1909th AACS History, 1952: Andrews Tower and the Washington Saucer Flap
An 83-page communications squadron history from Andrews AFB gives one paragraph to July 1952, when tower staff saw orange lights and approach radar sent an aircraft toward three blips that sped away.
What this record is
This is a unit history, the periodic narrative that every Air Force squadron was required to file. It covers the 1909th Airways and Air Communications Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, from 1 July to 30 November 1952, and its successor, the 2045th AACS Squadron, for December 1952. The cover (page 3 of the PDF) places the unit under the 1834th AACS Group, 1800th AACS Wing, of the Airways and Air Communications Service, part of the Military Air Transport Service, and the catalog dates the history 9 February 1953. It runs to 83 pages in the PDF and was marked RESTRICTED.
AACS units ran the Air Force’s control towers, approach control and ground-controlled approach radars, direction-finding stations, weather relay and long-haul radio and teletype circuits. Most of this history reads accordingly: the split of the old 1909th into two squadrons on 1 December 1952, heavy personnel turnover, a new radio circuit to Bermuda, a new control tower at Andrews and a long list of cable faults and equipment shortages. The Air Force included it in the UAP transfer because of a single paragraph.
What it says about UFOs
The UFO material amounts to one paragraph, which runs from the foot of page 37 of the PDF onto the top of page 39 (page 38 is blank). It sits in the section on the Control Tower. The historian opens with a flourish: “As if the heavens were viewing our activities ‘flying saucers’ dominated the scene during July.” Visual reports from ground and airborne personnel, the history says, were numerous.
It then gives one specific episode. On the midnight watch of 20 July, T/Sgt Izzo and two men given the civilian title “Mr.”, Deboves and Banning, saw what appeared to be two falling stars with an orange hue and a tail. At the same time, Washington air traffic control radar and Andrews approach control radar observed targets on their scopes. Andrews approach control directed an aircraft toward three blips near the Andrews range. The blips moved away at a fast pace and disappeared as the aircraft approached.
That is the whole account. The next sentence returns to routine business: a new standard operating procedure for the tower went into effect on 1 August 1952. The history does not describe the second weekend of sightings later in July, the jet interceptions, or any investigation, and it does not name the aircraft that was directed toward the blips.
Context
The night of 19–20 July 1952 opened the Washington, D.C. UFO flap, when radar at Washington National Airport and Andrews tracked unknown targets over the capital on two weekends, visual reports came from pilots and ground staff, and interceptors were sent up. The episode belongs to the wider summer 1952 UFO wave and led directly to the Air Force press conference of 29 July and, in time, to the Robertson Panel. Some popular retellings of the first night say that Andrews initially saw nothing unusual on its radar. This history, written within months by the squadron that operated the Andrews tower and approach radar, says its approach control scopes did show targets.
Status
The paragraph is valuable because it is a contemporary record from the unit that ran the Andrews tower and approach radar. It confirms, from the squadron’s own history, that its tower staff saw orange lights on the night of 20 July, that Washington ATC and Andrews approach radar both showed targets at the same time, and that an aircraft sent toward three blips saw them pull away and vanish.
It does not show that the lights and the blips were the same thing, or that either was anything unusual. The history’s own wording, “falling stars with an orange hue and a tail”, describes something consistent with meteors, and the Air Force’s eventual explanation for the Washington radar returns was temperature inversions producing false targets, a view later disputed by some of the controllers involved. The blips “disappearing” as an aircraft approached is also what anomalous radar returns tend to do. The historian’s tone suggests the squadron treated the episode as a colourful aside rather than a security matter.
Sources
- National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/659965410
- PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/656595571/500225_History_of_the_1909th_Airways_and_Air_Comm_Squadron.pdf
- Series: Records from the Department of the Air Force Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/656595571
- National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615