UFOs in the daily Press:

New Reports of Saucers Above State and Washington

Whatever they Are, 'Sky[ ghosts', but They] ARE There (radar says)

Compiled by the Observer-Dispatch
From Press Association Dispatches

Radar, which normally doesn't show something that isn't there, has picked up "flying saucers" near the nation's capital for the second time within a week.

Jet fighters pilots searched the skies without directly contacting anything during the six hours that four to 12 unidentified objects intermittently appeared on radar screens at Washington National Airport and nearby Andrews Air force Base.

One pilot said he saw four lights approximately 10 miles away and slightly above him. But they disappeared before he could overtake them, the Associated Press said. Later, the same pilot said, he saw "a steady white light" five miles away that vanished in about a minute.

As far as could be determined, this was the first time jets have been sent on the trails of such sky ghosts.

Officials carefully avoided mentioning "flying saucers," just as they did when radar picked up seven or eight unidentified objects near Washington last Monday. But the Air Force was expected to add the report to its long list of saucer sightings, which officials say are coming faster than at any time since the initial flurry in 1947.

UPSTATE NEW YORK had another report of the mysterious sky "things" again, too. It came from Nat Marsh, 27, Prospect.

Marsh said that he and his wife and 13-year-old son, Wallace, were driving home from Binghampton at about 7 last night when his son called his attention to a silver disc in the sky.

The disc was moving southward at what he described as a "terrible speed." He says he and the members of his family watched it for several minutes before it disappeared. He was sure the object was not a plane.

"WE DON'T KNOW what they are, but we are investigating", an Air Force spokesman said of the Washington report.

"We have no evidence that they are flying saucers. Conversely, we have no concrete evidence that they are not flying saucers."

There was no agreement whether the recent reports are the first of such mystery objects appearing on radar. At least, officials agreed that they are unusual.

Radar normally does not register anything without substance - such as light. But it can pick up such things as a bird in flight or a cloud formation. And one expert said radar is not infallible.

The Air Force reported that between four and 12 unidentified objects appeared at 9:08 p.m. Saturday on the radar screen at the air route traffic center operated by the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Their position was estimated at 10 miles east of Mount Vernon, Va., which is near Washington National Airport.

Word went to the Air Force, which sent up two jet fighters interceptor planes from a base in Newcastle, Del., some 90 miles from Washington.

When the planes appeared on their radarscope at approximately 11:25 p.m., the CAA tried without success to guide the planes into contact with the mystery objects. It was during this search that the pilot made his two sightings of lights.

The planes left for their base at 1:40 a.m. and the two other jets took over and stayed in the sky until 2:20 a.m. without making contacts.

The pilot who sighted the lights said they "were really moving" - faster than 600 miles per hour. But radar operators at Andrews Air Force Base said they [...] at a "slow rate of speed" - - [...] miles per hour. This was much the same pattern as last week's sightings - slow moving objects with bursts of speed.

One woman in Washington reported she saw "a very bright light" streak across the sky towards Andrews Base at about 12:15 p.m. Later she said she saw an object with a tail like a comet whiz by and a few seconds later a third in another direction.