Part 36 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative. TL;DR — On two weekends in July 1952, Washington radar operators picked up unusual echoes and pilots reported lights. Air Force fighters went up the second weekend. Some reports appear to line up, but the surviving records don’t show a single object being tracked throughout. Later tests showed how the atmosphere could produce similar echoes, though physicist James McDonald disputed how well that fit July...

Harry Barnes, Senior Air Traffic Controller at Washington National Airport 1952: "We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed... their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft." July 1952. Multiple radar systems at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base lit up with UFO's darting over the White House and U.S. Capitol. Commercial pilots and scrambled jets reported bright white and orange orbs that hovered, then accelerated at impossi...