Howard Cocklin

Radar Technician

Radar specialist who reportedly confirmed unusual targets were appearing on properly functioning equipment. Howard Cocklin, assistant chief of Washington National Airport’s control tower, was working the graveyard shift on Saturday night, July 19, 1952. Just after he settled into a chair behind a radarscope, an unidentified white blip blinked onto his screen. “We were tracking a flight that had just taken off, when all of a sudden, we had another target show up,” says Cocklin, now 82 years old and living in Fairfax, Va. “It was very erratic. It went left and right. We knew it wasn’t an airplane, because a plane flies in one direction. But it was a strong signal, just like an airplane. Then a man named Harry Barnes in the Air Route Traffic Control [ARTC] center down below called the control tower. He wanted to know if we had seen what he saw, whatever it was.”