Radar tracks unidentified objects over the Oak Ridge atomic site
October 12, 1950 – January 1951 · Oak Ridge, Tennessee · Sighting · Original document
On the evening of 12 October 1950 the Air Force radar station at Knoxville picked up eleven or more objects crossing the controlled area of the atomic installation at Oak Ridge, according to an urgent FBI teletype the next day. A fighter was sent; the radar showed contact but the pilot saw nothing, and the Atomic Energy Commission's patrol saw nothing either. More radar and visual reports followed through January 1951, including a bright object seen on 18 December by three of six men riding to work at the site and an F-82 scramble on the evening of 16 January. On 5 December FBI headquarters told its Knoxville office to gather all the facts on possible radar jamming, and Army counterintelligence and the Air Force sent the Bureau their own reports.
Era: Flying discs and the first inquiries · Themes: Nuclear and weapons sites, Military and police witnesses
Why it matters (3/5)
Repeated radar and visual reports over an atomic installation drew fighter scrambles and FBI, Army and Air Force inquiries at the time.
The other side
The teletype says no reasonable explanation had yet been found and that the operators were experienced. A later Defense Department public statement cites a January 1951 Oak Ridge intercept, in which the fighters' radar led them toward a point on the ground, as support for the theory that temperature inversions caused such returns. In one of the January reports a pilot identified an object as a star. Final Air Force conclusions were not found in the pages read.
Sources
- FBI file 62-HQ-83894 "Flying Discs", Section 6 (1950-1951) (Federal Bureau of Investigation (released by the Department of War)), primary
- FBI file 62-HQ-83894 "Flying Discs", Section 7 (1951-1952) (Federal Bureau of Investigation (released by the Department of War)), criticism