The Ellsworth Unknown

It was just after nightfall on 12 August 1953, when the radar station of the Air Defense Command at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota received a call about a strange light in the sky. The caller was a woman who was serving with the Ground Observer Corps in Black Hawk, about ten miles west of Ellsworth. She said the light was extremely bright, and that it was low in the sky, just at the horizon off to the north of her position.

The radar had been scanning an area to the west, working a jet fighter in some practice patrols, but when they got the report they moved the sector scan to the northeast quadrant. There was a target exactly where the observer reported the light to be. The warrant officer who was the duty controller for the night, said that he'd studied the target for several minutes. He knew how weather could affect radar but this target was well defined, solid, and bright. It also seemed to be moving, but very slowly. He called for an altitude reading, and the man on the height-finding radar checked his scope. He reported back that the object was holding steady at sixteen thousand feet.

The warrant officer proceeded in a by-the-book fashion. He had all air traffic checked and rechecked. There was no registered plane in the area: no commercial flights, no private aircraft, and no military craft. The light was not supposed to be there, but it was.

He contacted the original spotter and confirmed with the woman that she was continuing to observe the object. Then he contacted ground observors on Ellsworth and directed their attention to area in question. All of them confirmed that they too could see the object. The warrant officer was about to say something when the Ground Observor woman exclaimed, ""It's starting to move - it's moving southwest toward Rapid [City]."

The Ellsworth Observors reported the same thing, as did the radar technicians; they were all watching the same object.

The warrant officer then made a decision. He contacted the jet fighter who had been practicing air patrols. "Get ready to make an intercept!" he told the pilot.

The fighter plane was an F-84 Thunderjet, with an Alison turbojet engine producing 4,000 pounds of static thrust. It had a top speed of over 600 miles an hour, and was armed with six .50 caliber machine guns.

But rather than streaking directly toward the light, the warrant officer decided to be cagey. He had the pilot swing in around Ellsworth from the south and then move in on the light. The pilot reported that he had spotted the light and had locked on. But when he closed to within three miles of the target, it began to move. The controller saw it begin to move, the spotter saw it begin to move and the pilot saw it begin to move - all at the same time. There was no doubt that all of them were watching the same object.

Once it began to move, the UFO picked up speed fast and started to climb, heading north; the F-84 was right on its tail. The pilot also noticed that the light was getting brighter, as though the power consumption for motion was directly proportional to the intensity of its outward appearance.

There was always a limit as to how near the jet could get. It was as though the UFO had some kind of an automatic warning radar linked to its power supply. When something got too close to it, it would automatically pick up speed and pull away. The separation distance between the F-84 and the object always remained three miles.

The chase continued on north out of sight of the lights of Rapid Cty and the base and into the black of the night; a pursuit of more than one hundred twenty miles. But no matter how hard the pilot pushed his aircraft, he could not gain on the object. Finally, after checking his fuel, the pilot signaled Ellsworth that he wished to abandon the pursuit, and the warrant officer agreed.

When the Thunderjet returned to the Ellsworth radar scopes, it had a friend. Incredibly, the UFO had changed direction, and was trailing the jet back to the airfield!

Now the warrant officer was more than a little irritated. He placed a call down to the ready room, and found that the alert pilots had been following the pursuit and were more than a little curious. Was this one of those flying saucers that everyone was talking about? The warrant officer asked for a volunteer, and a veteran airman of both World War II and Korea stepped forward.

The first Thunderjet landed safely, even as a second rocketed into the air. The new pilot locked onto the UFO and roared in pursuit, but it was a replay of the previous pursuit: a three-mile distance always kept them apart.

The veteran pilot used every trick he had to close with his foe. He tried broad sweeps, he nosed down to use gravity to slingshot forward, but nothing worked.

Finally, the pilot began to wonder if this thing was an illusion of some sort. He turned off all of his lights to see if it was a reflection from any of the airplane's lights, but there it was, right in front of him! A reflection from a ground light, maybe? He rolled the airplane a few times, but the position of the light didn't change! Was it a star? He picked out three bright stars near the light and watched carefully. The UFO moved in relation to the three stars!

Well, a solid object should register on his gunsight radar, so he flipped on his radar-ranging gunsight. In a few seconds the red light on his sight blinked on: something real and solid was in front of him.

At that point, the pilot felt cold and scared. He'd met MD 109's, Fock-Wolfe 190's and Messerschmitt 262's over Germany and he'd battled MIG-15's over Korea but the large, bright, bluish-white light was none of those things. It was an aerial intruder so advanced that he could not close the distance with it. And if it could do all that, what else was it capable of?

The pilot signaled the ground-controllers, and requested permission to break off pursuit.

When the Thunderjet veered off, the light remained stationary for several minutes and then accelerated off to the north. It did not come back.

The warrant officer called for a course trajectory for the object, and was told that it appeared to be headed toward Fargo, North Dakota. The warrant officer called the Fargo filter center [aircraft control and warning center at which observation reports are collated and determined for probable action]. Had they any reports of unidentified lights? The filter center said no.

Five minutes later, the filter center called back. A ground observer had spotted a bright light moving on a southwest-northeast line to Fargo.

This case was thoroughly investigated by the infamous Project Blue Book, but no satisfactory explanation was ever brought forward. It was officially designated, "UNKNOWN".

I first heard of this case in the mid 1970's, and it always bothered me that no one took the time to look into it. Now I know that it WAS investigated, probably more thoroughly than any other case. It has always stayed with me, because no one knows what it was.

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