Category 11
Sightings From Aircraft

Directory
Sighting By Navy Admiral & Secretary of the Navy
March 14, 1952
Near Hawaii

Updated: Dec. 30, 2006
Fran Ridge:
In March of 1952 (Keyhoe said April, but this was incorrect) of 1952, Navy Secretary Dan Kimball was flying to Hawaii when two disc-shaped craft streaked in toward his Navy executive plane. This was written in a UFO book, but there is no doubt that it it actually happened. In December of 2006 Dan Wilson located an article found in the Blue Book files and Jean Waskiewicz produced a transcript of that article, which can be found at the bottom of this directory.

Donald Keyhoe:
"Their speed was amazing," he told me later, in Washington. "My pilots estimated it between fifteen hundred and two thousand miles an hour. The objects circled us twice and then took off, heading east. There was another Navy plane behind us, with Admiral Arthur Radford on board. The distance was about fifty miles. I had my senior pilot radio a report on the sighting. In almost no time Radford's chief pilot called back, really excited. The UFOs were now circling their plane---they'd covered the fifty miles in less than two minutes. In a few seconds the pilot told us they'd left the plane and raced up out of sight." After landing, Secretary Kimball had a report radioed to the AF, since it was officially in charge of the UFO investigation. When he returned to Washington he had an aide ask the AF what action had been taken. He was informed it was against orders to discuss case analyses, even with witnesses who made the reports. In regard to other Navy & Marine Corps reports ...on checking, found that the Air Force had insisted on getting all copies of reports, without even a preliminary Navy investigation. As in his own case, the AF had refused to answer any questions about these sightings, except for a few that were already known to the press, which it later tried to debunk. As soon as he learned this, Secretary Kimball had a conference with Rear Admiral Calvin Bolster, Chief of the Naval Research. (He wanted ONR to make a full investigation of all Navy and Marine reports from then on and also try to get duplicate reports from witnesses in unexplained earlier cases. And this was to be kept separate from the Air Force Project Blue Book).

(Source: Aliens From Space 1973, pp. 65-66, Keyhoe). 

Dan Wilson:
This sighting may have had great ramifications. The intelligence behind these two discs may well have known who was aboard these planes. In 1953, at the height of the Cold War, Admiral Radford became the third Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He served in that position until 1957, when he retired. During his retirement, Radford still advised Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson from time to time.