UAP and Nukes, The Kelly Johnson Case, Excerpt from The Sword Of Damocles

By Michael and James Hall

Since the early days of atomic bomb development and testing, there have been numerous and notable sightings near Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) installations. By procedure, AEC security guards filed reports whenever unidentified aircraft or phenomena were observed. These reports placed the AEC at the center of many of the early investigations.

Not all reports described conventional UAPs, then called UFOs. Numerous accounts from the 1940s and 1950s involved a phenomenon known as “Green Fireballs,” which garnered considerable attention because they were spotted so frequently near AEC sites. These early UFO reports prompted formal meetings with AEC officials. One meeting in particular stands out because its transcript is held in the National Archives. It took place at Los Alamos on February 16, 1949, and was attended by Edward Teller, Norris Bradbury (Oppenheimer’s successor), other AEC scientists, and regional astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz. The session was convened to tap the expertise of nuclear physicists and astronomers. Attendees reviewed and discussed the latest green fireball reports of the era. (The records for this meeting are cataloged in the National Archives under file numbers NARA-PBB88-398 and NARA-PBB90-1027 through NARA-PBB90-1050, within document code group T1206-88.)

Another interesting National Archive file involves a noted Lockheed aeronautical engineer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson. In the 1950s he designed and engineered the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft (and later SR-71) at Lockheed’s Burbank southern California “Skunk Works” facility and then tested them in a very remote area adjacent to the Nevada Test Site called Area 51. The story is notable to recount because Kelly Johnson served as a first-hand witness along with some of his key technical staff. Their noted sighting did not take place in Nevada but near Agoura, California on December 16, 1953. This is now considered one of the top UFO/UAP sightings in modern history.

It all began at 5PM PST when Johnson observed from his California seaside ranch, through eight-powered binoculars, a very large black lenticular-shaped object. He stated in a written report that the object hovered stationery at a high but undetermined altitude for at least three minutes and then moved off in a long shallow climb at an increasing high rate of speed on a heading of 240 to 260 degrees. He stated that the object appeared ellipse in shape with a “finesse ratio of the larger axis to the minor one of 7 or 10 to 1.”  (In naval architecture and aerospace engineering, the fineness ratio is the ratio of the length of a body to its maximum width. Shapes that are short and wide have a low fineness ratio, those that are long and narrow have high fineness ratios.)

Johnson estimated the object to be “roughly over Point Mugu.” (Project Blue Book Files, National Archives, Record Group 341, Microfilm Publication No. T-1206, Roll No.20, Case 2837.) By sheer coincidence, at 5:00 PM PST on that December day in 1953, Kelly Johnson’s top engineer–test pilots were aloft in a Lockheed WV-2 Super Constellation over the Catalina Channel—between Avalon and the Palos Verdes Hills, just south of Point Mugu. While they ran avionics tests at 16,000 feet, the crew spotted the same dark, sharply outlined object Johnson had observed and later sketched from his Agoura ranch. Chief aerodynamics engineer P.A. Colman later emphasized that the near-perfect overlap of sightlines from the ranch and the Constellation eliminated any possibility of a lenticular or other cloud phenomenon. Although every witness initially thought they were looking at a dark cloud, they quickly ruled out that explanation when the object held its shape and position for several minutes.

These men also included Lockheed test pilots Roy Wimmer, Charlie Grugan and flight engineers R. L. Thoren and Joe Ware who were all in the cockpit and collectively described in writing what they termed as a “flying saucer.” The Lockheed crew were between 16,000 and 20,000 feet and observed the unfamiliar object for approximately five minutes around the 17,000-foot level. It appeared to have sharp defined edges and looked like a flying wing airplane according to one of the observers. Joe Ware, the flight test supervisor, described it as a “large object without wings with a maximum thickness in the middle tapering toward either side.”

He could not, however, distinguish between the front or rear of the object by shape. The pilot, Roy Wimmer, described it as “crescent.” Although it seemed to be stationary, it finally outpaced the Constellation’s speed of 225 miles per hour on a due west heading in the vicinity of the Santa Barbra Islands. By then the sun had gone below the horizon and before disappearing the object was said by all the witnesses to be perfectly silhouetted against a red background of the setting sun. This led the engineers to believe the object must have been of considerable size and at a greater distance than first estimated.

In January 1954, Kelly Johnson forwarded his detailed written report—augmented by testimony from the Constellation’s flight crew—to Air Force Intelligence, where it was assigned to his longtime friend Lieutenant General Donald Putt. Putt, celebrated for his leadership of the Air Technical Intelligence Board, had orchestrated the recovery and evaluation of captured German aircraft and rocketry at the end of World War II and then directed the transfer of those technologies into U.S. industry. His endorsement of Johnson’s sighting lent it exceptional credibility.

Declassified Pentagon memos from Putt indicated he knew every classified Air Force project then going on but did not know what Kelly Johnson and his technicians witnessed. Today, Johnson’s reflections of these sightings are carefully documented not only in Record Group 341 of the National Archive holdings in College Park, Maryland, but the National Archives Record Administration files at Maxwell Air Force base collection ID: MAXW-PBB19-1710.

It should be noted for a proper historical perspective that various sources document that there was a period from approximately 1947 to 1953 when the subject we now refer to as “UAPs” was given considerable attention and reflection by various US Intelligence services. Many of the Air Force sighting reports went to a large variety of agencies, including the Atomic Energy Commission. This was not because the AEC had a specific interest in UFOs but because of a mandate from Vannevar Bush, who directed the post-World War Two Research and Development Board established by Harry Truman. Bush and his board simply thought the AEC was a logical resource for scientists to keep informed, and Air Force Intelligence occasionally consulted their opinions until about 1953. What almost everyone fails to realize is that the urgency surrounding those UFO reports in the early Cold War days centered not on visitors from space but on a true fear that they might represent advancements in Soviet aircraft technology. That theory was taken extremely seriously. By January 1953, a special panel convened and was named after the panel’s chairman, Dr. Howard P. Robertson. The Robertson Panel emerged from a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee in December of 1952 after a Central Intelligence Agency review of the US Air Force UFO files. The CIA changed the narrative to downplay the subject, supposedly out of fears of creating confusion between delineating possible UFO reports as opposed to possible Soviet incursions should a nuclear war ever come.

What Kelly Johnson and his Lockheed engineers saw in 1953 bears a striking resemblance to today’s Northrop B-2 Spirit bomber, pictured below. From that time on, Johnson considered himself a believer in the term “flying saucer,” although there is no evidence to suggest he ever publicly postulated on the origin of the many credible sightings like his own.