High Alert! UFO over Oak Ridge National Laboratory, circa 1951

Professor Alan D. Conger is the key player in this case, and we'll begin by introducing him thorough a few key quotes from his obituary:

Alan Conger, a pioneer in genetic effects of radiation, died 22 Dec 1995... He was 78 years old. Alan was born 23 Mar 1917, in Muskegon, Michigan. He attended Harvard as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, and received the Ph.D. degree in biology in 1947.

After (working in the weather service for the Army during WWII), Alan returned to Harvard to pursue his graduate work.. Alan had become interested in the genetic effects of radiation... He began his research career in this field at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1947 and had a major role in the early bomb tests in the Pacific.

 

Only small part of the following plays a role in the UFO case, but it's too valuable not too repeat.

Alan was well known for his puckish sense of humor... One tangible artifact to have survived his Florida period is associated with Alan's service on the Radiation Study Section of the National Institutes of Health. He donated to that body an alligator coprolite that he had collected in the Florida swamps, which he had mounted on an impressive plaque for presentation annually to the member chosen by his colleagues to have propagated during his study section tenure the greatest quantity of the material of which the coprolite was composed.

( We had to look it up. Coprolite means fossilized excrement.)

Flying Saucers over Oak Ridge National Laboratory

First, we need to introduce the location.
"Established during World War II by the Manhattan District, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) occupied the X-10 site on the fifty-six-thousand-acre reservation between Clinch River and Black Oak Ridge purchased by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1942. Initially called Clinton Laboratories after the nearest town, it began as a top-secret installation to produce plutonium for the first nuclear weapons." For further details, see The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: Oak Ridge National Laboratory.


In The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, ex-head of Project Blue Book said, "...UFO's were habitually reported from areas around 'technically interesting' places like our atomic energy installations, harbors, and critical manufacturing areas." He cited a notable UFO case from Oak Ridge, where an object was sighted by ground observers, confirmed by radar, and pursued by an Air Force plane:  

On June 21, 1952, at 10:58P.M., a Ground Observer Corps spotter reported that a slow-moving craft was nearing the AEC's Oak Ridge Laboratory, an area so secret that it is prohibited to aircraft. The spotter called the light into his filter center and the filter center relayed the message to the ground control intercept radar. They had a target. But before they could do more than confirm the GOC spotter's report, the target faded from the radarscope. An F-47 aircraft on combat air patrol in the area was vectored in visually, spotted a light, and closed on it. They "fought" from 10,000 to 27,000 feet, and several times the object made what seemed to be ramming attacks. The light was described as white, 6 to 8 inches in diameter, and blinking until it put on power. The pilot could see no silhouette around the light.

Ruppelt's story was just one of many from the facility. It's an old question: Are there more UFOs reported around sensitive government facilities because the objects are attracted to them, or is it just that the heightened security produces more false alarms? Fran Ridge's site has a page, NICAP: The Oak Ridge Sightings, featuring several similar events of this kind from around 1950, other Radar-Visual cases where planes were sent out to pursue UFOs reported over ORNL. 

1976: Alan Conger's UFO Disclosure

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review's Fall 1976 issue featured a look back at the organizations history: "this special issue of the Review contains a skeleton history of the Laboratory's first 25 years, interspersed with reminiscences, anecdotes, funny pictures, and a few expansions on particular aspects of importance to the Laboratory." There was only one reminiscence about a UFO.

Alan Conger Remembers... 

