The year is 1951, Project Blue Book is in full swing as the United States Air Force has made a paradigm shift from ridiculing UFO witnesses to actually trying to solve the mystery. It won’t be long before the year of 1952 and a wave of national UFO sightings that will overwhelm Project Blue Book resources and “Bogies” invade White House airspace rendering attempted intercepts by USAF jet interceptors useless. With all that is to come, that same year the “Lubbock Lights” in Texas create a sensation as Texas Tech professors spot unidentified aerial lights flying in formation in the night skies of the Texas panhandle.

Routine outing

On weekends two friends working at an electronics laboratory, make a trip out to the California coast to take some background radiation readings. Background radiation is a very stable indicator of the environment and easily disrupted by unusual phenomenon. So, as the two electronics nerds make checks on the background radiation levels a distortion occurs that they cannot account for. Suddenly, looking up into the sky they spot a UFO! It’s the classic domed disk shaped configuration so many have dubbed “Flying Saucer”. Still, they haven’t correlated the sighting with the unknown up-tick in back ground radiation. They vow to return to the same place at the same time the next weekend.

Does lightning strike twice?

The following weekend the two men return to that quiet spot on a hill overlooking the sea shore and set up their equipment. Time goes by on a seemingly uneventful afternoon and suddenly another spike in the background radiation readings, and this time they see the UFO arrive in the air above them. This time they accurately identify the source of the anomaly. What are the known causes of background radiation disturbances? Electromagnetic pulses, and micro wave radiation are two known sources of background radiation changes. At that time, most of the analog instrumentality was primitive compared to today’s digital technology, but it was good enough to track and guide rockets, radar was in operation, and the foundations for the modern computer were all in place.

Another case file to Blue Book

The two electronic enthusiasts contacted Captain Edward Ruppelt, Director of Project Blue Book and presented their findings. Ruppelt included this incident in his 1956 book release “The Report on UFO’s” as one of the odd and fascinating stories that revealed the confounding realm of mystery that the armed services was faced with when coming up with a definitive answer. Known as the “Golden Era” of the UFO mystery there in the 1950’s there were a myriad of bizarre encounters reported from Texas to Washington DC, from the California coast to New Mexico, and USAF missile installations, and still the truth remains unattainable to this day.