{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252 \deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f1\froman\fcharset2 Symbol;}{\f2\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}{\f3\fnil\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f4\froman\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f5\froman\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}}{\colortbl;\red0\green0\blue0;\red0\green0\blue255;\red0\green255\blue255;\red0\green255\blue0;\red255\green0\blue255;\red255\green0\blue0;\red255\green255\blue0;\red255\green255\blue255;\red0\green0\blue127;\red0\green127\blue127;\red0\green127\blue0;\red127\green0\blue127;\red127\green0\blue0;\red127\green127\blue0;\red127\green127\blue127;\red192\green192\blue192;}{\stylesheet{\fs20 \snext0 Normal;}{\cs10\fs20 \snext10 Default Paragraph Font;}}{\info{\version0}{\edmins0}{\nofpages0}{\nofwords0}{\nofchars0}}\aendnotes\aftnstart0\hyphhotz0\revbar1\revprop1\ftnnar \sectd \guttersxn0\linex0\endnhere1 \pard \qc \plain \f3\fs28\ul Comments on Dave Clarke/Andy Roberts interview with Sq Ldr Victor Mitchell\par
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\plain \f4 Martin Shough\plain \f4\ul \par
\pard \plain \f3\fs20 \par
\pard \qc \plain \i\f3\fs20 This commentary confined to references to Neatishead/Lakenheath/Bentwaters August 13 1956\plain \f3\fs20 \par
\pard \par
\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 DC: So something that was at low level you could only detect it, using one of these radars, within that small distance, ie 30 miles?\par
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VM: Yes that\rquote s right because low level, the level is in relationship to the earth. So low level operations, and this is the thing that I looked at briefly...if you draw a map showing the distance between Neatishead, Bentwaters and Lakenheath, it is a roughly a triangle, about 60 miles. So whoever was at Neatishead is unlikely to have seen anything low level above Woodbridge or Bentwaters, and vice versa, they won\rquote t see it at Bentwaters, not at low level.\par
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DC: That\rquote s interesting.\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 That's what I kept banging on about in our debates, of course. And I also discussed the radar horizons at great length in the \plain \f5\lang2057 Blips! \plain \i\f5\lang2057 manuscript. This is why the 23 Squadron interceptions were not under Neatishead control and can't therefore have been the same event(s) recalled by FW, by FW's oppo Sq Ldr Clift, and by the other Neatishead Sq Ldr interviewed by DC on 13.03.02. \plain \f5\lang2057 \par
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\pard \li720 VM: Now the important point about what they did, and I can see this happening...that the airbase had a problem. They had seen something, something odd of course. They had scrambled, or they had told the GCI and GCI had scrambled something and went up to have a look at it. And it would be a sensible ploy to make sure that the person who had control over the fighter aircraft to put them in the right position would be the guy who had the best coverage. So if it is flying at low level around Bentwaters then it would be the GCA guy there who would have it . . . . From what I can see they are talking about 3-4,000 feet aren\rquote t they? So it\rquote s got to be local to them. These guys [GCI Neatishead] are unlikely to see it unless it pops up.\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 Ditto. Last time we reviewed this issue you said you still weren't convinced by all my arguments for the absence of GCI control for 23 Squadron. Is this still an open question?\par
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\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 Now, you can argue, I think you may want to look in greater detail at the propagation. The transmission of a radar signal out, and striking the moon. [point to drawing]..you make a transmission here, and the radar pulse will travel out into space; the measuring system that you have got will receive the returns from objects that you have got within this time frame, but this pulse is still carrying on, it\rquote s still keeping going. So you send out the next pulse, and the same thing happens. So you have now got two pulses going out into space. It\rquote s perfectly reasonable if the moon is low, or high for that matter, that at some stage some return energy would displayed from the moon itself, but it wouldn\rquote t be displayed there, it would be displayed down here. So there would be no correlation between that pulse that went out there and the return that comes up there. So it would be a spurious return. However, looking at what these guys saw, I cannot conceive that that was the answer to it because if it were, it would follow the normal pattern of a return. It might be a bit more blodgy, but it would follow that sort of pattern. Plus there is evidence there that says this thing moved around. So, of the things they suggest that is a possibility but I don\rquote t think it would do because if you had sequential pulses going out and coming back in they would appear on sequential time bases all the way down, and it may well be that they would move around. But I think that anyone who with knowledge of the use of the radar system.....\par
\pard \par
