July 17, 1957 — Mississippi through Louisiana and Texas and into Oklahoma
Before dawn. The crew of a USAF RB-47 reconnaissance aircraft is flying out of Forbes Field [now Topeka Regional Airport], Kansas, on an electronic warfare training flight over Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The RB-47 is carrying a 6-man crew, of whom three are electronic warfare officers manning ECM gear in the aft portion of the aircraft. Their names are Lewis Dormon Chase, pilot; James H. McCoid, copilot; Thomas H. Hanley, navigator; John J. Provenzano, No. 1 monitor; Frank B. McClure, No. 2 monitor; and Walter A. Tuchscherer, No. 3 monitor. The crew detects on its Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) equipment an airborne radar source at 2.8 GHz that mimics some but not all of the signal characteristics of a common air defense ground radar. Aircraft normally do not carry such high-powered radars. As the key ELINT officer on the RB-47 puts it, “an antenna bigger than the airplane” would be required to emit as strong a signal as the one detected from the UFO. Because the UFO signal appears to have comparable or greater received signal strength than the one-megawatt ground radar beam and the UFO’s distance is about 5 times closer than the ground radar, a crude estimate of the UFO radar power output using the inverse-square law would be about 40 kilowatts. The maneuvering radar signal coincides in location with a bright UFO. At times the signal moves ahead of the RB-47, then circles around as if airborne, highly maneuverable, and flying faster than the RB-47. The 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing Intelligence report states that the Wing’s director of intelligence “has no doubt the electronic D/F’s coincided exactly with visual observations by a/c numerous times thus indicating positively the object being the signal source.” An air defense radar station near Dallas, Texas, reportedly confirms tracking a UFO at the same location reported by the RB-47 crew but later tries to deny it in an unclassified message to ATIC. The UFO is reportedly tracked by the RB-47’s airborne navigation radar as well, though the crew has differing recollections on this point. Twice the UFO blinks out visually when pursued by the RB-47. At the same time the strange signal disappears; either that, or the ground radar site and the RB-47 onboard radar loses the object from their scopes. At least once, the UFO suddenly reappears visually at about the same time the ground radar regains tracking of the object. The main part of the incident occupies 30 minutes over the Fort Worth, Texas, area from 5:30–6:00 a.m. Some earlier ELINT and visual incidents are noted as early as about 4:30 a.m., but they catch the crew off guard, and consequently reports at the time and later recollections have had to be carefully reconstructed. The UFO may have trailed the RB-47 up to 6:40 a.m. following the main events, for a total duration of possibly more than 126 minutes. The RB-47 incident is the first conclusive instrumented proof for the existence of UFOs. Calibrations of the RB-47’s electronic measurements provide an irrefutable case. When the Colorado Project scientists asked the Air Force for the Blue Book file on the RB-47 case, the file could not be found. Ultimately, the case was put together by better file searching at Blue Book, James E. McDonald’s success at locating several crew members and interviewing them, and FOIA searches that located more of the lost documents. Particularly in the George T. Gregory years at ATIC, this sort of rejection of the need to clarify almost any significant aspect of a UFO case was constant. If we did not know, from our earlier information, what Captain Gregory understood to be his duty as chief of Blue Book, we would label this as reckless and incompetent. Colorado project investigator Gordon Thayer declares the case unexplained, and later describes the official USAF explanation (airliner) as “literally ridiculous.” Brad Sparks sums it up in 1998 (and in 2018): “This case certainly now ranks as among the best documented unexplained UFO incidents in history, and it has the potential for further revealing disclosures if records of an extremely highly classified investigation can be found and released. All of the UFO observations by multiple visual observers, multiple ELINT receivers, and multiple radar sets, as well as the serendipitous calibrations of the UFO signals against the separately identifiable Duncanville radar signals, provide a unique, tight, interlocking web of intricately fitted evidence.” [Eberhart]
Record Card:
Joint Message From CIRVIS:
Observer Report:
Other July 17 Sightings:
Evaluation Letter to Gregory:
Sources:
Brad Sparks, Blue Book Unknowns Catalogue, Case 1238, p. 244;
David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins. UFOs? Yes! New York: Signet, 1968, pp. 126–127; [Misdated because Chase/McCoid got the details wrong to Roy Craig]
Edward Condon, Final report of the scientific study of unidentified flying objects conducted by the University of Colorado, Case 5, pp. 56-57, 136–139, 260–266;
James E. McDonald, “Science in Default: Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations,” paper presented at the Symposium on UFOs, 134th Meeting, AAAS, Boston, December 27, 1969, pp. 4–9;
James E. McDonald, “The 1957 Gulf Coast RB-47 Incident,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 3 (May/June 1970): 2–6;
Allen Benz, “30 Years of UFOs,” Official UFO (July 1977): 53;
Gert Herb, “A Rebuttal to Philip J. Klass’s Analysis of the RB-47 Incident of July 17, 1957,” CUFOS Bulletin, Summer 1977, pp. 3–10;
Philip J. Klass, [response to Gert Herb], CUFOS Bulletin, Fall 1977, pp. 7–10;
Gert Herb, “Gert Herb Replies,” CUFOS Bulletin, Fall 1977, pp. 9–10;
Roy Craig, UFOs: An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence, University of North Texas, 1995, pp. 134–150;
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1957 May 24th–July 31st, The Author, 1996, pp. 64, 69–71;
Michael Swords, et al, UFOs and Government, pp. 248–249;
James T. Lacatski, Colm A. Kelleher, and George Knapp. Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations. RTMA, 2023, p. 24;
Robert Powell, UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know), 2024, pp. 91–92;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd Ed., pp. 953–999; [The article from the 2nd Edition is in link below]
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 4th Ed., pp. 424, 892, 1067–1114;
http://www.nicap.org/reports/RB47_Sparks_Ency.pdf
NICAP, “RB-47 Incident”;
Center for UFO Studies, [case interviews];
Center for UFO Studies, [case documents];
Center for UFO Studies, [more case documents];
[Brad Sparks extensive article from the UFO Encyclopedia (2nd Edition), McDonalds AIAA paper, NICAP notes]
“UFO Encounter 1: Sample Case Selected by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA,” Astronautics and Aeronautics, July 1971, pp. 66–70;
http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_aa_9_7_66_71.pdf
Blue Book files collected at The Black Vau
Martin Shough, RADCAT: Radar Catalogue: A Review of Twenty-One Ground and Airborne Radar UAP Contact Reports Generally Related to Aviation Safety for the Period October 15, 1948, to September 19, 1976, National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, NARCAP Report TR-6, December 8, 2002, pp. 55–97;