Case Report and Analysis of Lakenheath UFO

Case Directory
The Lakenheath Radar/Visual
England
August 13-14, 1956

...

The Lakenheath/RAF Bentwaters Case - Dr. James E. McDonald
The RAF Fighter Controller's Report - Wimbledon/Timothy Good
The Lakenheath Case - Gordon Thayer
Case 2. Lakenheath, England - The Condon Report [continued]

Track E. The BOI-485/Perkins/Wimbledon scenario

Discussion of the reported radar contacts will be offered in terms of a number of hypotheses:

a) Aircraft
b) Anomalous Propagation
c) Specular Partial Reflection from Elevated Layers
d) Scatter from Clear Air Structures
e) Echoes from the Moon
f) Balloons/ other Windborne Objects
g) Meteors, Precipitation Cells, Lightning Channels/Sferics, Auroral Ionisation, Birds & Insects
h) System Noise, Component Failure, Remote RFI & Deception Jamming (spoofing)
i) Ghost Echoes
j) Jet Exhaust

This episode is the core of the event due to the several radars reported to be involved and the singular relationship of the reported echo movements to the position of the concurrently tracked interceptor. Track E is therefore not simply a radar track but a complex event reconstructed from several partial accounts of radar contact from different fixed and mobile locations. This is of course the source both of its interest and of its occasional ambiguity. The prima facie impression is of multiple redundant contacts with the same target, whose physical location in the air appears to be confirmed by the remote physical locations of the ground radar sites (at Neatishead and at Lakenheath) and by the simultaneous contact on the airborne interception (AI) radar. [continued parts 1 and 2]