The 1957 UFO Crash at Knoxville, Tennessee

In late 1956 into early 1957 there were a series of UFO reports near the atomic energy installation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The sightings came to an abrupt end when a flying saucer was seen to crash in flames. Although local authorities searched for the wreckage, they found nothing. News reporters had better luck.

Here's the story as reported in The Knoxville Journal, February 2, 1957.

 

The flying saucer turned out to be man-made, an experiment by seven high school students: Gene Bradburn, Ben Baker, Dewaine Speaks, D.C. Hunley, J.D. Seat, Boots Dew, and Johnny Henry. The newspaper coverage gives no indication the boys were perpetrating a hoax, but their balloon did cause a stir, at least on it's final flight. The saucer likely would have remained a mystery and become another UFO legend if the boys had not been persuaded to tell their story to the press.

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

Major Tiger Joe Thompson, WW II UFO Witness

Joe Thompson Jr., (1919 - 2012) of Nashville, Tennessee, was not the typical UFO buff. His obituary described him as: “Thoughtful and devoted husband, father and grandfather, man of faith, insurance executive, Presbyterian elder, P-51 Mustang pilot and World War II hero, photographer, storyteller, planter of trees, friend to many, stranger to none...”

Before the war, Thompson graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in biology in 1941. Thompson was a pilot in World War II, ultimately as a major, and he chronicled his wartime experiences through photographs. In 2006, his book was published, Tiger Joe: A Photographic Diary of A World War II Aerial Reconnaissance Pilot by Joe Thompson and Tom Delvaux.

During those days as a pilot, Thompson became a UFO witness, seeing a formation of the mysterious wartime aerial phenomenon known as foo fighters. Due to that experience, he took a particular interest in the postwar sightings of flying saucers. Thompson eagerly studied UFO reports and literature, and became a local expert, and in the mid-1950s discussed the subject in public, at civic club lectures and on radio.

Thompson is noted as being a foo fighter witness, but there's very little recognition today for his role in educating the public on UFOs as a lecturer. There are just a few mentions recorded on Thompson in period UFO literature. M. K. Jessup’s 1956 book, The UFO Annual, included two newspaper excerpts about him. The first was about Thompson’s role in a public debate, from The Nashville Tennessean, June 22, 1955:

Joe Thompson of Northwestern Mutual Insurance maintained that all the qualified people such as airplane pilots who have seen the flying “somethings” couldn't be so far wrong... Thompson's argument hinged on the fact that pilots, accustomed to watching for objects in the sky and instantly recognizing regular objects, have seen the so-called flying saucers. “These qualified men with thousands of flying hours know what they see and don't see,” he said.

The Nashville Tennessean, June 22, 1955

Jessup's second one on was about one of Thompson many public lectures on UFOs, as reported by The Nashville Banner, Oct. 18, 1955:

M. K. Jessup’s 1956 The UFO Annual

As far as we know, Thompson never had another UFO sighting, but he was watching the skies. Here's a photo from him that was featured in The Nashville Tennessean newspaper’s Sunday magazine for June 26, 1955:

Flying Saucers, Are They a Myth?

In his lectures, Thompson discussed everything from ancient sightings to modern events, as well as the Air Force investigations of UFOs.

The Tennessean, Oct.18, 1955, The Jackson Sun, May 1, 1956

The Jackson Sun, May 3, 1956

Thompson’s continued to lecture on saucers at least through 1961. Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective by Gordon Lore and Harold Deneault, 1968, page 118, features another of the few references to Thompson in UFO books:

The Nashville Banner, on February 15, 1961, published an interview with a veteran whose "flying saucer" talk at a local club had touched off a new round of discussion and speculation. The veteran, Joe Thompson, then an agent for Northwestern Mutual Insurance Co., was described by the Banner as a college graduate, a family man and a responsible civic leader whose "interest in flying saucers stems from his World War II experiences in air reconnaissance work over Germany.”
The story said: "Reconnaissance crews kept seeing 'strange circular objects over the Rhine Valley,' he recalled. They flew in formation and could not be overtaken by American planes. 'We thought they were some sort of German aircraft device,' he said, 'until after the war when we discovered the Germans thought they were ours.' "

In The Nashville Tennessean newspaper’s Sunday magazine for Oct. 30, 1966, an illustrated two page article by Max York discussed Thompson’s sighting, “Joe Thompson and the Foo-Fighters.”

It wasn't until 1947, when the stories about flying saucers hit page one, that Nashville's Joe Thompson Jr. gave much thought to those strange objects he saw in World War II. Now an insurance man, Thompson was a photo reconnaissance pilot in the war. He and his wing man were on a mission over the Rhine Valley, photographing German troop movements, when he saw them...

The full text of the article is among the historical resources at the Project 1947 site.
Project 1947, hosts The 1966 foo fighter story put Thompson’s UFO interest back in the public’s mind and he lectured at least once more, on “UFOs- Fact or Fantasy?” for a mid-November 1966
presentation in Nashville.

Remembering Tiger Joe

The rest of Thompson’s involvement in the topic is undocumented, but due to the sensational news about the 1973 “Pascagoula Abduction” of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker in Mississippi, he made a brief return to the topic on radio. Thompson spoke about UFOs on Nashville’s WSM radio call-in talk program, “The Teddy Bart Show,” at least twice, in October and November.

Thompson’s participation in the public discussion of UFOs was unusual because he was a prominent citizen, and did not appear to fear it damaging his reputation. The UFO topic has been polluted with an endless stream of hoaxers, hucksters and charlatans who have vied for our attention. From time to time, it’s worth remembering the honorable people like Joe Thompson.

First Flying Saucer Occupant Report, Published July 9, 1947

Little Green Men from Mars were not initially given any serious thought as being the answer to flying saucers. In 1947, most people thought that if flying saucers were real, they must be a secret military project- ours or by other countries spying on the USA. Space aliens were taken no more seriously than the earlier talk of mischievous gremlins sabotaging airplanes during World War II.

The first report of contact with alien beings from saucers was made in Nashville, Tennessee in early July 1947, and published in the day after the story of the "captured flying disc" story from Roswell, New Mexico:

The Nashville Tennessean, July 9, 1947, page one

All Over the Nation People Talk Saucers

The flying saucer furore has finally hit Nashville... One man, apparently sane and sober, wrote the editor of The Nashville Tennessean, a long interesting letter about his brush with a couple of Men from Mars on a nearby flying field. These strange little men, “all heads and arms and legs, glowing like fireflies,” landed and alighted from a flying saucer as he drove along a highway, the man wrote. The man from Nashville and the Men from Mars exchanged greetings (in sign language) and the saucer finally took off in a cloud of dust, so the letter says.

The Nashville Tennessean, July 9, 1947

Indistinguishable from a joke?

Describing the story, Jerome Clark in The UFO Encyclopedia Volume 2, 1992, said,

"The newspaper account characterizes the correspondent (whose letter was only paraphrased, not published) as 'apparently perfectly sane and sober,' but the story sounds more like a practical joke than a serious report."
The letter may not have been genuine, but the account is important for being the first published, and closely resembles many other that would eventually surface later, including a number of accounts told or published at the each year on April 1st.

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.

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.