     Old-timers in the Biology Division may remember the overhang roof facing the highway outside my second floor lab in 9207 -our lunch patio where we dined on balmy days under the morning glories. At the height of the UFO scares (ca. 1951 ?), coming across some balloons and a helium tank left over from our first lab Open House, I filled six or so balloons with helium, tied them together with string, and attached a 6-ft strip of aluminum foil beneath as a radar target. With Kim Atwood's help, I got it out of the lab and launched from our roof patio, admiring its stately ascent as it drifted down Bear Creek Valley, rapidly transforming from a recognizable bundle of balloons and foil into an unidentifiable flying object. We then ran down the hall, calling out to Jack Von Borstel, Bill Arnold, Shelly Wolff, and others, "See the UFO!"
     It caused great excitement and much speculation about what it was, its size, velocity, and height; and soon, even more excitement when it was detected by the nearby radar station on Pilot Mountain, and the fighter-interceptor squadron then stationed at Knoxville was scrambled to intercept the intruder. With planes buzzing around, and our scientist friends seriously considering the object, the situation had rapidly become so very imposing that neither Kim nor I had the guts to confess to our hoax. We kept quiet and hoped the Air Force or AEC would be unable to identify us.
     A few years ago, my son, reading a book on UFOs, came across this incident as one of the case histories of UFO sightings from Air Force records. He recognized it as a hoax, and surmised that some unknown Oak Ridge scientists probably perpetrated it.
-Alan D. Conger, Professor of Radiobiology, School of Medicine, Temple University 

Conger's accomplice was Dr. Kimball C. Atwood III, senior biologist at the ORNL. Most UFO balloon hoaxes are perpetrated by mischievous kids, not Ph.D.s working at US government facilities.
 Up close, the UFO must have looked something like this.

But at a distance, the sun's reflection from metal foil would have been the most visible feature. The foil also provided something for the radar to find, serving as an improvised radar wind target of RAWIN. On radar, the foil strip registered as a solid object, and it was due to this the hoax worked well enough for the Air Force to scramble planes to catch the UFO.

Radar operator, circa 1950.

Dr. Congers did not remember the precise date of the incident, so it's difficult to match Air Force records. There is a possible match in Project Blue Book's files in this one from December of 1950:  18 Dec. 1950, Oak Ridge, Tenn. 

This episode and its exposure seems to have been the extent of Professor Conger's involvement in the UFO controversy.

In an interesting trivial footnote to the story, Conger's hoaxing accomplice, Kim Atwood, had a son who has written articles on medical quackery for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

"Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D. is an anesthesiologist at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts. He is Assistant Clinical Professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine and Contributing Editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine." 

CSI is the den for UFO debunkers like Robert Sheaffer, James Oberg, Joe Nickell, and the late Phil Klass.

Thanks to Roger Glassel for locating the magazine article with Dr. Conger's confession.

Flying Saucer Ambush: Brush Creek, CA, 1953

Gail Sprague, illustration for The Saucerian #2, 1953

This case cannot truly be considered forgotten because Gray Barker devoted an entire chapter to it in his classic 1956 book,  They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

John Black and John Van Allen told authorities they had been mining "fissionable material" in the Marble Creek area near Brush Creek, California. On at least two occasions, they witnessed a flying saucer land and a small man get out, fill a pail with water, then fly away. There seemed to be a pattern to the visits, so the miners intended to be ready to shoot at the saucer when it returned. They consulted the local law enforcement asking for permission to fire at it. The Brush Creek incident raised some ethical and legal challenges. Can aliens be shot for trespassing? Captain Fred Preston of the County Sheriff's Department, said no.

Idaho State Journal June 25, 1953

Long Beach Independent, June 25, 1953

Gray Barker, author of They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. 

Gray Barker reported on the case in the first issue of The Saucerian, and followed up in the second issue, "Report on the Brush Creek Saucer," which was the basis for his coverage in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

To me the story somehow smacked of truth, and I felt I should try to get to the bottom of it. Paul Spade, an amateur astronomer of California, who had volunteered his services to saucer investigation in his area, also volunteered to go to Brush Creek and look into the matter.

Spade provided the most detailed description of the saucer argument: 

The little man wore green trousers, a jacket and a tie. His shoes were particularly strange in that they seem to be so remarkably flexible. Although they were distinctly recognizable issues, they seemed almost to be a part of the man's feet. The outfit was topped off with a green cab over black hair. He seem like a normal person and except for his small stature and somewhat odd dress.

