{"it":{"id":"UFO-RB47-1957","name":"RB-47 radar/ELINT case (Condon Case 5)","kind":"ufo","sub":"Historical sighting","place":"Mississippi–Louisiana–Texas region, USA (approximate)","lat":32.3,"lon":-90.2,"date":"1957-07-17 (Condon wrote \"Fall 1957\")","rep":"A ball of light on airborne receivers and ground radar.","off":"Condon: unidentified. Klass (not opened) contended ground radar plus an airliner.","src":[{"t":"Condon Report (1968), Case 5, text hosted by NCAS","u":"https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case05.htm"}],"tags":["Sightings"],"sum":"Early one morning in the fall of 1957, a B-47 crew flying a training mission at about 30,000 feet over the south central United States picked up a strong signal at about 2,800 megahertz on a monitoring receiver. Then the pilot saw a white light ahead. It crossed in front of the plane far faster than any aircraft, and to him it looked like a glowing body 'as big as a barn'. Ground radar, the crew said, reported a target in the same place.\n\nThe case reached the Condon Report because the pilot, by then an officer, mentioned it at a conference in Boulder in June 1967, ten years later. The Condon team sought out all available members of the six-man crew. Project Blue Book had no record of it.\n\nWhat is hard to explain is the mix of signals the crew remembered: a light seen by eye, a return on ground radar, and a radio signal that held its position beside the plane. Ten plasma specialists at the project's October 1967 conference said a plasma could not account for it.\n\nThe crew's memories were the case, and they did not agree. The pilot recalled film and wire recordings being taken away after landing; the co-pilot and one monitoring officer said nothing had been recorded at all. A review of the Wing's history found no reference to the event. The Condon team concluded that the phenomenon 'remains unidentified' but that ten-year-old recollections were 'not adequate' to identify it (single source).\n\nThe open question is whether a case that cannot be checked should count as evidence of anything.","nsrc":1,"new":1,"qs":["A light seen by the crew, picked up on their receivers and tracked by ground radar. If this stays unidentified, what would ever count as proof?","Blue Book had no record of this case at all. How many instrumented military encounters never reached the public files?","Even the Condon Report, built to close the subject, wrote 'The phenomenon remains unidentified.' Why didn't that line change the debate?"],"yt":"Three sensors at once: which explanation covers all three?","rel":["REC-CON1968"],"hook":"A bomber crew said a glowing light as 'big as a barn' crossed their path in 1957. No record survives.","why":"An Air Force crew's encounter that the Condon Report, the study that closed official UFO research, could not explain."},"S":{},"rec":{"id":"UFO-RB47-1957","qs":["The Condon Report left this case unidentified. Does that weaken its overall conclusion?","The crew disagreed about whether data was recorded. How much should we trust memories ten years old?","If records had survived, what would they need to show?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/B47E_in_flight.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:B47E_in_flight.jpg","title":"B47E in flight.jpg","lic":"Public domain","by":"www.nationalmuseum.af.mil","alt":"RB-47 radar/ELINT case (Condon Case 5)"}],"ms":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"src":[{"t":"Condon Report (1968), Case 5, text hosted by NCAS","u":"https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case05.htm"}],"pts":[{"p":"The crew described a ball of light shown both on airborne monitoring receivers and on ground radar.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"Condon Report (1968), Case 5, text hosted by NCAS","u":"https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case05.htm"},{"p":"The signal was about 2,800 MHz.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"Condon Report (1968), Case 5, text hosted by NCAS","u":"https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case05.htm"},{"p":"Ground control saw the target at a range of ten miles from the B-47.","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"Condon Report (1968), Case 5, text hosted by NCAS","u":"https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case05.htm"},{"p":"Blue Book had no record of it; Condon: \"The phenomenon remains unidentified.\"","g":"SINGLE SOURCE","b":"S","t":"Condon Report (1968), Case 5, text hosted by NCAS","u":"https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case05.htm"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":null,"hs":{},"lh":{"s":"img/h/UFO-RB47-1957.webp","w":1280,"h":814,"o":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/B47E_in_flight.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original"}}