South Korea.Chorwon · two guards see a light rise and fall over a radar

At 3:50 a.m. on Saturday, May 31, 1952, in the central sector of the Korean front, near the 38th parallel, two guards at a U.S. Air Force radar unit (the 607th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron) saw a light in the sky. The unit's camp stood at about 2,000 feet of altitude, below a 2,600-foot mountain with the radar on top. The night was clear, with no clouds or wind, and the stars were out. The two were on guard at different posts and each gave his own account separately to the air intelligence investigators.

The first, a mechanic with 31 months of service, was about 100 feet above the camp when the guard at the neighboring post called him on the field telephone and pointed out a bright light to the northeast. It looked like a falling star to him. According to the report, the object was round and glowing, the color of a star with a blue tint, of a size that could not be determined, at between a quarter and half a mile. It dropped vertically from about 3,600 feet to about 2,800, stopped and climbed back to the same point. Then it moved in straight and level flight to the east, at 100 to 150 miles per hour, and came back. From that point it began to climb at about 45 degrees toward the northeast, picking up speed, until it was lost. It lasted about two minutes, with no trail. He heard a sound like a jet in flight, not continuous, which he compared to a pulse jet. The report describes him as a man of average intelligence, a good narrator and poorly oriented.

The second guard, a 20-year-old radar mechanic with 14 months of service, a commercial fisherman in civilian life with one semester of college, was about 600 feet below the summit and a mile from it. He said he heard a jet to the north with a pulsating sound, as if it were idling. He saw nothing until, within a few seconds, a small light appeared at about 3,500 feet. He thought it was a helicopter hovering with a light on one side. The light came down very slowly, growing, to about 2,600 feet, where it stopped and took the shape of a disk: the center a color duller than mercury, and a much brighter rim, a fine white like white phosphorus. It was about the size of a fighter. It moved east in jerks, stopped, went back west almost to where it started, stopped, went east again in a gentle climb to the right of the radar mountain and went into a 45-degree climb to the north, from which it disappeared in three or four seconds. He noticed that the light grew and dimmed in time with the pulses of the sound and that it did not seem to light up the way a flare would.

In the intelligence reports the names of both are blacked out. The unit's radar recorded nothing, but the second guard, who was also a radar mechanic, explained that the set cannot see anything within four miles of the site. The Blue Book card notes "Sighted by F-94 and visually from an AC/W site at Chorwon"; the comment of Brigadier General Charles Y. Banfill on both reports says this is believed to be the same sighting on which an interception was attempted with an F-94, and refers to report 52-106 of the same detachment, which is not in the file. The card gives 0345 and nine minutes of observation; report 52-93 gives about two minutes and 52-94, three to four.

The two guards describe a very similar movement separately: a slow drop, a stop, a climb, horizontal sways and an exit climbing at about 45 degrees. They differ on the rest, which is what one expects of two accounts taken separately, though the first guard looked because the guard at the neighboring post called him on the phone (the report does not say whether that guard is the second witness): one sees a light moving to the northeast and the other a disk with a bright rim, one estimates 100 to 150 miles per hour and the other speaks of jerks. Both mention a jet-like sound. Report 52-93 is dated June 4, four days later, and the investigator notes in both reports that there was no weather or other activity that would account for what was seen.

The file offers one explanation and it does not fit completely. The card says that, from the maneuvers, there is a faint possibility of a balloon, though no release is known. Fifteen days earlier, F-94 crews had shot down balloons with a light attached in that area, one of which climbed at 2,000 feet per minute, and the Far East Air Forces technical intelligence liaison office noted that they could explain many sightings in the region; but the guards saw the light drop, stop and retrace its steps between 2,800 and 3,600 feet, not climb without stopping. The card also says an F-94 saw it from the air; report 52-106 on that flight is not in the file, and no document says what its crew saw or whether the jet the second guard heard was that fighter. The rest remains unidentified.

That the radar saw nothing adds little: the guard himself, a radar mechanic, explained that the set cannot see within four miles. There is no photograph or other instrument either. What remains is the testimony of two servicemen, from their unit and their post, collected by an intelligence captain within days. It is the same theater and the same weeks as ↗, the F-94 case of May 26, with which it shares the setting of lighted balloons and interceptors chasing lights.