Word: blip
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...give a continuous radar-eye view of the air around the airport. Instead it shoots out only a single narrow beam of radar pulses. Guided by a direction finder, the operator swings the beam with a pair of "handle bars" until it picks up an approaching plane. A "blip" on the radar's scope tells him that he has found it. Then, keeping the plane in the scope, he "talks" it down just as operators do with more complicated radars...
Over the White House. Barnes began to get worried when he saw the blips apparently flying over the White House and other prohibited areas. He called the airport control tower. Sure enough, its radar showed the strange blips too. When the towermen measured the speed of a fast blip, they found that it had flown for eight miles at 7,200 m.p.h...
...blips on Barnes's scope were moving toward Andrews Air Force Base about ten miles to the east. Barnes called the Andrews tower. Nothing strange showed on its radar, but both towermen and an enlisted man on the field saw a single, round, orange light drifting in the southern sky. That was enough for Barnes. He called the Air Defense Command and reported an unidentified object was over the Washington area. Then he told an airline pilot, C. S. Pierman of Capital Airlines, who was about to take off for Pittsburgh, to watch for mysterious objects. Pierman climbed...
...rest of the week, a few strange blips appeared now & then. Then on Saturday night they broke out all over, crisscrossing the capital as they had the week before. This time, the radar at Andrews was seeing the things too. One blip hung over Boiling Field, across the Potomac from the airport, but observers at Boiling saw nothing in the sky. Some airline pilots saw mysterious lights; others saw nothing...
...Saucer Flies Again. Down from Delaware roared another flight of night fighters. This time the blips did not vanish. They stayed on the ground scopes while the jets screamed among them. But only one pilot saw a light; another saw a doubtful blip on his scope. It vanished before he could shoot...