USAF Alaska ADC Mass Sighting October 1952

On October 29, 1952, Ladd Air Force Base's Air Defense Command radar station in Fairbanks Alaska tracked multiple unidentified contacts performing coordinated formation maneuvers at 20,000 feet over the Alaskan interior. Multiple F-94 Starfire interceptors were scrambled. Aircrews made visual contact with a formation of lights maintaining precise geometric spacing. When the F-94s approached, the formation simultaneously increased altitude and speed. The scrambled interceptors could not match the contacts' performance. The encounter lasted 28 minutes from initial radar detection to final contact loss. Project Blue Book classified the case. The Ladd AFB incident was part of the extraordinary wave of Air Defense Command radar-visual encounters in 1952 that produced an intelligence summary that went to the National Security Council and contributed to the first formal NSC briefing on UAP phenomena in US history. The Alaskan ADC corridor was considered strategically vital given Soviet bomber threat vectors.