Bellefontaine, Ohio: Radar vectors F-86s to sphere, pilot films it with gun camera
On August 1, 1952, an Air Defense Command radar site at Bellefontaine, Ohio, vectored two F-86s toward a target traveling 500 mph against the wind; Maj. James B. Smith got a weak radar return and shot gun camera film of a white or silvery sphere.
Background
At 10:51 a.m. on August 1, 1952, an Air Defense Command radar site on Campbell Hill at Bellefontaine, Ohio, tracked a target 20 miles NNW of Wright-Patterson AFB traveling 500 mph against the wind. It vectored two F-86s piloted by Maj. James B. Smith and Lt. Donald J. Hemmer, who made visual contact but twice climbed to 48,000 feet without reaching the object. Smith got a weak return on his radar gun sight and shot gun camera film of a white or silvery sphere estimated at 60,000 feet; the pilots broke off the intercept at 11:13 a.m. about 100 miles west-southwest of Dayton. Blue Book officers Lt. Anderson G. Flues and Lt. Robert Olsson initially rated the case “unknown,” but Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt changed the evaluation a few weeks later to two coincidental IFOs, a weather balloon and a jet. Ruppelt went to great lengths to debunk the case in his ADC briefings to the Robertson Panel. 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.