Project Blue Book: Exposed

August 13, 1956: The First Bentwaters Case

If there is a case that proves that the officers and investigators for Project Blue Book were not interested in finding any answers except those they wanted, this is the report. It involves radar sightings on more than one set at more than one location, it involves jet fighters and attempted intercepts, and it involves visual sightings from the ground. It contains the physical evidence required of the skeptics in the form of radar returns, and it contains the corroborative visual confirmation of something unusual in the sky. But, in the end, the Air Force investigators fumbled the case away suggesting a combination of events that rivals the first of those multiple excuses provided for the Mantell incident of eight years earlier.

It began, according to the Blue Book files at 2130Z, or 9:30 p.m. local time when Tech Sergeant Elmer L. Whenry, a GCA (Ground Controlled Approach) radar operator for the USAF's 1264th AACS Squadron at the RAF Station Bentwaters, England, spotted twelve to fifteen blips on his radarscope. These were not correlated to any of the aircraft known to be in the area at the time.

According to the official Blue Book files, "This group was picked up approximately 8 miles southwest of RAF Station Bentwaters and were tracked on the radar scope clearly until the objects were approximately 14 miles northeast of Bentwaters. At the latter point on the course of these objects, they faded considerably on the radar scope."

The Blue Book report continued, "At the approximate 40 mile range individual objects… appeared to converge into one very large object which appeared to be several times larger than a B-36 aircraft due to the size of the Blip on the radar scope. At the time that the individual objects seemed to converge into one large object, the large object appeared to remain stationary for 10 to 15 minutes. The large object then moved N.E. approximately 5 or 6 miles then stopped its movement for 3 to 5 minutes then moved north disappearing off the radar scope."

At about the same time, Airman Second Class John Vaccare, Jr., another radar operator, spotted a single blip twenty-five to thirty miles southeast. As he watched, the blip seemed to be moving on a 295 degree heading at a very high rate of speed. After about thirty seconds, the blip was fifteen to twenty miles from the radar site, where it disappeared. According to the conservative figures, the object was moving at 5000 miles an hour.

At about 10:00 p.m., about five minutes after Whenry's first sightings had ended, he saw another blip located about thirty miles east of the station. Although the blip was on screen for only sixteen seconds, it moved to a point where is was west of the station and then faded. Calculations suggested that it moved at about 12,000 miles an hour.

From the Bentwaters control tower, others including Staff Sergeant Lawrence S. Wright, reported a bright light, according to the Air Force file. It was the size of a pin head held at arm's length and rose slowly from a point about 10 degrees above the horizon. It remained in sight for about an hour, appearing and disappearing. Nearly everyone who has looked at the file and checked the various star charts and maps have concluded that this object was Mars.

As Whenry was tracking the objects on his scope, a flight of two T-33 jets from the 512th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, returned to Bentwaters after a routine mission. The two pilots, identified in the Blue Book files only as Metz and Rowe (other data revealed their full names as First Lieutenant Charles V. Metz and First Lieutenant Andrew C. Rowe), were asked to try to find the objects. Although they searched the area for forty-five minutes, vectored by the radar operators, they failed to find anything. They broke off and landed about 10:15 p.m.

At 10:55 p.m., another target was spotted, about thirty miles to the east and heading west at only 2000 to 4000 miles an hour. It passed directly overhead and disappeared, from the radar screen, about thirty miles from the base. This time, however, there was an airborne observation. A C-47 pilot saw the object flash beneath his plane. To him it looked like little more than a blur of light.

The pilot wasn't the only person to see the light. On the ground, a number of people, looking up, saw the same bright blur. They provided little in the way of useful description of the object.

There were those who believed that this one segment of the case could be identified, just as Mars seems to have explained the Bentwaters control tower sighting. Analysis by UFO debunker Philip Klass led him to speculate that the pilot only saw a meteor, one of the many that can be seen during the Perseid Meteor showers. Atmospheric physicist James McDonald, who also reviewed the case, disagreed, using the ground observations and the pilot's sighting to suggest the object was between ground level and 4000 feet. Klass failed to mention that there were ground observations of that object as he writes it off. But even if Klass was right (thought I doubt it) about this one sighting, there were others that were not so easily explained.

