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The 701 Club
Case # 636 - July 26, 1952
The Blue Book record
NICAP describes the case as:
Kansas City, Missouri. 12:15 a.m. Witnesses: USAF Capt. H. A. Stone, men in control towers at Fairfax Field and Municipal Airport. One greenish light with red-orange flashes was seen for 1 hour as it descended in the northwest from 40* elevation to 10* elevation1
The blue book file is a bit more informative as the Air intelligence report states:
On 26 July 1952, at approximately 0015 hours XXXX observed an airborne object above Kansas City, Missouri. He (XXXX) then notified the dispatcher, Fairfax field, Kansas City, Kansas, of his observation. The dispatcher subsequently notified the tower operators of the Fairfax and Municipal Airports of the incident, who also saw the object.2
The witness, using 6X30 binoculars, made his own report:
At approximately 15 minutes past midnight my wife called my attention to what appeared to be an unusually bright star in the western sky. I observed this object through binoculars for about 10 minutes and then notified the dispatcher at Fairfax Field, Kansas of what I was looking at and it’s (sic) location. I continued to keep the object under observation with the binoculars until approximately 15 minutes past one o’clock A.M. At this time it had apparently sunk so low on the horizon I could no longer keep it in view.3
He also gave a chronological statement of events:
First observed 0015 26 July 1952
Location. WNW from observer at angle of about 40 degrees from horizontal.
Shape. Indeterminate, appeared to be round more than anything else.
Color. Predominately greenish with intermittent red orange flashes shooting out from edges in all directions.
Size. Unknown, but gave the impression of being quite large.
Altitude. Unknown, but based on intensity of lights would estimate 35,000 to 40,000 feet.
Speed. Took about one hour to cover 30 degrees of arc in the sky.
Course. Appeared to travel in a Northwesterly direction, with no apparent loss of altitude or change of speed.
Last observed. 0115 26 July 1952, NNW from observer at an angle of about 10 degrees from the horizontal.4
At the end of this report, the witness made the following comment:
Wish to emphasize that estimates of size and altitude given above are unreliable due to lack of adequate data on which to accurately judge. They are purely guesstimates.5
Is it possible that his “guesstimates” prevented Blue Book from determining the source of this UFO?
CST or CDT?
One of the items that always bothers me about these reports is when they don’t designate a time zone or do not use Zulu time. In 1952, daylight savings time was not used nationwide and one can never be sure who was using it and who was not. According to internet sources, Missouri employed CDT in 1952, which would seem to answer the question. However, I checked further and examined a few local newspapers in Missouri. They listed sunset as being around 7:30 PM, which was standard time. Additionally, I examined several 1952 Blue Book cases from Missouri. When a local time was listed, it was listed as CST and not CDT. This implies that the witness was giving CST as his time zone.
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A possible solution
When this case was first brought to my attention, I saw the times and locations and wondered if it were a bright star that was setting. So, I started with a looking at the sky conditions using Stellarium. There was a bright star in the sky at the time setting in the WNW. Arcturus (magnitude 0), at 0015 local time, was at an azimuth of 286 degrees and 12 degrees elevation. At 0115, the star was at 295 degrees azimuth and 1 degree of elevation. It is interesting to note that, at the time the UFO was last seen, Arcturus had essentially set. This appeared to be a potential solution to this case.
Reasons for rejection
The explanation might be rejected based on the witness’ estimates of elevation and azimuth. He states that the object was originally in the WNW (azimuth 290) and disappeared in the NNW (azimuth 340). This is a difference in azimuth of 50 degrees. Arcturus only changed direction by about 10 degrees. The difference of elevation was 30 degrees of arc (40 to 10 degrees). Arcturus only changed elevation by roughly 10 degrees.
Another reason to reject the explanation is the apparent color of Arcturus is orangish-red to most observers (It is classified as a K-type star). While the observer stated there were intermittent flashes of red-orange, the dominant color he observed was green.
Witness errors?
In the argument concerning angles of elevation and azimuth, the changes were greater than the motion of Arcturus. However, we have to remember that the witness was making, in his own words, “guesstimates”. We don’t know how accurate he was in making these estimates. People can, and do, make errors when determining directions and angles of elevation. According to several articles I read, many observers tend to overestimate angles of elevation.
