I first heard about the sighting about two o'clock on the morning of
August 11,1953, when Max Futch called me from ATIC. A few minutes before,
a wire had come in carrying a priority just under that reserved for flashing
the word the U.S. has been attacked. Max had been called over to ATIC by
the OD to see the report, and he thought that I should see it. I was a
little hesitant to get dressed and go out to the base, so I asked Max what
he thought about the report. His classic answer will go down in UFO history,
"Captain," Max said in his slow, pure Louisiana drawl, "you know that for
a year I've read every flying saucer report that's come in and that I never
really believed in the things." Then he hesitated and added, so fast that
I could hardly understand hini, "But you should read this wire."
The speed with which he uttered this last statement was in itself enough
to convince me. When Max talked fast, something was important.
A half hour later I was at ATIC - just in time to get a call from the
Pentagon. Someone else had gotten out of bed to read his copy of the wire.
I used the emergency orders that I always kept in my desk and caught
the first airliner out of Dayton to Rapid City, South Dakota. I didn't
call the 4602nd because I wanted to investigate this one personally. I
talked to everyone involved in the incident and pieced together an amazing
story.
Shortly after dark on the night of twelfth, the Air Defense Command
radar station at Ellsworth AFB, just east of Rapid City, had
received a call from the local Ground Observer Corps filter center. A lady
spotter at Black Hawk, about 10 miles west of Ellsworth, had reported an
extremely bright light low on the horizon, off to the northeast. The radar
had been scanning an area to the west, working a jet fighter in some practice
patrols, but when they got the report they moved the sector scan to the
northeast quadrant There was a target exactly where the lady repored the
light to be. The warrant officer who was the duty controller for the night,
told me that he'd studied the target for several minutes. He knew how weather
could affect radar but this target was well defined, solid, and bnght."
It seemed to be moving, but very slowly. He called for an altitude reading,
and the man on the height-finding radar checked his scope. He also had
the target - it was at 16.000 feet.
The warrant officer picked up the phone and asked the filter center
to connect him with the spotter. They did, and ihe two people compared
notes on the UFO's position for several minutes. But right in the middle
of a sentence the lady suddenly stopped and excitedly said, "It's starting
to move - it's moving southwest toward Rapid."
The controller looked down at his scope and the target was beginning
to pick up speed and move southwest. He yelled at two of his men to run
outside and take a look. In a second or two one of them shouted back that
they could both see a large bluish-white light moving toward Rapid City.
The controller looked down at his scope, the target was moving toward Rapid
City. As all three parties watched the light and kept up a steady cross
conversation of the description, the UFO swiftly made a wide sweep around
Rapid City and returned to its original position in the sky.
A master sergeant who had seen and heard the happenings told me that
in all his years of duty - combat radar operations in both Europe and Korea
- he'd never been so completely awed by anything. When the warrant
officer had yelled down at him and asked him what he thought they should
do, he'd just stood there. "After all," he told me, "what in hell
couldf we do - they're bigger than all of us."
But the warrant officer did do something. He called to the F-84 pilot
he had on combat air patrol west of the base and told him to get ready
for an intercept. He brought the pilot around south of the base
and gave him a course correction thai would take him riglit into
the light. which was still at 16.000 feet. By this time the pilot had it
spotted. He made the turn, and when he closed to within about 3 miles of
the target, it began to move. The controller saw it begin to move, the
spotter saw it begin to move and the pilot saw it begin to move - all at
the same time There was now no doubt that all of them were watching the
same object.
Once it began to move, the UFO picked up speed fast and started to climb,
heading north, but the F-84 was right on its tail. The pilot would notice
that the light was getting brighter, and he'd call the controller
to tell him about it. But the controller's answer would always be the same,
"Roger, we can see it on the scope."
There was always a limit as to how near the jet could get, however.
The controller told me that it was just as if the UFO had some kind of
an automatic warning radar linked to its power supply. When something got
too close to it, it would automatically pick up speed and pull away. The
separation distance always remained about 3 miles.
The chase continued on north out of sight of the lights of Rapid Cty
and the base - into some very black night.
When the UFO and the F-84 got about 120 miles to the north, the pilot
checked his fuel; he had to come back. And when I talked to him, be said
he was damn glad that he was running out of fuel because being out over
some mighty desolate country alone with a UFO can cause some worry.
Both the UFO and the F-84 had gone off the scope, but in a few minutes
the jet was back on, heading for home. Then 10 or 15 miles behind it was
the UFO target also coming back.
While the UFO and the F-84 were returning to the base - the F-84 was
planning to land - the controller received a call from the jet interceptor
squadron on the base. The alert pilots at the squadron had heard the conversations
on their radio and didn't believe it. "Who's nuts up there?" was the comment
that passed over the wire from the pilots to the radar people. There was
an F-84 on the line ready to scramble, the man on the phone said, and one
of the pilots, a World War II and Korean veteran, wanted to go up and see
a flying saucer. The controller said, "OK, go."
In a minute or two the F-84 was airborne and the controller was working
him toward the light. The pilot saw it right away and closed in. Again
the light began to clirnb out, this time more toward the northeast. The
pilot also began to climb, and before long the light, which at first had
been about 30 degrees above his horizontal line of sight, was now below
him. He nosed the '84 down to pick up speed, but it was the same old story
- as soon as he'd get within 3 miles of the UFO, it would put on a burst
of speed and stay out ahead.
Even though the pilot could see the light and hear the ground controller
telling him that he was above it, and alternately gaining on it or dropping
back, he still couldn't believe it - there must be a simple explanation
He turned off all of his lights - it wasn't a reflection from any of the
airplane's lights because there it was. A reflection from a ground
light, maybe. He rolled the airp!ane - the position of the light didn't
change. A star - he picked out three bright stars near the light and watched
carefully. The UFO moved in relation to the three stars. Well, he thought
to himself, if it's a real object out there, my radar should pick
it up too; so he flipped on his radar-ranging gunsight. In a few seconds
the red light on his sight blinked on - something real and solid was in
front of him. Then he was scared. When I talked to him, he readily
admitted that he'd been scared. He'd met MD 109's, FW 190's and ME 262's
over Germany and he'd met MIG-15's over Korea but the large, bright, bluish-white
light had scared - he asked the controller if he could break off the intercept
This time the light didn't corne back.
What he UFO went off the scope it was headed toward Fargo, North
Dakota, so the controller called the Fargo filter center. "Had they had
any reports of unidentified lights?" he asked. They hadn't.
But in a few minutes a call came back. Spotter posts on a southwest-
northeast line a few miles west of Fargo had reported a fast-nioving, bright
bluish-white light.
This was an unknown - the best..
The sighting was thorougly investigated, and I could devote pages of
detail on how we looked into every facet of the incident; but it will suffice
to say that in every facet we looked into we saw nothing. Nothing
but a big question mark asking what was it.
Captain Edward J. Ruppelt
Ellsworth Air Force Base UFO Incident, 1953
Former Director, Project Blue Book