The problem is, and one with which the Air Force investigators never dealt was that similar sightings, that is, strings of lights in the night skies, were seen all over west Texas. From as far north as Amarillo to as far south as the Midland-Odessa area, reports of these sorts of sightings were made. Birds and the newly installed sodium-vapor lamps in specific areas of Lubbock do not provide an adequate explanation.
What is relevant here, however, is that Air Force officers made a long, complex investigation of the sightings. Ruppelt flew down from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and officers and investigators were dispatched repeatedly from nearby Reese. They actually spoke to the witnesses in person, searched for evidence, analyzed the photographs and conducted follow-up interviews. Ruppelt made it clear that he believed there to be a plausible, mundane explanation for the sightings, but never officially said what it was. Later, by searching his files, I learned that he thought, personally, the Lubbock Lights were explained by fireflies.
Of course, that explanation didn't explain the photographs. Ruppelt wrote that he never found an explanation for them. "The photos were never proven to be a hoax but neither were they proven to be genuine." According to Ruppelt, "There is no definite answer."
Less than a year later Ruppelt and Project Blue Book would be involved in another series of sightings that had highly credible, multiple witnesses, and provide another type of physical evidence. This one would involve radar and air intercepts and would take place of the nation's capital.
It began late in the evening on July 19 when two radars at the Air Routing and Traffic Control Center (ARTC) picked up eight unidentified targets near Andrews Air Force Base. According to reports made by the controllers, these were not airplanes because they moved too fast. One object, according to the calculations made at the time was tracked at 7,000 miles an hour.
About twenty minutes later, or just after midnight on July 20, the tower radars at Washington's National Airport tracked five objects. What this meant was that three radars at three different locations had solid targets that were not identified as aircraft.
One of the controllers at the ARTC called for a senior controller, Harry C. Barnes who in turn called the National Airport control tower. They had unidentified targets on their scopes, as did the controllers at Andrews Air Force Base. They had already eliminated a mechanical malfunction as the cause, but with the objects on other scopes in other locations, there was no longer any question of their reality. The performance of the blips ruled out airplanes. All the men, including Barnes, were sure they were looking at solid objects based on their years of experience with radar. Weather related phenomena wouldn't produce the same effect on all the radars at the widely scattered locations. In fact, if weather was the explanation, the targets would have varied from scope to scope.
Just after midnight, Airman Second Class (A/2c) Bill Goodman, called the Andrews control tower to tell them he was watching a bright orange light about the size of a softball that was gaining and losing altitude as it zipped through the sky.
During this time, Goodman talked to A/1c William B. Brady, who was in the tower. Goodman told Brady that the object was to the immediate south. Brady saw a ball of orange fire. There were discrepancies between the physical description given by Goodman and Brady, but the problems were relatively small. It can be argued that the discrepancies are the result of the points of view of the two observers.
Joseph DeBoves, who was also on the scene as a civilian control tower operator at Andrews, said that Brady became excited during one of his telephone conversations, yelling, "There one goes." DeBoves believed that Brady was watching nothing more interesting than a meteor.
About two in the morning on July 20, the Radar Officer, Captain Harold C. Way, at Andrews Approach Control, learned that the ARTC had a target east of Andrews. He went outside and saw a strange light which he didn't believe to be a star. Later, however, he went back out, and this time decided that he was looking at a star.
Bolling Air Force Base became involved briefly about the time Way went outside. The tower operator there said that he saw a "roundish" object drifting low in the sky to the southeast of Bolling. There were no radar confirmations of the sighting, and that was the last of the reports from that base.
The ARTC again told the controllers at Andrews that they still had the targets on their scopes. There is conflicting data because some of the reports suggest that the Andrews radar showed nothing, while other reports claim they did. Now DeBoves, and two others in the tower, Monte Banning and John P. Izzo, Jr., swept the sky with binoculars but could see no lights other than the stars.
The sightings lasted through the night, and during that time, the crews of several airliners saw the lights right where the radars showed them to be. Tower operators also saw them, and jet fighters were brought in for attempted intercepts. Associated Press stories written hours after the sightings claimed that no intercepts had been attempted that night but those stories were inaccurate. Documents in the Project Blue Book files, as well as eye witnesses, confirm the attempted intercepts.
Typical of the sightings were those made by Captain Casey Pierman on Capital Airlines flight 807. He was on a flight between Washington and Martinsburg, West Virginia at 1:15 A.M. on July 20, when he, and the rest of the crew saw seven objects flash across the sky. Pierman said, "They were like falling stars without trails."
Capital Airline officials said that National Airport radar picked up the objects and asked Pierman to keep an eye on them. Shortly after takeoff, Pierman radioed that he had the objects in sight. He was flying at 180 to 200 mph, and reported the objects were traveling at tremendous speed. Official Air Force records confirm this.
Another Capital Airlines pilot, Captain Howard Dermott, on Capital Flight 610, reported a single light followed him from Herndon, Virginia, to within four miles of National Airport. Both the ARTC and the National Tower confirmed that an unidentified target followed the aircraft to within four miles of landing. At about the same time, an Air Force radar at Andrews AFB was tracking eight additional unknown objects as they flew over the Washington area.
One of the most persuasive sightings came early in the morning when one of the ARTC controllers called the Andrews Air Force Base control tower to tell them that there was a target south of the tower, over the Andrews Radio range station. The tower operators looked to the south where a "huge fiery-orange sphere" was hovering. This again was later explained by the Air Force as a star.
Just before daylight, about four in the morning, after repeated requests from the ARTC, an F-94 interceptor arrived on the scene, but it was too little too late. All the targets were gone. Although the flight crew made a short search of the local area, they found nothing unusual and returned to their base quickly.
During that night, apparently the three radar facilities only once reported a target that was seen by all three facilities. There were, however, a number of times when the ARTC radar and the Washington National tower radars had simultaneous contacts. It also seems that the radars were displaying the same targets that were seen by the crews of the Capital Airlines flights. What it boils down to is that multiple radars and multiple eyewitnesses were showing and seeing objects in the sky over Washington.
Air Force intelligence, including ATIC and the officers assigned to the Project Blue Book, had no idea that these sightings had taken place. They learned of the Saturday night — Sunday morning UFO show when the information was published in several newspapers on Monday. Ruppelt, on business in Washington and unaware of the sightings, reported "I got off an airliner from Dayton and I bought a newspaper in the lobby of Washington National Airport Terminal Building. I called Major Dewey Fournet, but all he knew was what he read in the papers."