They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers

300 people were ready for the saucer's return, but apparently a much smaller number was ready at the alleged landing site.

Long Beach Independent, July 20, 1953

The Chico Enterprise-Record, July 21, 1953

The saucer did not return. Among the puzzles in this case is why the miners would have wanted to shoot their visitor. In the trespasses on their camp, the little man only took a bucket of water on each visit. That's hardly a crime worth punishing if it risks starting an interplanetary war.

We were unable to find much on John Q. Black, but the obituary for John J. Van Allen indicates that he was a veteran of World War I, and died on June 3, 1957, at the age of 64.

This Brush Creek incident is not forgotten, and is cited in many UFO databases and prominent books like Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée. However, considering the absence of tangible evidence, it would seem to be fit only for a discussion of folklore.  For further reading, see the entry by Patrick Gross at UFOs at Close Sight:

MAY 20, JUNE 20, 1953, BRUSH CREEK, CALIFORNIA, USA, JOHN B. BLACK AND JOHN J. VAN ALLEN

Project Blue Book Case does have a 12-page file: 20 May 1953, Brush Creek, California. The Air Force closed the case on the Brush Creek incident, and it was classified a hoax.

. . .

A special thanks to Louis Taylor of Information Dispersal for the original UP photo of Black and Van Allen.

Captured Flying Saucers: Twin Falls, Idaho, July 11, 1947

Mrs. Fred Easterbrook

July 11, 1947
A crashed flying saucer with glistening sides of silver and gold was discovered by Mrs. Fred Easterbrook in the yard of her next-door neighbor T.H. Thompson in Twin Falls, Idaho. Two narrow strips of turf on the Thompson lawn were torn up, apparently from when the disc had crashed into the earth. Mrs. Easterbrook reported it to the the police, and both the military and FBI participated in investigating the incident. In a day's time, it was determined that the saucer was a counterfeit.

Twin Falls, Idaho, July 11, --AP-- Four teen age boys skimmed a "flying saucer" into this town today and before the turmoil died down tonight with their admission it was "all a joke," the FBI, army intelligence and local police spent a dizzy day trying to figure out their gadget. Lewiston, Idaho Daily Tribune - 12 July, 1947 Army, FBI, Police in Circles

The Lewiston Daily Sun July12, 1947

From the PROJECT 1947 web site.

Government Cover-Up?

An editorial from the July 15 Idaho Times-News showed how the military's insistence for secrecy was fueling rumors of a government conspiracy or cover-up.

The Idaho Times News July 15, 1947

The object was determined to be of earthly origin, and the identity of the hoaxers was determined, so this is one of the few cases definitively closed as solved.

As with so many of the most interesting UFO cases featured here at The Saucers That Time Forgot, Project Blue Book has no file on this incident


For further reading on the case, see the reprints of more original news articles:
Twin Falls, Idaho, 1947 and...

Saturday Night Uforia, Flying Disc Reported Found in Idaho; Now in Army Hands

Unidentified Lights in the Ohio Sky, Sept. 1952

 "...deep red streaks which met with a scarlet flash." (Reconstruction)

1952 was an explosive year for UFOs, and the Air Force was unable to investigate all the reports. Here's one they missed from Ohio.

Points mentioned in the story, Lockbourne Air Force Base, Ashville and Circleville. Ohio.

Mrs. Gail Wolf and her sons spotted some strange lights in the sky over Lockbourne, Ohio. Previously she'd been skeptical of saucers, "most people are, until they see something like we did."

The Circleville Herald, Sept. 6, 1952.

 The news story prompted another independent witness to come forward with testimony a few days later.

The Circleville Herald, Sept. 11 1952.

The Air Base that Link Brown was referring to was the former Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus, OH, known today as Rickenbacker International Airport.

As with so many of the most interesting UFO cases featured here at The Saucers That Time Forgot, Project Blue Book has no file on this incident.