This is the classic RB-47 encounter
I'm not familiar with the prominent UFO anecdotes, so I'm just going on what was reported. If I understand you correctly, then there's no inherent connection between the visual sightings and the electronic detection, and the signal need not be presumed to have come from an airborne source.
I'm a little embarrassed by the latter. Normally I would have asked, "What makes you think the signal came from an airborne source?" The original question included a presumption I did not catch, and which would greatly hinder a useful investigation.
Of course I have no idea what exact model of radar might have produced this signal. If it were very important to know, I suppose we could survey all the S-band radar products produced prior to 1957. Instead of asking whether this signal is really a specific S-band search radar, I would find it more interesting to ask why space aliens would employ a device so suspiciously similar to human-produced radars.
The presumed connection between some particular electronic surveillance and some other particular rash of visual sightings elsewhere is what really sinks an investigational ship. One of the cardinal rules is that you never presume that two observations are connected just because they occurred generally at the same time and are both subjectively remarkable. There isn't a connection until you prove there's one, and proof of a connection is not merely a hypothesis that draws them together.
This is important because many pseudoscientific arguments take the form:
A implies (X and Y)
where A is the hypothesis and X and Y are observations. The combination of X and Y (e.g., signal intelligence and visual sightings) is often considered so extraordinarily improbable that it can be caused only by a very improbable antecedent. And A is usually highly improbable, such as "Aliens visited the Earth."
But if X and Y are independent, then each can have arisen from a separate cause, as in
(B implies X) and (C implies Y).
The proposition (B and C) is usually far more probable than A.
The unwarranted augmentation of "coincident" observations does not generally help an investigation.
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