MacDill AFB, Florida: Radar tracks fast objects, B-29 locks on before the UFO speeds off
On the night of 22–23 July 1952, a control tower operator at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida, watched colored objects, base radar tracked targets at about 41,000 feet, and a B-29 crew vectored to investigate saw a high-speed object that its fire control radar locked onto.
Background
At 10:30 p.m. a control tower operator at MacDill AFB watched for 30 minutes a red-greenish-blue object to the west-southwest with two smaller objects to its north, and spotted another object to the south-southeast at 11:30 p.m. At 12:03 a.m. MacDill radar tracked an object 37 miles away at 41,200 feet heading almost directly toward the base at 532 mph, and another to the south-southeast at 41,000 feet; Navy and CAA radars reportedly also tracked it. At 12:08 a.m. the pilot and copilot of a B-29 on landing approach, vectored by the tower, saw a high-speed object at 40,000 feet heading toward MacDill and traveling faster than the B-29. The B-29 fire control radar locked onto the object and prepared to fire just as the UFO changed course and disappeared at 4,600 mph. Four airmen at the MacDill radar site saw an object pass nearly overhead before radar lost it at about 12:15 a.m., and civilians in Tampa saw two yellowish-orange discs maneuvering around the base. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.