The Long Island–Buffalo Radar Track

The track ran almost straight across New York State. Components of the US Air Defense Command reported an unidentified flying object moving west "at an altitude of 50,000 feet and speed of 2,000 kts". It was followed from the eastern tip of Long Island to the vicinity of Buffalo. Several radars in the area and westward as far as Chicago reported "jamming". The next day a memorandum went to the Acting Director of Central Intelligence weighing whether the Soviet Union could be behind it.

What is on the record

The record is that CIA memorandum, dated 21 September 1957 and signed by Herbert Scoville Jr. The archive holds two copies. At a briefing for the Intelligence Advisory Committee, it says, the Air Force reported that the original reports "had been degraded somewhat". There had been an 11-minute break in the track. The weather was of a type that had produced false radar pips and electronic interference before. SAC B-47s were near Chicago on an electronic countermeasures training flight. The memo concludes that the jamming west of Buffalo was "not related to the UFO". Air Defense Command had not finished its investigation.

The CIA had no intelligence tying Soviet activity to the event. It credited the USSR with a possible submarine-launched cruise missile of about 500 nautical miles' range but had "no specific evidence" that one existed. It judged a Soviet operation "highly improbable" and "weather phenomena are increasingly likely explanations". It advised that no committee meeting be called.

A reconstruction published by Christopher Mellon, drawing on NORAD and Blue Book papers, names Scoville as head of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. It places the first track on the Montauk Point radar and a later one at Benton in Pennsylvania. It cites a 31-page NORAD evaluation that found no firm explanation. None of that is in the archive's records.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. The observers are Air Defense Command radar units, identified in the memo only as components of that command. No independent testimony sits beside the record in the archive, and the tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What the radars painted over New York is not resolved here.