The sighting by the pilot and the people on the ground was the last of the events at the Bentwaters base. The action shifted to the west-northwest as Lakenheath Air Force Base radars began to pick up the objects. Ground personnel saw a luminous object approach from a southwesterly direction, stop, then shoot off toward the east. Not much later, two white lights appeared, "joined up with another and both disappeared in formation together." Before they vanished, the objects had performed a number of high speed maneuvers. Most importantly, all of this was seen on two separate radar screens at Lakenheath.

The Blue Book files noted, "Thus two radar sets [that is, Lakenheath GCA and the RATCC radars] and three ground observers report substantially the same thing… the fact that radar and ground visual observations were made on its rapid acceleration and abrupt stops certainly lend credulance (sic) to the report."

But Klass, in his analysis of the case, finds what he believes to the be fatal flaw here too. He seizes on the point that the blip stopped to hover. He wrote, "With the radar operating in the moving-target-indicator (MTI) mode, only moving targets should appear on the scope — IF the MTI is functioning properly. In radars of that early vintage, MTI was a relatively new feature and one that often caused problems. For example, the instruction book for the MPN-11A [the designation of that particular radar set design] radar, which also had MTI, specifically warned radar operators and maintenance personnel of the possibility of spurious signals being caused by an MTI malfunction. In chapter 5, on page 12, the Technical Order (as the instruction book is called) warned that MTI "circuits are complex; the stability requirements are severe; the tolerances are close." And on page 18 of chapter 4, the same manual warns operators of still another potential source of spurious signals that can result from what is called "extra-time-around signals." (Emphasis in original).

What Klass is suggesting, without going into a complex and detailed discussion of the workings of radars that are now more than forty years old, is that "this condition can arise during anomalous-propagation weather conditions when echoes from distant fixed targets on the ground far beyond the selected maximum radar operating range defeat the MTI function. Under this condition, the Tech Order warned, 'the signal from this distant fixed target may appear as a false moving target… ' (Klass's added emphasis)."

Klass is arguing, based on the technical specifications of the radars in use, that the blips during this first sighting are anomalous propagation. In other words, the returns were not of real craft but a "phantom" created by the weather conditions outside and the electronic characteristics of the radars being used.

About midnight, one of the operators at Lakenheath called the chief fighter controller at the RAF Station at Neatishead, Norfolk in England, and reported a strange object buzzing the base. F.H.C. Wimbledon would later say, "I scrambled a Venom night fighter from the Battle Flight through Sector, and my controller in the Interception Control team would consist of one Fighter Controller, a Corporal, a tracker and a height reader. That is, four highly trained personnel in addition to myself could now see the object on our radarscopes."

Blue Book files, which are often confusing, suggest that it took the two-man fighter between 30 and 45 minutes to arrive at Lakenheath. As the aircraft approached, according to the reports, "Pilot advised he had a bright light in sight and would investigate. At 13 miles west, he reported loss of target and white light."

Immediately afterwards the interceptor was directed to another target over Bedford, and the navigator locked on it with his radar. He said it was the "clearest target I have ever seen on radar."

The radar contact was broken, and the Lakenheath controllers reported that the object had passed the Venom fighter and was now behind it, that is, at the six o'clock position, in the lingo of fighter pilots. The pilot acknowledged the message and tried various maneuvers to reverse the situation, that is, to get behind the object. Unable to shake the object, the pilot asked for assistance.

But the Venom was now low and fuel and the pilot decided to return to base. According to the Blue Book documents, "Second Venom was vectored to other radar targets but was unable to make contact." The second aircraft returned to the base and no other fighters were sent. By 3:30 a.m., all targets were gone."

When the Condon Committee, also known as the University of Colorado study, the Air Force sponsored investigation into UFOs, began, one of the controllers who had been on duty that night at Bentwaters, sent a letter describing the events. Although it had been about a dozen years, the memory seemed to be well etched. Naturally there were some discrepancies in the letter but nothing of a significant nature.

The man pointed out that he had not told anyone of the events because he was "pretty sure it is considered (or was) classified, and the only reason I feel free to give you details is because you are an official government agency."