\plain \i\f5\lang2057 With the greatest of respect to Sq Ldr Marshall I have to dispute this idea. Moon echoes on a 1956 airfield surveillance radar?? First, since he refers at one point to 'third or fourth [trip] returns from the moon' this suggests some confusion about the physics or the geometry of multiple-trip echoes. Second-trip echoes on a CPN-4 would be from targets between 60 and 120 miles; third-trip echoes from targets between 120 and 180 miles and so on. Such echoes are normally displayed from large volume- or plane-targets such as weather or the ground because the power of the set is matched to the designed range so as to minimise power wasted on point targets where the scope is not designed to 'see' them. For example, an aircraft 600 miles away is hardly likely to be displayed by, say, tenth-trip returns on a CPN-4 because the energy-on-target at this range is designed to be negligible. Lunar echoes would be \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 4000th trip\plain \i\f5\lang2057 . Thus the attenuation of signals returned from 1/4 million miles will be fantastically extreme and of vanishing intensity at the receiver. You can easily prove this:\par
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Obviously the moon is a very big target in absolute terms. If you consider a 1/2 degree spherical target at 240,000 miles range compared to a 1/2 degree target at the maximum unambiguous range of 60 miles then you compare a 2000-\plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 mile \plain \i\f5\lang2057 sphere and a 2000-\plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 foot \plain \i\f5\lang2057 sphere. The moon has an effective echoing area on the order of 10^6 times as large. But the moon is 4000 times further away, which, because the intensity falls off as the 4th power of the distance for point targets (spheres are 'point targets' for theoretical purposes however big they are) means that the intensity is 4000^4 times weaker, which is a huge number, 10^15 or a few hundred thousand billion! Now you could argue that 10^-15 of an extremely strong signal like that from a 1/2-mile sphere at 60 miles might still be quite strong. To get an idea of how strong one can compare it with a 20-foot sphere (about 30 sq m radar cross section, roughly equivalent to a well-aspected smallish aircraft) at the same range, which has an effective echoing area only about 10^4 times smaller than the 2000-foot sphere. In other words, the echo strength from the moon will still be \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 eleven orders of magnitude or one hundred billion times weaker \plain \i\f5\lang2057 than that from a small aircraft at the edge of the scope. If it were even theoretically possible to adjust the sensitivity to display such a level of signal I'm sure the entire scope would be bright white due to thermal noise in the circuitry.\plain \f5\lang2057 \par
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\pard \li720 DC: What about this condition where you have got trapping and ducting of radar signals so that you are seeing things many miles away...\par
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VM: Yes, absolutely right. Your wave is bent down and all that. I have only seen it once, and I cannot recall in detail, but I don\rquote t think it would be...it\rquote s the same sort of philosophy as the moon. You know, you bend the beam down and its trapped, and it goes out and it goes on and on and on and picks up the Ural mountains and throws it back in your face!\par
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DC: But perhaps it is that very rarity! So that something like that happens and causes a case like this, which when looked at years later can\rquote t be explained, but you don\rquote t know everything about the conditions at the time....\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 Caution again please - saying that a radar response of \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 some sort \plain \i\f5\lang2057 might be caused by ducting is not really good enough. A radar response of some sort might in principle be caused by LGMs too, or even the moon. But if you want to rule those out it means looking at the detail of exactly \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 what \plain \i\f5\lang2057 sort of responses in exactly \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 what\plain \i\f5\lang2057 circumstances, and it isn't true that you have to know 'everything about the conditions at the time' to make reliable inferences about the limits of the possible range of effects due to this or that mechanism. Restricting discussion only to the 23 Squadron events as recalled by the aircrews, stationary echoes detected in the same approximate location by fixed ground and mobile airborne radars, at different frequencies, different pulse and scan rates, approached repeatedly at changing bearings and elevations by two separate aircraft over two extended periods, \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 is not at all easily explainable as AP. \plain \i\f5\lang2057 (And this is disregarding reports of coherent movements etc. detailed in other sources of course.) \par
\pard \li720 \par
\plain \f5\lang2057 VM: . . . A summary of my feeling is that those guys saw something. I\rquote m fairly happy with what they said, and what they picked up that something occurred which they had not normally, or hadn\rquote t experienced before. You have only got to look a few years later at the Rendlesham incidents. Rendlesham is not too far away is it? You may well argue that the Americans have been messing around with things, I don\rquote t know. There is a question in my mind as to what was going on in that time-frame that we were doing, or that we and the Americans were doing. It is unlikely that they would have advised the Air Defence system if they were doing experimental operations. Unlikely. They were very very cagey about Black Bird and people like that zooming out. They would just say, here\rquote s a special going out....\par
