Observatory Manager Observes UFOs
Observatory Manager of Public Relations Harley C. Marshall drove away from observatory when he saw a perfect V of Vs formation of about 16 to 18 silver/round objects without tails or wings overhead.
Traveling at high 1+1 electromagnetic effects on cosmic ray detector speed to the northwest and emitting a sound like jets but not quite the same which noticeably lagged behind visual location of objects in the sky by about 35° to 40°.
Marshall stopped car and observed objects disappear behind cloud cover that extended from horizon to about 45° elevation.
Harley returned to Observatory, and phoned Assistant Superintendent-Electrical B.B. Traxler on duty who at about 1:20 p.m. saw one dark unidentified object traveling to the southwest while checking the cosmic ray Geiger counter recording equipment and saw that the needle had jumped off scale for several seconds.
For the next 10 days another 21 incidents of off scale cosmic ray detector incidents occurred at scattered times fitting a periodic 1½ hour time schedule, a phenomenon not seen before or after, and unexplainable by equipment failure or radio interference from aircraft.
Several Navy aircraft of differing prop and jet types were flown near Palomar Observatory using radio, altimeter and radars on October 21 and November 2 in an unsuccessful effort to trigger the Geiger counter.
The witness on the Blue Book project card is identified as Focke, which is not correct.
Focke was neither a UFO witness nor a UFO reporter. He was Dr. Albert B. Focke, a scientist working on the cosmic ray detection experiment which was located at Mt. Palomar.
Dr. Focke was chief scientist of the Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, I don't know if he was such in 1949, and he was later chief scientist at Point Magu Naval Missile Test Center.
I know Dr. Focke's son, who unfortunately does not know anything about the Mt. Palomar events.
Astronomers incident.In the fall of 1949, at some unspecified place in the United States, a group of scientists had set up equipment to measure background radiation, the small amount of harmless radiation that is always present in our atmosphere.
This natural radiation varies to a certain degree, but will never increase by any appreciable amount unless there is a good reason.
According to the rumor, two of the scientists at the unnamed place were watching the equipment one day when, for no apparent reason, a sudden increase of radiation was indicated.
The radiation remained high for a few seconds, then dropped back to normal.
The increase over normal was not sufficient to be dangerous, but it definitely was unusual.
All indications pointed to equipment malfunction as the most probable explanation.
A quick check revealed no obvious trouble with the gear, and both scientists were about to start a more detailed check when a third member of the radiation crew came rushing into the lab.
Before they could tell the newcomer about the unexplained radiation they had just picked up, he blurted out a story of his own.
He had driven to a nearby town, and on his return trip, as he approached the research lab, something in the sky suddenly caught his eye.
High in the cloudless blue he saw three silvery objects moving in a V formation.
They appeared to be spherical in shape, but he was't sure.
The first fact that had hit him was that the objects were traveling too fast to be conventional aircraft.
He jammed on the brakes, stopped his car, and shut off the engine.
No sound.
All he could hear was the quiet whir of a generator in the research lab.
In a few seconds the objects had disappeared from sight.
After the first 2 scientists had briefed their excited colleague on the unusual radiation they had detected, the 3 men asked each other the $64 question:
Was there any connection between the two incidents?
Had the UFOs caused the excessive radiation?
They checked the time.
Knowing almost exactly when the instruments had registered the increased radiation, they checked on how long it took to drive to the lab from the point where the three silver objects had been seen.
The times correlated within a minute or so.
The 3 men proceeded to check their radiation equipment thoroughly.
Nothing was wrong.
The rumor stopped here.
Nothing that I or anyone else on Project Blue Book could find out shed any further light on the source of the story.
People associated with projects similar to the research lab that was mentioned in the rumor were sought out and questioned.
Many of them had heard the story, but no one could add any new details.
The 3 unknown scientists, at the unnamed lab, in an unknown part of the United States, might as well never have existed.
Maybe they hadn't.
Almost a year after I had first heard the UFO radiation story I got a long-distance call from a friend on the west coast.
I had seen him several months before, at which time I told him about this curious rumor and expressed my wish to find out how authentic it was.
Now, on the phone, he told me he had just been in contact with 2 people he knew and they had the whole story.
He said they would be in Los Angeles the following night and would like very much to talk to me.
I hated to fly clear to the west coast on what might be a wild goose chase, but I did.
I couldn't afford to run the risk of losing an opportunity to turn that old recurrent rumor into fact.
20 hours later I met the 2 people at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
We talked for several hours that night, and I got the details on the rumor and a lot more that I hadn't bargained for.
Both of my informants were physicists working for the Atomic Energy Commission, and were recognized in their fields.
They wanted no publicity and I promised them that they would get none.
One of the men knew all the details behind the rumor, and did most of the talking.
To keep my promise of no publicity, It'll call him the scientist.