His long letter then described most of the events of that night. He provided a detailed look at the attempted intercept. He made a number of interesting observations in the letter, including the information about the intercept. He wrote, "The first movement of the UFO was so swift (circling behind the interceptor), I missed it entirely, but it was seen by other controllers. However, the fact that his had occurred was confirmed by the pilot of the interceptor. The pilot of the interceptor told us he would try to shake the UFO and would try it again. He tried everything — he climbed, dived, circled, etc., but the UFO acted like it was glued right behind him, always the same distance, very close, but we always had two distinct targets. Note: Target resolution on our radar at the range they were from the antenna (about 10 to 30 miles, all in the southerly sectors from Lakenheath) would be between 200 and 600 feet probably. Closer than that we would have got one target from both aircraft and UFO. Most specifications say 500 feet is the minimum but I believe it varies and 200 to 600 feet is closer to the truth… "

What all this boils down to are a series of radar observations of objects that displayed characteristics that were outside the capabilities of aircraft of the day. In at least one of the reports from Bentwaters, the radar sightings coincided with visual observations on the ground and by a pilot in the C-47 (the sighting that Klass had "identified" as a meteor). This should not be confused with the observation of Mars made by tower personnel. That aspect of the case has been resolved to the satisfaction of everyone whether a believer or a skeptic or an Air Force investigator.

On the ground at Lakenheath were witnesses who saw two luminous objects in fast flight. They witnessed the course reversals and the dead stops. The maneuvers rule out meteors which some have suggested were responsible for the sightings.

Dr. James McDonald in his paper, "Science in Default," published in 'UFOs A Scientific Debate, wrote, "The file does, however, include a lengthy dispatch that proposes a series of what I must term wholly irrelevant hypotheses about Perseid meteors with 'ionized gases in their wake which may be traced on radarscopes,' and inversions that 'may cause interference between two radar stations some distance apart.' Such basically irrelevant remarks are all too typical of Bluebook critique over the years."

He also pointed out that "Not only are the radar frequencies here about two orders of magnitude too high to afford even marginal likelihood of meteor- wake returns, but there is absolutely no kinematic similarity between the reported UFO movements and the essentially straight-line hypersonic movement of a meteor, to cite just a few of the objections to meteor hypotheses."

Two separate radars at Lakenheath, having different radar parameters, were concurrently observing movements of one or more unknown targets over an extended period of time. One of the ways that the reliability of a return on one radar is checked is to compare it to another. If they are operating at different frequencies, then an inversion layer, if affecting the returns, will be different on the two sets. Or one will show it and the second will not. It eliminates the possibility of a spurious target.

That is not to mention the fact that the Blue Book files suggest that some of the two-radar sightings were coincident with the visual observations on the ground. In other words, not only were the objects seen on multiple radars, but there were people outside who saw the lights in the sky.

Klass, in his report, attempting to dismiss the case as anomalous propagation, wrote, "If it were not for the incident involving the first Venom pilot's reported radar-visual encounter with the UFO, this case would deserve scant attention because the erratic behavior of the radar-UFOs is so characteristic of spurious targets…"

Klass then goes on to explain the cockpit configuration of the Venom fighter, reporting, accurately, that it is set up so that the pilot sits on the left and the radar operator sits on the right. Controls for the radar, and the screen, are situated so that it would be difficult for the pilot to both fly the plane and work the radar. He suggests, based on the reported communications between the pilot and the ground that there was no radar operator in the cockpit. This, Klass believes, explains why there seems to be a radar visual sighting. The pilot, doing double duty, was "overwhelmed" by the workload and made a simple mistake.

But this is speculation by Klass. He pointed out, "Never once did the words 'we' or 'radar operator' appear in the reports; only the words 'I' and 'pilot.'"

This was a "scrambled" intercept mission. It is unlikely that the aircraft took off without a full cockpit crew. In other words, regardless of the speculations by Klass, there would have been a man sitting in the right seat to work the radar. And, if that is the case, then his whole theory is in error and should be rejected.

And even if he was correct about there being a single occupant of the Venom aircraft, that does not explain the other visual sightings at the scene. The case is made of more than a single misidentified blip on the radars. It is a complex case that should have been carefully researched by those who claimed to be interested in finding answers.

The Condon Committee, which did investigate the case in a very limited fashion, suggested that they were hampered by receiving the case late. It wasn't until the letter from the controller arrived that they even began to look at it. Only then did they request the Air Force file.

One interesting point is that Klass, of course, criticizes some researchers for relying on the twelve-year-old memories of the controller, preferring to rely on the reports written within days of the sighting. The Condon Committee, however, noted, "One of the interesting aspects of this case is the remarkable accuracy of the account of the witness as given in the letter… which was apparently written from memory 12 yr. after the incident. There are a number of minor discrepancies, mostly a matter of figures (the C-47 at 5,000 ft. was evidently actually at 4,000 ft.), and he seems to have confused the identity of location C with B [as noted in his letter]; however all of the major details of his account seem to be well confirmed by the Blue Book account."

