Lincoln AFB Radar-Visual Case (1957)

Background

Lincoln Air Force Base in Nebraska is now Lincoln Airport. The case is catalogued by J. Allen Hynek as Radar-Visual Case RV-7, and the NICAP archive reproduces his summary. It is one of the radar-visual reports from the 1950s that the Air Force's Project Blue Book had to classify.

The sighting

According to the NICAP case page, the event happened at about 2:30 a.m. Several objects were seen trailing an airliner five to six miles behind it, and reportedly moved about twice as fast. Two radar installations were involved: the control tower radar, run by the tower's NCOIC, and the Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) radar. A discussion thread on UAP Discovery gives the same time and adds that the objects hovered, that one split in two, and that another turned through 180 degrees. Per the same account, the targets were watched for three to five minutes and returned no response to IFF interrogation. A third account, a RADCAT case-directory post on the RealTVUFOs blog, lists the duration as "3-5 mins" with a bracketed, questioned "[25 min]" in Brad Sparks's summary, so the duration itself is uncertain.

The radar operator reportedly said the blips were about the size of a B-47 bomber. Visual observers could not estimate size.

Official explanation

The Blue Book summary, as quoted by NICAP, says the objects were "visually observed by three control tower operators and by the Director of Operations." Blue Book rated the case "probable balloon" and "probable aircraft." Neither source names the airliner or describes a test used to reach that conclusion, so the explanation rests on the classification alone.

Assessment

The case is a multi-observer radar-visual report, which is why researchers cite it. Its documentation is secondhand: both sources read here quote Hynek and Blue Book summaries rather than the original file. The time and the count of targets are vague or differ between accounts, so they should be treated as reported rather than verified.