THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT

1956: Goose Bay, Labrador: A Red-and-Green Object Circles an F-89D

Late on the night of February 12, 1956, a U.S. Air Force F-89D Scorpion interceptor was flying over Goose Bay, Labrador, one of the most important air defense bases on the northern approaches to North America. Its crew suddenly found they had company. A green-and-red object swept around their jet, rapidly circling the aircraft. The pilot, Bowen, watched it through the canopy, and in the back seat radar observer Crawford tracked it on his scope.

The encounter lasted about a minute. Project Blue Book filed the Goose Bay F-89D radar-visual sighting as case #3969 and listed it as unidentified. A trained two-man interceptor crew had a visual and radar observation at the same time, of an object that moved around their fighter rather than away from it.

Date: February 12, 1956

Sighting Time: 11:25 p.m. (AST); some listings give 10:55 or 11:10 p.m.

Day/Night: Night

Location: Airspace over Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada

Urban or Rural: Airborne (over a remote military air base region)

No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable

Entity Type: Not Applicable

Entity Description: Not Applicable

Hynek Classification: RV (Radar-Visual): airborne visual and airborne radar at the same time

Duration: About 1 minute

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): A green and red object that rapidly circled the aircraft

Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Shape and size not recorded; green and red

Distance to Object(s): Unknown; close enough to circle the aircraft

Height & Speed: At the interceptor’s altitude (not recorded); fast enough to circle a jet in flight

Number of Witnesses: 2: F-89D pilot Bowen and radar observer Crawford, USAF

Special Features/Characteristics: The object circled the jet rather than passing it, and was tracked on the F-89D’s airborne radar while being watched visually.

Case Status: Unexplained (Project Blue Book unknown, case #3969)

Source: Project Blue Book files, case #3969 (BBU); Don Berliner; Saunders/FUFOR Index; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology

Summary/Description: An F-89D crew over Goose Bay, Labrador saw a green-and-red object rapidly circle their jet and tracked it on radar for about a minute. Blue Book listed it as unidentified.

Detailed Report

In 1956, Goose Air Base in Labrador was a front-line station of North American air defense. It hosted U.S. Air Force interceptor squadrons flying round-the-clock readiness against possible bomber routes over the Arctic, and F-89D Scorpions were a mainstay of that force. These two-seat all-weather fighters carried a pilot in front and a radar observer in back, and relied on airborne radar to find targets at night.

At about 11:25 p.m. Atlantic Standard Time on February 12, 1956, the crew of one such F-89D, pilot Bowen and radar observer Crawford, reported a green-and-red object that rapidly circled their aircraft. Crawford tracked it on the jet’s radar during the sighting, which lasted about a minute. Different listings give the time as 10:55, 11:10 or 11:25 p.m., which suggests the original file contains more than one time entry.

The summaries available from the Blue Book index add nothing more: no altitude, no object size, no departure direction. Project Blue Book recorded the case as #3969 and kept it among its unknowns.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

Strong in Kind, Thin in Detail

Radar plus eyes, in the same aircraft: The strength of this case is that the visual and radar observations came at the same time, from a trained interceptor crew, of an object that moved around them. That is the kind of report Blue Book was least able to explain away.
Red and green: Red and green are the standard navigation light colors on aircraft, so another aircraft is the obvious first explanation. But an aircraft circling a jet interceptor at night within a minute is hard to picture, and presumably Blue Book considered and rejected it when it classed the case as unknown.
Goose Bay history: Goose Bay produced repeated Blue Book radar cases in the early and mid-1950s, including radar-tracked objects in September 1951 and June 1953. That places this report in a long run of unexplained contacts around the base.
Missing detail: Only the index-level summary is available here. The original case file would give the crew’s full names, altitude, heading, radar range and the Air Force evaluation.

The Goose Bay F-89D sighting is brief and sparsely documented, but its core is solid: a trained two-man crew, a simultaneous radar and visual observation, and an object that circled a jet fighter. Project Blue Book left it unexplained, and it remains one of several unresolved radar-visual contacts from the air defense bases of the far north.