After their review of the case, the Condon Committee, which was financed by the Air Force, reported, "In conclusion, although conventional or natural explanations certainly cannot be ruled out, the probability of such seems low in this case and the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved seems high."

Let's look at that conclusion again, remembering that Ed Condon, in authoring his report to the Air Force claimed they found no evidence for UFOs. But the conclusion reached by the scientists of the Condon Committee was, "…the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved seems high."

Hynek, in a "memorandum for record" found in the Project Blue Book files, wrote about the case, "The Lakenheath case could constitute a source of embarrassment to the Air Force, and should the facts, as so far reported, get into the public domain, it is not necessary to point out what excellent use the several dozen UFO societies and other 'publicity artists' would make of such an incident. It is, therefore, of great importance that further information on the technical aspects of the original observations be obtained, without loss of time from the original observers."

There is no evidence that anyone did any follow up work, at least in the Blue Book files. Here is a case that, if properly researched, could have given us a great deal of information about UFOs. It contains the elements that the scientific community demands. Not only do we have the reports of the radar operators about what they were seeing on the scopes, but we have visual confirmation by other personnel including two pilots. Clearly something other than weather related phenomena was present.

Even the Condon Committee scientists, who by the time this case arrived, were predisposed to believe that UFOs were nothing more than imagination, misidentification and illusion, wrote that there was a genuine UFO involved. I should point out here that a genuine UFO does not translate directly into extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Klass, at the end of his report about the case, wrote, "UFOlogical principal #10: Many UFO cases seem puzzling and unexplainable simply because case investigators have failed to devote a sufficiently rigorous effort to the investigation." He added, "This is not really surprising because the vast majority of UFO investigators are persons who want to believe in extraterrestrial spaceships, either consciously or unconsciously. The larger the number of seemingly unexplainable cases, the stronger the apparent support for the extraterrestrial hypothesis."

Except, in this case, some of the most persuasive of the arguments came from the Condon Committee scientists. They didn't want to believe at all, and in fact, had hung ridiculous explanations on some of the reports simply to have them labeled as "identified." But here, with this case, they reported it was a genuine UFO.

But the point is that Blue Book and the Air Force had this case in their hands. They were alerted as required by Air Force Regulation 200-2 demanded, and they had access to all the witnesses. At worst, some of them would have been civilians assigned to one of the bases involved. Yet there is no evidence in the Blue Book files that they followed up on the reports. There is no evidence that they cared what the facts were. Instead, someone said meteors might be in the area, and meteors became a source of the visual sightings. Someone suggested that anomalous propagation might be responsible and anomalous propagation became the source of the radar returns.

In fact, one writer suggested that as the objects approached the radar sites, they seemed to fade, and then came back stronger. To him, this meant anomalous propagation because this was a classic symptom of it. The targets often faded and came became stronger under those circumstances.

There is, of course, another, equally plausible explanation. Radar sites are designed so that there is little in the way of signal strength directly overhead. The radars at set up to find targets approaching and to display those targets. If the object flies directly overhead, then the signal fades and the target fades, only to come back strong on the other side, once it is out of this "cone of silence."

In other words, if a real, solid object flew over the top of the radar site, the operator could expect it to fade out and then come back. The returns on the scopes did exactly what they should have, not because they were anomalous propagation but because the target had flown over the top of the site.

What this case demonstrates, however, is that the Air Force, by the mid-1950s, had started to stick explanations on sighting reports. It made little or no difference if those sightings were explained or not. If they could sell the explanation to one another, and no one worked hard to slap them down, then that became the explanation.

This case should have been investigated with the intensity that was applied to the Florida scoutmaster case. The contrast in the investigations is staggering. In Florida, the Air Force investigators tried to find all the witnesses, they knocked on doors, checked the background of the man involved, interviewed the boy scouts, and took samples for testing.

At Bentwaters-Lakenheath, they took their teletype messages, checked the star charts, and let it go. There are some statements from some of the witnesses, but they take up only a few pages. No other investigation was completed. Nothing else was done. At least that is the evidence available in the Blue Book files.

McDonald, after reviewing the case, wrote, "Doesn't a UFO case like Lakenheath warrant more than a mere shrug of the shoulders from scientists?"

And to that I add, "Didn't it warrant more of an investigation than that given to what is essentially a single witness case in Florida?" Here was just another of the missed opportunities in the Air Force files.