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DC: At the time of the 56 incident was the time the U2 was based there....\par
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\pard \li720 VM: That\rquote s right. So, what do you say? I don\rquote t think you can dispute the honest reporting of these guys. I can\rquote t suggest anything specific to you that could point you in any one direction, because the anomalous propagation is there, third or fourth return from the moon is a possibility, but I think that that would become self evidence. \par
\pard \par
\plain \i\f5\lang2057 See reference to 'third or fourth returns from the moon' above. I think the points made by Andy Roberts about the U2 during our 'debate' do cast doubt on the actual basing of a U2 at Lakenheath that August. You'll recall that similar doubts were expressed by the aviation expert who I asked to comment on this, who believed the logistical arrangements made it very likely that the focus had shifted to Turkey by this time. The U2 history on the CIA web site supports this. But this doesn't guarantee that visits were not made to Lakenheath, nor does it mean that there was not some notional readiness to return basing there in the future.\par
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\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 DC: Was it possible to pick up meteors up on radar?\par
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VM: I\rquote ve never seen one. But then I haven\rquote t been looking for them!\par
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DC: But these events were right at the height of a shower, the Perseids.\par
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VM: Yes it was.\par
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DC: And certainly when the people at Bentwaters became aware that something was being tracked, they went outside and saw shooting stars...\par
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VM: That\rquote s right, yes. But they wouldn\rquote t manoeuvre. And I get the impression from what\rquote s been written in there that this thing did manoeuvre around. One time it was in front, and then it was behind...\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 There's a lot of confusion here. Who is talking about which body of information? VM is talking about the Perkins/BOI-485 object at Lakenheath which manoeuvred around. The 23 Squadron 'object' didn't manoeuvre around but it certainly wasn't a meteor either. If we're talking about the BOI-485/Perkins report of the Bentwaters fast radar-visual or the others in IR-1-56 then these were straight tracks, but it is not accurate to say that Bentwaters personnel went out and saw meteors. There is no reference to meteors in any report from or referring to Bentwaters. Lakenheath observers reported unusual numbers of meteors but it is fair to point out that they mentioned them only to \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 contrast\plain \f5\lang2057 \plain \i\f5\lang2057 them with the visual 'UFOs' they described. \par
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Moreover it is not at all clear from BOI-485 that Lakenheath ground observers looked for UFOs \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 because they were aware of radar trackings\plain \i\f5\lang2057 . In fact the specific answer in BOI-485 to this question about what drew observers attention to UFOs is that the observers simply '\plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 looked at sky and saw objects'\plain \i\f5\lang2057 , which you can interpret to mean something else - but something else is not what it actually says. \par
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And Dave, the implication of your statement above is that the presence of the Perseids and these fast radar tracks can't be coincidence, which would be a fair point except that: \par
a) these fast, small particles at great height are \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 not even remotely favourable targets \plain \i\f5\lang2057 for airfield surveillance radars for all the reasons I have adduced before; \par
b) the types of large fireball bolides that \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 are \plain \i\f5\lang2057 potential targets are mavericks and are \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 not statistically associated with showers \plain \i\f5\lang2057 anyway, so the 'coincidence' becomes just that - a coincidence\plain \f5\lang2057 ; \par
\plain \i\f5\lang2057 c) diametric as opposed tangential tracks are the \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 least \plain \i\f5\lang2057 favourable meteor orientation for radar tracking even for fireballs; \par
d) the Bentwaters tracks were on widely divergent headings whereas shower meteors originate in a common radiant; \par
e) none of these headings was anywhere near the azimuth of the Perseid radiant; \par