Writing about meteor plots, J. Hugh Pruett once wrote:
From tests once made on 50 persons, we found that 95 per cent estimate angular altitudes too high, most of them far too high........7
In the Condon report, we read the following comment:
The angular elevation, or apparent location above the horizon, of objects is generally not estimated very accurately at all. The difference from 0° or from 90° of angles near the horizon or near the zenith tends to be substantially overestimated. Anything that is more than 45°
or even 30° above the horizon is often reported as overhead.8
M. Minnaert wrote:
We estimate as well as we can, the direction in which the centre of the arc joining the zenith to horizon appears to lie. When this estimated centre is checked, it turns out not to lie at a height of 45 degrees, but much lower, mostly at heights from 20 degree to 30 degrees; values as low as 12 degree or as high as 45 degrees have been given, though rarely. 9
If a witness thinks 20-30 degrees is actually 45 degrees, they are going to overestimate angles of elevations. This does not mean that all observers overestimate angles but it does indicate that there is a tendency for people to do so. There also may be a clue in the witness’ statement that he was mistaken about his angle of elevation estimates. He claimed 10 degrees above the horizon was when the object became too low to see. In my opinion, this estimate was probably too high, which means the initial estimate was probably inaccurate to a similar degree. If we consider that the point it got too low as 3-5 degrees and apply that same factor (2-3X) to the initial sighting, we have a value of more like 13-20 degrees for the initial sighting, which is pretty close to the value of 12 degrees, where Arcturus was located.
If the elevation angles were off, couldn’t the azimuth be off as well? This would not be unusual based on what some investigators have reported. Allan Hendry wrote in his UFO Handbook:
I was always surprised to encounter adults at or near their own homes who couldn’t locate north, south, east, and west even though they may have lived in the area for years. I was able to prod them with guidelines, like where the sun rises or where it sets or what direction the street they live on runs. I had to worry at times about whether witnesses were actually describing the correct direction of, say, a stationary light source when all the other characteristics described except the direction led to the conclusion of “Venus.” 10
UFOlogist John Keel also commented about this:
Early in my own investigations I discovered that the average witness could not even pinpoint true north- even when he or she had lived in the area all their life. It is common for a witness to say that the object appeared in the east, say, and travelled to the south west when actually I found that it had appeared in the west and travel north east!11
Writing about fireball reports, Hal Povenmire also encountered this problem:
It is surprising how many people do not know North from South, or even which way the house that they live in faces. In the mail, a large number of people will send you some sort of a map indicating what they saw. Many of these will show that they did see an object and spend a lot of time constructing the map but the map tells nothing of value for it lacks pertinent information.12
The other reason for rejection is the statement by the witness that the UFO was “predominately greenish....” 13 While Arcturus appears orangish-red to most observers, it is plausible that it can appear green under certain conditions. The lower the elevation angle, the more likely a star will scintillate causing its color to rapidly change.
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I recently took a handheld image of the star Arcturus when it was 10-15 degrees above the horizon. Exposure time was eight seconds and I purposefully moved the camera about so the various colors displayed would be visible in the trailing images. Notice that the color green, as well as blue and red, does appear quite frequently. One could make a case that the predominant color was green under these conditions.
The one thing that can not be ignored in all of this is the fact that Arcturus had essentially set at the same time the witness lost sight of this UFO because its angle of elevation had gotten too low. This indicates that it needs to be considered as a potential explanation.
Why didn’t Blue Book solve this one?
There are two possible reasons Blue Book did not seem to consider Arcturus as the potential solution. The first had to do with when this sighting was made. This was the same time frame as the Washington DC sightings. There probably was no time to examine
this case closely and it was probably put into the “unexplained” pile because nobody could figure out what it was after initial examination. The potential errors in elevation/azimuth estimates probably compounded the issue.
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One has to remember that Blue Book did not have any sophisticated computer programs to determine the precise locations of astronomical objects. The individuals attempting to identify these reports probably used a nomograph with an astronomical almanac (left)14 or a planisphere (right) to get approximate positions of celestial objects. In both cases, there is a margin for error, which could make identification difficult when coupled with inaccurate estimates made by witnesses.
Solved?
Without more information one can’t draw any definitive conclusions. It would have been nice to have reports from the witnesses
at Fairfax field, who stated they saw the object as well. I could not find any such reports in the blue book archive or Fold 3 web site. If they filed any reports, they probably were lost in the shuffle. If we make the assumption that this witness was not 100% accurate in his directions and angles of elevations, the star Arcturus becomes a probable source for this report. I would not call it positively “identified” but, in my opinion, the classification of this case should be changed from “unidentified” to “possibly Arcturus”. It certainly does not appear to have been any exotic craft.
Quelle: SUNlite 3/2013
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