Radar over Oak Ridge

Radar over Oak Ridge

Between March 1950 and January 1951 the FBI's file on flying discs collected a run of reports of objects over the Atomic Energy Commission's plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A radio amateur in Knoxville reported an object “directly over Oak Ridge” at up to 100,000 feet on a surplus radar set; the Navy's radar saw nothing, and the Air Force officers who examined his set found it unreliable. In October an Air Force radar at Knoxville tracked eleven objects across the controlled area that a fighter could not find. On 18 December two carloads of officers and engineers saw a bright light over the turnpike, which the three who signed one of the statements compared to sunlight reflected from a distant aircraft. In January 1951 a pilot and the plant's patrol identified a light over the area as a star. The file records every check; none of them found an object, and several of the records it refers to are not in the release.

Source document: Original public reference