f) quantitative deductions possible from the speeds and distances of the Bentwaters fast radar-visual and from the known features of the CPN-4 radiation pattern are all consistent \plain \f5\lang2057 in detail \plain \i\f5\lang2057 with the passage of a hypersonic object at a height which closely matches the bracketed visual height report. Again features of this report can be interpreted to mean something different from what is stated, i.e. that the object wasn't really 'beneath' the plane etc., or the existence of the report can be discounted; but in such cases you have to balance the 'saving of the phenomena' achieved by that interpretation against the damage done to the internal consistency or the arbitrariness of an assumption. \par
There really is no evidence that these radar tracks had anything to do with meteors.\par
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\pard \li720 DC: It seems odd to me too that this began happening at 9.30 in the evening and yet it wasn\rquote t until 2 am in the morning that aircraft were scrambled to have a look...\par
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\plain \i\f3 Agreed.\par
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\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 VM: Again it comes back down to the operational function of the air defence system. . . . If something appears as a normal track and then stops and doesn\rquote t move, it would be dismissed because it would be ground clutter.\par
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DC: And if it was computerised, would it be removed from the display?\par
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VM: Well, absolutely, if you have got Moving Target Indication (MTI), you have got Circular Polarisation, designed to cut out returns from raindrops, you have got all these features...now think about the theoretical shape of a UFO. Here is an ideal large raindrop, which Circular Polarisation says, piss off you, we don\rquote t want you! [laughter] MTI, the same philosophy is the same thing, it allows a moving target to pass through a dense area of clutter and be displayed. It removes the clutter from it.\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 MTI was used on the CPN-4s at Lakenheath and Bentwaters and on the CPS-5 at Lakenheath, but in 1956 the UK air defence system did not use MTI because the detectors and delay lines were not considered stable enough to be completely reliable, so this was \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 not \plain \i\f5\lang2057 a factor at Neatishead. The fact that the 23 Squadron interception didn't happen until 2.00 am is therefore either a 'delay' related to Neatishead's operational focus or indicates that this target at 2.00 am. just wasn't in the Neatishead radar pattern. We have good reason to believe (above) that it wasn't in Neatishead's radiation pattern. \par
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The idea of circular and elliptical polarisations prejudicing detectability of spheroids and ellipsoids is one I've raised myself for twenty years without getting anyone to take any notice. Thankyou Sq Ldr!\par
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\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 VM: . . . If they get reports of aircraft buzzing the area he is not going to go too quickly to the air commander and say shall I launch? So things could have been happening earlier on in the evening and he sat there and he thought \lquote well, it could be anything really.\rquote Wait until you start getting verbals from the airfields...\par
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DC: Well he did say he didn\rquote t see anything until they rang him, and that\rquote s when he started looking....\par
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VM: That\rquote s right. If he did that, it\rquote s unlikely that he would have seen anything, because of the very reason of the distance he was looking.\par
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DC: It begins to make sense now that you explain it like that.\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 We've always known this. The concentration of the air defence radar is on inbound targets to seaward as I've often pointed out and as FW also emphasised. They didn't look at Lakenheath and didn't see anything; when they were asked to look they saw something. But what they saw wasn't the target that Lakenheath GCA and 23 Squadron were busy with at 2.00 am. There's no way that FW was involved with any launch at 2.00 am - it doesn't fit the pre-midnight time he reported and there's no need to try and make it fit because \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 we know Neatishead couldn't even see that target anyway\plain \i\f5\lang2057 . This leaves open the question of what Neatishead did see and when. \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 If \plain \i\f5\lang2057 we accept that an event did occur on the night of August 13, as reported by FW and confirmed by two other Neatishead sources, then the elements of the Perkins/BOI-485 scenario that don't fit in time or in content with the 2.00 am events become natural candidates for that same event. If the Neatishead event \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 didn't\plain \i\f5\lang2057 happen on the 13th then we have another 'Lakenheath UFO tail-chase' on a different night around that time that we know nothing about - and which the Americans were \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 not \plain \i\f5\lang2057 involved in, otherwise we would have a Blue Book record, or a reference in one of the UFOB messages, or a recollection from Perkins, or probably at least a rumour from some other source. All as confusing as ever, I fear . . . !\par