The rumor version of the UFO radiation story that had been kicking around in Air Force and scientific circles for so long had been correct in detail but it was by no means complete.
The scientist said that after the initial sighting had taken place word was spread at the research lab that the next time the instruments registered abnormal amounts of radiation, some of the personnel were to go outside immediately and look for some object in the sky.
About 3 weeks after the first incident a repetition did occur.
While excessive radiation was registering on the instruments in the lab, a lone dark object was seen streaking across the sky.
Again the instruments were checked but, as before, no malfunction was found.
After this second sighting, according to the scientist, an investigation was started at the laboratory.
The people who made the visual observations weren't sure that the object they had seen couldn't have been an airplane.
Someone thought that perhaps some type of radar equipment in the airplane, if that's what the object was, might have affected the radiation detection equipment.
So arrangements were made to fly all types of aircraft over the area with their radar in operation.
Nothing unusual happened.
All possible types of airborne research equipment were traced during similar flights in the hope that some special equipment not normally carried in aircraft would be found to have caused the jump in radiation.
But nothing out of the ordinary occurred during these tests either.
It was tentatively concluded, the scientist continued, that the abnormally high radiation readings were officially due to some freakish equipment malfunction and that the objects sighted visually were birds or airplanes.
A report to this effect was made to military authorities, but since the conclusion stated that no flying saucers were involved, the report went into some unknown file.
Project Blue Book never got it.
Shortly after the second UFO-radiation episode the research group finished its work.
It was at this time that the scientist had first become aware of the incidents he related to me.
A friend of his, one of the men involved in the sightings, had sent the details in a letter.
As the story of the sightings spread it was widely discussed in scientific circles, with the result that the conclusion, an equipment malfunction, began to be more seriously questioned.
Among the scientists who felt that further investigation of such phenomena was in order, were the man to whom I was talking and some of the people who had made the original sightings.
About a year later the scientist and these original investigators were working together.
They decided to make a few more tests, on their own time, but with radiation detection equipment so designed that the possibility of malfunction would be almost nil.
They formed a group of people who were interested in the project, and on evenings and weekends assembled and set up their equipment in an abandoned building on a small mountain peak.
To insure privacy and to avoid arousing undue interest among people not in on the project, the scientist and his colleagues told everyone that they had formed a mineral club.
The mineral club deception covered their weekend expeditions because rock hounds are notorious for their addiction to scrambling around on mountains in search for specimens.
The equipment that the group had installed in the abandoned building was designed to be self operating.
Geiger tubes were arranged in a pattern so that some idea as to the direction of the radiation source could be obtained.
During the original sightings the equipment malfunction factor could not be definitely established or refuted because certain critical data had not been measured.
To get data on visual sightings, the mineral club had to rely on the flying saucer grapevine, which exists at every major scientific laboratory in the country.
By late summer of 1950 they were in business.
For the next 3 months the scientist and his group kept their radiation equipment operating 24 hours a day, but the tapes showed nothing except the usual background activity.
The saucer grapevine reported sightings in the general area of the tests, but none close to the instrumented mountaintop.
The trip to the instrument shack, which had to be made every other day to change tapes, began to get tiresome for the rock hounds, and there was some talk of discontinuing the watch.
But persistence paid off.
Early in December, about 10:00 a.m. the grapevine reported sightings of a silvery, circular-shaped object near the instrument shack.
The UFO was seen by several people.
When the rock hounds checked the recording tapes in the shack they found that several of the Geiger tubes had been triggered at 10:17 a.m.
The registered radiation increase was about 100 times greater than the normal background activity.
3 more times during the next 2 months the mineral clubtucson's equipment recorded abnormal radiation on occasions when the grapevine reported visual sightings of UFOs.
One of the visual sightings was substantiated by radar.
After these incidents the mineral club kept its instruments in operation until June 1951, but nothing more was recorded.
And, curiously enough, during this period while the radiation level remained normal, the visual sightings in the area dropped off too.
The mineral club decided to concentrate on determining the significance of the data they had obtained.
Accordingly, the scientist and the group made a detailed study of their mountain top findings.
They had friends working on many research projects throughout the United States and managed to visit and confer with them while on business trips.
They investigated the possibility of unusual sunspot activity, but sunspots had been normal during the brief periods of high radiation.
To clinch the elimination of sunspots as a cause, their record tapes showed no burst of radiation when sunspot activity had been abnormal.
The rock hounds checked every possible research project that might have produced some stray radiation for their instruments to pick up.
They found nothing.
They checked and rechecked their instruments, but could find no factor that might have induced false readings.
They let other scientists in on their findings, hoping that these outsiders might be able to put their fingers on errors that had been overlooked.
Now, more than a year after the occurrence of the mysterious incidents that they had recorded, a year spent in analyzing their data, the rock hounds had no answer.
By the best scientific tests that they had been able to apply, the visual sightings and the high radiation had taken place more or less simultaneously.