Donald Keyhoe in True Magazine

The apparent high speed and violent maneuvers, he explains, can be caused by reflections of moving objects, such as cars and trains, or by turbulence in the inversion, in the latter case, the light or radar waves, striking agitated air, reflect unevenly, creating false effects of motion even from fixed objects.

At first glance, this would seem to explain not only the Washington reports, but all the simultaneous radar-and-light sightings. When word of this answer reached Washington Airport, the controllers and radar engineers were astounded.
"Every man in here knows temperature-inversion effects," said Barnes. "When an inversion is big enough, it picks up all sorts of ground clutter'- water tanks, buildings, bridges, shore lines and so on. But anybody can recognise it-you'll see huge purplish blobs, but nothing like those blips we tracked. And in the six years I've watched these scopes, absolutely nothing-high-speed jets, storms, inversions, or anything else -has ever caused echoes that maneuvered like that, and we have had identical weather conditions many times."

Every controller and technician backed him up. .

"Besides that," Chief Engineer J.L. McGivern told me, "there was no ground clutter either time, except the big blotch we always have at the center of the scope, where the bottom of the beam picks up the airport buildings."

At the Weather Bureau. I found the same answer. Vaughn D. Rockne, senior radar specialist, who is familiar with inversion effects, had never seen or heard of such blips as were tracked on the two nights in question.

Dr. John Hagin, the leading radio astronomer at the Naval Research Laboratory went even further.

"Even with an extreme inversion," Dr. Hagin told me, "conditions would have to be very, very unusual to cause such effects. In my opinion, the pinpointing of blips by three radar stations, and simultaneous sighting of lights at the same points, would make it impossible."

"How much of an inversion-what temperature change would be needed?" I asked him.

"Ten degrees Fahrenheit at the very least. Probably much higher."

As a final step, I asked the Air Force to select a radar expert to present the official opinion. The officer chosen was Major Lewis S. Norman, Jr., of the Aircraft Control and Warning Branch, who had made a special study of temperature inversion.

"Turbulence in an inversion layer absolutely is necessary to get the effect of high speed and fantastic maneuvers," Major Norman told me. "It can result from up or down drafts, or such 'burbles' may be caused by heated air from smokestacks."
"At a minimum, how much temperature inversion would it take?'' I asked.

"On the centigrade scale, between 5 and 10 degrees. If you used the Fahrenheit scale, it would take an inversion between 9 and 18."

Now I was sure of the truth. But to be doubly certain, I rechecked Weather Bureau charts.

On the first night, the inversion had been 1 degree Fahrenheit. The second
night it had been almost equally negligible-barely 2 degrees.

Here was positive proof. Temperature inversion could not possibly explain the Washington "saucer" cases.

Suddenly, as I recalled the words of the Naval Research experts, the hundreds of Air Force radar reports took on dramatic meaning. The rare conditions required to produce moving lights and blips certainly could not have existed in more than a few of these cases. There must be a large number still officially unexplained.
Going back to the Air Force, I asked two point-blank questions. Had Menzel ever been asked by the Air Force to determine if his theory would explain specific "saucer" cases? If so, what n the results?

Here are the Air Force answers:

1. Dr. Menzel had been invited to apply his theory to cases on record.

2. He had not attempted to explain any specific occurrences.

Following this I asked the Air Force for typical reports and conclusions, from 1948 up to date.

One of the first cases, involving three separate incidents, took place in Labrador, at Goose Bay Air Force Base. About 3 a.m. on October 29, 1948. an unidentified object in slow level flight was tracked by tower radarmen. Two days later, the same thing happened again. But the following night, on November 1, radarmen got a jolt. Some strange object making 600 m.p.h. was tracked for four minutes before it raced off on a southwest course.

At the time, weather conditions were considered as a possible answer. But in the light of the new temperature-inversion revelations, this obviously must be ruled out.
On November 6, the same year, Air Force operators in Japan tracked two strangely maneuvering objects for sixty-five minutes. On the scope, they appeared like two planes dogfighting, but no fighters were in the area. This case is still unsolved.
On the night of November 23. 1948. an F-80 pilot living near Furstenfeldbruck Germany, sighted a circling red light. About the same moment, the object was picked up by an Air Force ground radar station. It was tracked as flying in circles at 27,000 feet, the same altitude at which the pilot encountered it. Because of his own maneuvers, he could only guess at its speed-somewhere between 200 and 500 m.p.h.

As the F-80 drew nearer, the object swiftly climbed up out of the pilot's sight. But before it went off the scope, operators tracked it to 40,000 feet. This case also is unexplained.