The Neah Bay Radar Intercept (1954)

The blip split while the fighters were closing on it. Radar site TIMOTHY had picked up an unknown target at an estimated 200 knots and relayed it to the direction centre MERCURY. Two F-86D interceptors on combat air patrol (Pronto Blue 1 and 2) were vectored off station toward it. Blue 2 caught it on his own radar about 28 miles out and the return then "separated into two 'clear distinct' blips". Diving from 25,000 to 6,000 feet at up to .9 Mach, he closed to about six miles before the blips slid off his scope. Blue 1 held a contact for some twenty seconds before it too slid away. Neither pilot saw anything with his eyes.

What is on the record

Two papers in the FBI's Washington State file, FBI-UAP-D013, carry the case. The first is a Seattle office memo written that night by Special Agent J. Francis Sullivan, headed "Neah Bay 6/22/54". It records an OSI agent's call at 11:10 PM: a target 38 to 40 miles south-west of Neah Bay, two planes scrambled from McChord Field and a blip that split in two and faded "presumably because of fast air speed". The second, an Air Force OSI letter of 24 June from McChord, quotes the 25th Air Division's intelligence summary of the same report.

That summary names the pilots as 2nd Lt Edward E. McBride and 2nd Lt Hilson L. Sewell of the 317th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. They were questioned separately within four hours. A technician at the site ruled out radar malfunction. Balloons, ships and known aircraft were ruled out. The summary notes a slight temperature inversion at 5,000 feet that evening and judges that it would affect only a limited area. The evaluation reads "true airborne targets" the size of B-36 or B-52 returns, "with an estimated pullout speed of Mach One or better."

The two papers disagree in places. The memo gives 1,500 to 2,000 feet and credits the Neah Bay station. The summary gives 15,000 feet for TIMOTHY's return and 25,000 feet at the split. Project 1947, which transcribes these papers, found no trace of the case in Project Blue Book.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. The observers are two named interceptor pilots and the controllers at site TIMOTHY. No independent testimony sits beside the record in the archive, and the tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What the radars painted off the coast is not resolved here.