THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT

1950: The Selfridge AFB Radar Case

For 75 minutes, two separate ground radar systems at Selfridge AFB tracked a target that climbed from 25,000 to 47,000 feet and back down again, its speed swinging from a dead stop to 1,000 mph — a case so sensitive it was kept out of Blue Book’s own unknowns list, and only came to light years later through the work of the Air Force’s own skeptical consultant, J. Allen Hynek.

Date: March 9, 1950

Sighting Time: 7:45-9:00 p.m. (EST)

Day/Night: Night

Location: Selfridge AFB, Michigan

Urban or Rural: Military installation

No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable

Entity Type: Not Applicable

Entity Description: Not Applicable

Hynek Classification: RV (Radar/Visual — radar contact; no accompanying visual sighting described in this account)

Duration: 75 minutes

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): Not visually described; known only through radar returns

Shape of Object(s): Not Applicable (radar contact only)

Size of Object(s): Not determined

Color of Object(s): Not Applicable

Distance to Object(s): Not specified

Height & Speed: Altitude varied erratically between 25,000 and 47,000 ft; speed varied from stationary (0 mph) to as much as 1,000 mph over the course of the tracking

Number of Witnesses: 4 named (1st Lt. Francis E. Parker, 1st Lt. Frank Mattson, Sgt. McCarthy, Cpl. Melton)

Special Features/Characteristics: Dual-Radar Corroboration (CPS-4 and CPS-5), Extreme Altitude and Speed Variability, Extended 75-Minute Track, Not Listed in Original Blue Book Unknowns, Surfaced Later Through J. Allen Hynek’s Research, Same Location and One Overlapping Witness as an Earlier Case Six Days Prior

Case Status: Unexplained

Source: J. Allen Hynek, UFO Report, pp. 123-125, 295-297

Summary/Description: Over 75 minutes on the evening of March 9, 1950, USAF personnel at Selfridge AFB — 1st Lt. Francis E. Parker, 1st Lt. Frank Mattson, Sgt. McCarthy, and Cpl. Melton — conducted multiple ground radar trackings of a target using two separate air defense radar systems, a CPS-4 and a CPS-5. The target’s behavior was highly erratic: its altitude ranged from 25,000 to 47,000 ft, and its speed varied from a complete stop to as much as 1,000 mph, over the course of the sustained tracking. Despite the extended duration and dual-radar confirmation, this case was, for unknown reasons, never listed among Project Blue Book’s official Unknowns. It came to public attention only years later, when it was disclosed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek — the Air Force’s own scientific consultant on UFOs, who began his work with Blue Book as a skeptic and grew increasingly convinced that a subset of cases genuinely resisted conventional explanation. Lt. Mattson also appears as a named witness in a separate, earlier radar-visual sighting at the same base on March 3, 1950 (BBU 650), six days before this incident.

Related Cases: This site’s March 1-10, 1950 archive index, entry for March 3, 1950, Selfridge AFB, Michigan (BBU 650) — same location, overlapping witness (Lt. Frank Mattson)

Detailed Report

This case’s evidentiary strength lies almost entirely in its instrumentation and duration. A 75-minute radar track, cross-confirmed by two independent radar systems operating on different technology, is a far more sustained and technically corroborated dataset than the brief visual glimpses that make up most of this archive’s 1950 record. The described behavior — climbing and descending across a 22,000 ft altitude band, and swinging between a dead stop and 1,000 mph — describes a flight profile no conventional aircraft of 1950 could execute, assuming the radar returns tracked a single coherent object throughout rather than a sequence of unrelated returns.

The case’s absence from Blue Book’s own official Unknowns list, despite its evident evidentiary strength, is itself a notable and unexplained gap in the record — this archive does not speculate on why it was omitted, only notes that it was, and that its eventual disclosure came through Hynek’s own later research rather than through the official case files becoming public in the normal course.

Lt. Frank Mattson’s presence as a named witness in both this case and the March 3 Selfridge AFB sighting six days earlier is worth noting as a specific, documented overlap — not evidence of anything beyond the fact that the same trained observer was involved in two radar-confirmed incidents at the same base within a single week.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Selfridge Radar Case — Michigan 1950 and a Skeptic’s Own Disclosure

Classification issues/corrections: Filed as RV on the strength of the dual-radar contact alone, since no visual sighting accompanies this account; this is consistent with this archive’s treatment of the January 1950 Gulf of Mexico B-29 case, another radar-only RV classification.
Source chain assessment: This case’s most notable feature is its source: it comes not from Blue Book’s official unknowns catalog but from J. Allen Hynek’s own published UFO Report, meaning the very consultant the Air Force hired to explain such cases away was the one who eventually surfaced this specific one. That is a meaningfully different and arguably stronger provenance than most secondhand-compiled cases in this archive.
Pattern context/comparative cases: The March 3 Selfridge AFB case (BBU 650), involving the same base and the overlapping witness Lt. Mattson, forms a natural comparison; unlike this case, the March 3 incident was listed as a Blue Book Unknown, making the two cases’ differing official treatment itself a point of interest.
Physical evidence/evidentiary weight: No visual sighting or photograph exists, but dual-radar confirmation over 75 minutes is itself a strong form of physical evidence — an instrumented record independent of any single observer’s perception or memory.
Geographic/historical context: Selfridge AFB’s location near Detroit and its role in continental air defense in this period places it within the broader early Cold War pattern of military radar installations logging unexplained contacts.

A 75-minute, dual-radar-confirmed track of a target defying any conventional flight profile — kept out of the official Unknowns list for reasons this archive could not determine, and disclosed to the public only through the work of the Air Force’s own eventual UFO consultant. Few cases in this archive carry that particular combination of technical strength and institutional obscurity.