Northeast Air Command UFOB Reports: RB-47s and a Harmon Tanker, 1955

What this record is

This 26-page file from the National Security Agency’s UFO holdings is really three separate records scanned together. The first and largest is a packet that the Air Force Special Security Office at Headquarters, Northeast Air Command (NEAC), sent to the Commander of the USAF Security Service in San Antonio, Texas, on 18 July 1955. It carries the subject line “UFOB NEAC Area”. A one-line transmittal of the same date, signed by the same NEAC security officer, sent the letter and reports to the Director of the National Security Agency “as requested by Commander, USAF Security Service.” The second record is an Air Intelligence Information Report from the Caribbean Air Command about radar tracks over the Panama Canal Zone in March 1958. The catalog dates this report 18 March 1956, but the form itself is dated 18 March 1958 and describes events of 9 and 10 March 1958. The third record is a Strategic Air Command operational report from August 1969.

What it says

The July 1955 cover letter answers a request for “more detailed information” on sightings in the NEAC area in June and July. It lists seven inclosures and states that NEAC’s Director of Intelligence “has not correlated these sightings with any known activity.”

The first four inclosures are short summaries of RB-47 reconnaissance flights over the Canadian Arctic archipelago. At 2100Z on 1 June, an eastbound RB-47 near Devon Island received a bright return on its APG-32 tail-gun radar for 20 minutes. Its warning light flashed intermittently, and its K-system recorded what may have been the sweep of another radar. At 0030Z on 4 June, a westbound RB-47 in the Melville Sound area had radar and visual contact for nine minutes. The crew chief described a “glistening silver metallic” aircraft that held position low and to the rear before breaking away north with an increase in speed. The gun camera film was too poor to show anything. On 7 June, south-east of Banks Island, an RB-47 bound for Eielson AFB, Alaska, picked up a small rectangular return at 3,500 yards, which the pilot took to be a form of jamming. On 8 June, south of Bathurst Island, the co-pilot of another RB-47 saw an aircraft of “fighter configuration” 5,000 to 10,000 feet above and behind, and a second RB-47 about 80 miles back saw its contrail. None of these summaries says the object was anything more exotic than an unidentified aircraft. They read as possible foreign intercepts or electronic probing, which may be why a signals intelligence organization asked for them.

The remaining inclosures concern the morning of 7 July 1955 near Harmon AFB, Newfoundland. Two KC-97 tankers, call signs Archie 29 and Archie 91, were returning from a refuelling mission when their crews reported a bright object that moved erratically. The ground radar station, call sign Embrace, reported painting the object and, in a second message, five smaller targets that “jumped” in azimuth and formed circular and line-abreast patterns. The controller estimated their speed at more than 1,500 knots. A fighter was scrambled but made no contact by radar or by eye.

The signed statements are more cautious than the first message. The KC-97 co-pilot who first saw the light wrote that his “first impression was that it was very likely the morning star or Venus” and that its erratic motion might be refraction through an inversion layer. He began to doubt this only when the radar station said it had four or five targets in the same area, and once the object climbed out of the suspected inversion its erratic motion seemed to diminish. He ended his statement: “once again I thought it was possibly the morning star.” Another crew member described “a very bright light, like a star” that grew dimmer as the sky brightened and vanished at about 0800Z. The radar station’s electronics officer wrote that since 1 July weather inversions had been bending the radar beam toward the ground, and that the station had periodically painted the south shore of Labrador and Anticosti Island as a result. He also said no such anomalous propagation was noticed at the time of the sightings.

The 1958 Canal Zone report describes several unidentified radar tracks. On the night of 9–10 March, a gun-laying radar locked on to targets between Albrook and Taboga Island, and a second radar on Taboga also locked on. A Braniff flight was vectored to within about a hundred yards of the target and saw nothing. The next morning a T-33 from Howard Field was sent to investigate and also saw nothing. The movement log itself notes that a weather balloon had been released that evening.

The 1969 record is a mission report from an RC-135, addressed in part to the Director of NSA. Among its remarks, it notes that at 0033Z on 22 August a bright white light rose in the north “like a giant pinwheel or a fireworks display” to about 40 degrees and then went out.

Context

The 1955 packet is the most substantial NEAC material in the NSA series. The Harmon statements show a pattern that recurs in radar-visual cases: the first teletype stresses speed and manoeuvre, and the witnesses’ own statements raise Venus and inversions. The 1969 remark describes the same event that a Navy intercept ship logged that night off Cuba, covered on the USNS Muller page.

Status

The file contains no final Air Force evaluation of any of these cases. The NEAC weekly intelligence digest that the cover letter says held the command’s own evaluation of the 7 July sighting is not among the scanned pages. Like the rest of the NSA series, this file had already been released by NSA before it reached the National Archives. The RB-47 contacts remain unexplained in the file. The Harmon case has a candidate explanation in its own witness statements, but the file does not confirm it.

Sources

• National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/596347941
• PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580103959/457UAP00028_released.pdf
• Series: Records from the National Security Agency Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/580103959
• National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615