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\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 VM: The Sector Commander . . . has the authority to launch the weapons. They come under his control. He authorises them, the controller at Neatishead would launch them, scramble the QRA, and they would come under his control for the purposes of interception. As we said earlier, if he hasn\rquote t got the cover the sensible thing is to say call Lakenheath, or call Woodbridge. \par
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DC: Which is what seems to have happened even though he [Freddie] doesn\rquote t remember that, he seems to think he was still in control of this.\par
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VM: Well he would have been in overall control, you see because you see the radar systems that were employed they designed as, you see this was a Control and Reporting System....\par
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\pard \plain \i\f5\lang2057 Again this is the situation I was trying to explain. Assuming everybody \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 is\plain \i\f5\lang2057 talking about the same date (!) the question of operational responsibility has to be distinguished from actual hands-on intervention when hearing people talk about what they were 'in control' of. FW didn't initiate anything. It was already underway when Neatishead was 'asked to look' (according to FW) as a result of Sector being put on alert by (according to BOI-485) the USAF 60th Anti Aircraft Artillery battalion at Lakenheath. \plain \f5\lang2057 \par
\pard \li720 \par
DC: Well also they didn\rquote t have height-finders, at the airbases, so he must have been supplying the height information?\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 Absolutely not - see below.\plain \f5\lang2057 \par
\pard \li720 \par
VM: Now it is possible that he might have seen them on height-finder. Because a height finder is nothing more than these [points to radar diagrams] turned through 90 degrees...right? So this thing is now looking down, it\rquote s got quite a wide coverage, and it\rquote s looking along, so it could well be that they could have got some height finding information, but who is to say? Because the height finder, you move it around like this, so they would not be necessarily a consistent tracking on it.\par
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DC: It\rquote s interesting but doesn\rquote t take us any nearer finding out what it was.\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 It isn't possible either. A heightfinder is less subject to ground clutter and extreme lobing at low elevations due to the shape of the beam, so that it can be more effective with targets at low altitudes. But FW's team certainly was \plain \b\i\f5\lang2057 not \plain \i\f5\lang2057 supplying any height information to supplement a fighter control being carried out by the USAF. As always, go right back to Freddie's first statements and the crux is always that there was no knowledge of any involvement of US radars and certainly no cooperation. In any case there could be no mistake about whether only height info was being used or not because, as VM indicates, the horizontal 'nodding fan' of the Type 13 heightfinder has extremely poor azimuth resolution of about 4 degrees and moreover doesn't scan in azimuth. In the ROTOR system the Type 13s were azicated by the operator turning a knob to place a marker strobe through the echo on the main PPI display. If you've only got radar contact through the heightfinder you've got no echo on the PPI in the first place and you're manually fishing in the dark for your target. In these conditions you'd know you weren't carrying out a 'proper' interception! And with 4-degree azimuth resolution you certainly couldn't detect a target separation down to 1/2 a mile at 40 miles range as reported (azimuth res. would be five or six times this figure, and minimum range resolution for the 1.9 microsecond pulse is twice this figure), nor would you be able to say that the pursuer leapfrogged the pursued 'in one sweep' as also reported, because the Type 13 doesn't 'sweep', only a surveillance PPI 'sweeps'. Furthermore none of the 23 Squadron aircrews recalls any height information coming from Neatishead and such a split arrangement would have been at least as memorable as the exclusively American control that they did remember. Ergo, the report we have from Neatishead cannot have anything to do supplementing Lakenheath GCA's 2.00 am fighter control effort, or any other, with height information.\par
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\pard \li720 \plain \f5\lang2057 VM: Personally I don\rquote t see you ever getting an answer to it. I\rquote ll be quite honest with you. I think we do see things, either you don\rquote t want to go any further with it because you know you will be black-balled or what have you, and things that are reported aren\rquote t reported quite correctly through the appropriate intelligence system and all the way down the line, but they tend to say \lquote well we\rquote ll put this down to anomalous propagation\rquote , you see?\par
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\plain \i\f5\lang2057 This is pretty spot-on in my view.\plain \f5\lang2057 \par
\pard \li720 \par
\pard \plain \f3\fs20 \par
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