Washington National Airport sits at the heart of the capital's most famous radar mystery. July 19, 1952. 11:40 p.m. In its radar room, controller Edward Nugent saw seven blips where no known aircraft should be. Senior controller Harry G. Barnes watched the targets loaf along, then race away, one clocked at 7,000 miles an hour. On 27 July the returns came back, and interceptors found nothing, an episode later weighed by the Robertson Panel. Two years earlier, Capt. Willis T. Sperry's American Airlines DC-6 had just left the airport when a bluish light appeared near Mount Vernon. Ruppelt's verdict on the 1952 sightings stood. Still unknowns.
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