[Scan-DC] Saturday night UFO scrambles Andrews jets??

[Frederick J Cox]

Similar incident to Steve's, roughly 8 years ago in Charles County, MD.
That time, however, most everyone in the southern part of the county saw
it, and most concluded it was a plane crashing into the Potomac River,
including some LEO's and rescue workers in the vicinity of Cobb Island.
There was a large initial response, including search helicopters, but
after consultation with National and Andrews, and local airports, all
reporting no planes missing, no distress beacons, and no radar tracks in
the area at the time, everybody went home.
	I vaguely remember one of the Trooper pilots trying to determine
the trajectory from eyewitness reports, and eventually he concluded that
it was too sharp/fast/etc to be anything but a meteor or similar.

Rick

>    This reminds me of a UFO I saw a few years ago which I am
> virtually certain was a meteor.  It was below the cloud cover on a
> totally overcast night, so I knew it had to be quite low in altitude
> when I spotted it at about midnight.  I called all around the area
> to air traffic centers, but no one claimed to have seen anything
> either visually or on radar.  I called Fairfax County Police while
> listening to the scanner hoping to hear something, but dispatch told
> me that no officers had reported anything.  Then, about 10 minutes
> later, dispatch called me back and informed me that an officer near
> where I had seen this thing could confirm my sighting.  He had
> called the incident in by phone, not by radio, probably to avoid
> ridicule, which was my guess at the time.
>
>    The UFO, or meteor, if that was the case, was big, bright and
> fiery, and likely hit the ground if it was that low according to an
> astronomer friend of mine to whom I related the incident.  One
> usually sees meteors at many thousands of feet in altitude, and ones
> that are sighted below low cloud ceilings normally make it to the
> ground.
>
>    Steve
>
>
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