Hanford, Washington, July 5, 1952: a disc above the atomic works.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
Hanford Atomic Works Disc:
Four Airline Pilots Watch a Saucer Over a Nuclear Plant, July 5, 1952
At 6:00 on the morning of July 5, 1952, four commercial pilots flying a C-46 at 9,000 feet above the Hanford Atomic Works saw a disc hovering just below a deck of wispy clouds, directly above their airplane. It stood still, then appeared to back away, change shape and flatten out, gain speed and disappear. The crew tried to pick it up on radar and could not. They turned around to look for it again and never found it.
The Hanford UFO sighting of July 5, 1952 landed on front pages the next day under headlines such as “Flyers Report Saucers Near Atomic Plant.” It happened over one of the most sensitive installations in the United States, with four professional witnesses aboard. Project Blue Book carries it as an Unknown.
Date: July 5, 1952
Sighting Time: 6:00 a.m. (just after local sunrise)
Day/Night: Day
Location: Hanford Atomic Works, Richland, Washington, United States
Urban or Rural: Rural
No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: Daylight Disc (DD)
Duration: Not recorded; the sequence of hover, backing away, flattening and departure is described without a time span
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): A disc seen just below a deck of wispy clouds, directly above the aircraft. It stood still at first, then seemed to back away and change shape, becoming flat, gained speed and disappeared
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Round, flat disc; size and color not recorded
Distance to Object(s): Directly above the airliner, below the cloud deck
Height & Speed: Stationary at first, then accelerated away. The airliner was flying at 9,000 feet
Number of Witnesses: 4 (Capt. John Baldwin, Capt. George Robertson, H. D. Shenkel and Steven Summers, Continental Air Lines pilots)
Special Features/Characteristics: Sighting over the Hanford atomic installation; the object could not be picked up on radar; the crew reversed course and could not find it again
Case Status: Project Blue Book: Unknown (BBU)
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index; Loren E. Gross, UFOs: A History (Jan-May 1952); OSI records and Blue Book files; Brad Sparks, Blue Book Unknowns Catalogue, Case 661; J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report; Dayton Daily News, July 6, 1952; Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 6, 1952; Madison Wisconsin State Journal, July 6, 1952
Summary/Description: Four airline pilots in a C-46 at 9,000 feet saw a disc under the cloud deck above Hanford. It hovered, backed away, flattened and vanished. Radar showed nothing. Blue Book: Unknown.
Related Cases: Fort Monmouth radar case of July 1, 1952; Tremonton, Utah film of July 2, 1952; other Atomic Energy Commission site reports of 1952
Detailed Report
The four men aboard the C-46 were Capt. John Baldwin, Capt. George Robertson, H. D. Shenkel (spelled Shanbel on some listings) and Steven Summers, Florida-based Continental Air Lines pilots. They were flying at 9,000 feet over the Hanford Atomic Works at Richland, Washington, shortly after dawn.
According to the accounts collected by the UAP Discovery group from the Dayton Daily News, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Madison Wisconsin State Journal of July 6, 1952, the crew saw a disc just below a deck of wispy clouds, directly above their airplane. Baldwin said the object stood still at first. It then seemed to back away and change shape, becoming flat. It gained speed and disappeared.
Robertson said the object could not be picked up on radar. The crew reversed course to look for it and could not spot it again. The case appears in J. Allen Hynek’s The Hynek UFO Report at page 53, in Brad Sparks’ Blue Book Unknowns Catalogue as Case 661 and in Michael Swords’ UFOs and Government. Project Blue Book carries it as an Unknown.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
Four Pilots over a Restricted Site
- Professional witnesses: Two captains and two other pilots, all current airline crew, watched the same object from the same cockpit. Their descriptions come from newspaper interviews the next day.
- The object behavior: Standing still, then seeming to back away and flatten, is a description of a change in apparent shape and distance. The sources do not give angular size, so the object’s actual distance and size cannot be estimated.
- Radar: The object could not be picked up on the aircraft’s radar. That fits a nonmetallic or very distant target, and it also fits a visual effect. The sources do not say what the radar range or setting was.
- Name spelling: Your date page lists “D. Shanbel,” while the UAP Discovery summary of the newspaper accounts reads “H. D. Shenkel.” I used the newspaper-derived spelling in the field and noted the other.
- Two duplicate entries: The July 5 Hanford report was logged twice on the old date page, once crediting only Baldwin and once naming all four. They are the same incident.
The Hanford sighting is a short, clean report from four trained observers over a highly sensitive site. The sources do not explain the object, and Blue Book did not either.
“Flyers Report Saucers Near Atomic Plant.”
— Dayton Daily News, July 6, 1952, page 1
