Four cases from November 1950, headlined by the Robert Haven aerial pursuit and the Oak Ridge/Knoxville radiation-anomaly incident.
1950: November UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
November 1950 opens with one of the year’s most dramatic aerial encounters — Navy pilot Robert Haven’s repeated head-on passes with a maneuvering light east of Lakehurst, New Jersey — and closes with the strangest chapter yet in the ongoing Oak Ridge/Knoxville saga, when a night of dense radar activity coincided with an unexplained spike in radiation readings at the AEC’s Tennessee nuclear facility. Both are documented in full via the standalone reports linked below. The month also brought two related radar-and-visual Navy intercepts off Key West and a striking contactee-style entity encounter in Columbus, Ohio.
Date: November 5, 1950 (BBU 829)
Location: Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Time: 11:55 a.m.
Summary: Fairchild Aircraft illustrator Don Patrick saw a translucent object, light grey with a dark core, shaped like a pear or bean, flying with rapid, darting movements for five to ten minutes. Part of the ongoing Oak Ridge/Knoxville pattern that began the previous month. See the Full Report.
Source: Berliner
Date: November 7, 1950
Location: East of Lakehurst, New Jersey (BBU)
Time: 7:15 p.m.
Summary: USN pilot Lt. j.g. Robert Haven, flying an AD-4Q at 3,500 feet, saw a steady white light about five miles away and turned to approach it; the object responded with a head-on pass 100-200 feet over his aircraft at an estimated 900 mph with no wash or slipstream, followed by five or six more such passes as it climbed at over 2,000 feet per minute. Haven abandoned the chase at 11,500 feet as the object continued to outmaneuver him; it reached roughly 25,000 feet and vanished by the time jets arrived. See the Full Report.
Source: Hynek, UFO Report, pp. 68-70; NARCAP
Date: November 10, 1950
Location: South Ruislip, England
Time: 8:59 a.m. – 10:26 a.m.
Summary: Four radar contacts were made with an airborne unidentified object over England at altitudes ranging from 1,000 feet or less to 30,000 feet or more, giving returns comparable to a B-29 aircraft. The object’s speed varied from 30 mph to 1,000 mph. One contact, beginning at 9:46 a.m. and lasting about a minute, was lost when the object’s acceleration and rate of ascent exceeded the capability of the radar’s automatic tracking equipment. Observation was made via AN/MPQ-2 radar from a van at Heston Airdrome.
Source: Dan Wilson
Date: November 14, 1950 (BBU)
Location: Key West, Florida
Time: Approximately 8:00-8:15 p.m.
Summary: Ground radar picked up an unidentified object at 15,000 feet, 30 miles north of NAS Key West, traveling at 480 mph on a heading of 180 degrees; the object turned right and faded from the scope. An F6F-5N picked up the object on its own radar at a mile and a half range but could not close for visual contact. Around 8:15 p.m., an unidentified object traveling at high speed was separately sighted visually by the pilot of an F6F-5N near the base.
Source: Dan Wilson; McDonald list
Date: November 15, 1950 (BBU)
Location: Key West, Florida
Time: 9:00 p.m.
Summary: Ground radar on a GCI flight picked up an unidentified object within three miles of two F6F-5N aircraft. One pilot made visual contact with the object, describing a long, silver fuselage with no lights, which then followed the two F6F-5Ns as they were vectored by ground control. The radar return was twice the size of an F6F aircraft, and the object’s speed was estimated at roughly twice the F6Fs’ 160-knot cruising speed. Likely related to the sighting near the same location the previous night.
Source: Dan Wilson; McDonald list
Date: November 20, 1950 (BBU)
Location: South Ruislip, United Kingdom
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail on this sighting survives in the available source beyond its listing as a Blue Book Unknown case.
Source: McDonald list
Date: November 23, 1950 (BBU)
Location: Maxwell AFB, Alabama
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail on this sighting survives in the available source beyond its listing as a Blue Book Unknown case.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index
Date: November 25, 1950
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Time: Late night
Summary: The witness, who had gone to bed with a strange feeling of being watched, was awakened by a tall, human-like figure with angelic features. The figure raised a hand, apparently causing the bedroom door to open, and explained he had come from a distant planet, inviting the witness to accompany him there. The witness agreed, reportedly returning two days later. The being was said to have melted large snowdrifts around the witness’s home using a laser-like weapon. No further detail is available.
Source: Lillian Crowner Desguin, UFO’s: Fact or Fiction?
Date: November 27, 1950
Location: Huron, South Dakota
Time: Unknown
Summary: CAA personnel saw a hovering, maneuvering UFO.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index
Date: November 27, 1950
Location: Evansville, Wisconsin
Time: Unknown
Summary: A flying instructor reported six elliptical objects in loose echelon formation.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index
Date: November 29-30, 1950
Location: McGhee Tyson Airport / Oak Ridge, Knoxville, Tennessee
Time: Beginning 5:55 p.m. November 29, continuing intermittently into November 30
Summary: Numerous unidentified radar “paints” appeared at the 662nd Aircraft Warning Radar Detachment, almost entirely covering the Oak Ridge restricted area; a scrambled fighter made no visual contact, though targets remained visible for two to three hours. At 7:00 p.m., a Geiger counter in the restricted area recorded a pronounced rise in Alpha particles and a smaller rise in Gamma rays at the same time as the radar activity — readings the AEC could not attribute to any scheduled “Argon release.” On November 30, a single target appeared 12-21 miles west-northwest of the station in the early afternoon, and numerous further targets, too dense to count or plot, appeared that evening and remained visible for several hours. At least nine qualified personnel witnessed the activity. The most striking single incident in the ongoing Oak Ridge/Knoxville pattern. See the Full Report.
Source: McDonald list; Dan Wilson
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
From a New Jersey Dogfight to a Radiological Anomaly
November 1950’s two strongest cases sit at opposite ends of the evidentiary spectrum. The Robert Haven pursuit off Lakehurst, New Jersey is a single, uncorroborated pilot account — dramatic and internally consistent, but resting entirely on one witness whose original letter no longer survives. The Oak Ridge/Knoxville pattern’s November 29-30 climax is the reverse: a multi-witness, instrumentally recorded event, where radar activity coincided with a documented and institutionally unexplained radiation reading at one of the country’s most closely monitored nuclear sites. Between them, the month’s Key West entries add two more Navy radar-and-visual intercepts to the growing 1950 record of military encounters with objects that consistently outperformed or evaded the aircraft sent to identify them.
“No wash or slipstream from the object traveling at about 900 mph.”
— Lt. j.g. Robert Haven, on the November 7, 1950 encounter east of Lakehurst, New Jersey
