Haneda AFB radar-visual sighting and F-94 intercept

Summer 1952. Weeks earlier, Washington, D.C. had its own flap of radar and visual reports. In Japan, US Air Force F-94s flew from Johnson AFB to guard the skies. At Haneda Air Force Base, on Tokyo Bay, the night of 5 August was exceptionally clear.

2330 hours. Two airmen were crossing the ramp to take over the midnight shift in the tower. Off to the northeast, over Tokyo Bay, hung "a large brilliant light."

Four tower operators watched it through 7x50 binoculars for 50 minutes to an hour. It was circular, "with brilliance appearing to be constant across the face." And it seemed to be part of something bigger. "The light appeared to be a portion of a large round dark shape which was about four times the diameter of the light." A smaller, dimmer light sat at the lower left edge. Two or three more ran in a curved line along the rest of the lower edge.

The tower released a lighted balloon for comparison. Beside the object it looked "extremely dim and yellow." Twice the light faded to the east. Twice it came back. "It seemed to travel to the East and gaining altitude at a very fast speed," one witness said. Around 2350, controllers at Tachikawa AFB called Haneda. They wanted to know about an unusually bright light.

The radar station at Shiroi, about 20 miles northeast, confirmed an unidentified target. It flew a right orbit centred off the Funabashi coast, eight miles northeast of Haneda. At times it moved "so slowly that it almost hovered," then sped up to 300 miles an hour.

Just after midnight an F-94 lifted off from Johnson AFB. 1st Lt. W.R. Holder was flying. 1st Lt. A.M. Jones was on radar. At 0012 the ground return broke into three smaller contacts. At 0016 Jones found it. "I picked up the radar contact at 10 degrees port, 10 degrees below at 6,000 yards. The target was rapidly moving from port to starboard and a 'lock on' could not be accomplished." In about 90 seconds, it was gone.

An FEAF officer called the report "one of the best to come out of the Far East." Project Blue Book classed it Unknown. At the Pentagon, Maj. Dewey Fournet named Haneda as one of two reports where the UFO "seemed to know what it was doing." Edward J. Ruppelt saw in the flight path the "crisscross" search patterns flown in World War II. His verdict: it "could not be identified as something we knew about."

In 1969 the Condon Committee's report took it up as case 237-B. Gordon O. Thayer proposed the star Capella, low in the northeast and distorted by the atmosphere, plus anomalous radar propagation. Sceptics also note that one target turned out to be a C-54, whose pilot saw only "a star."

James E. McDonald answered in Boston on 27 December 1969. Capella's corona does not look like a dark disc with small lights along its edge, he argued. The light was far brighter than the star, and anomalous propagation does not fly a steady orbit. In his words, "all four of the arguments offered in the Condon Report... must be rejected."

McDonald listed Haneda among the cases he said the Condon Report had dismissed with weak arguments. To him it pointed to objects "flying under intelligent control, that cannot be of human origin." Blue Book still carried it as unidentified. Today it sits in the NICAP casebook and in Brad Sparks's catalogue of Blue Book Unknowns.