1956: The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects

By Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt

The following excerpts are taken from Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt’s book, The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects, first published in 1956.

Capt. Ruppelt was Chief of the Air Force’s “Project Blue Book” from 1951 to Sept. 1953, an operation of the “Air Technical Intelligence Center” (ATIC). On 21 May 1951, the United States Air Force established ATIC as a field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence.

Foreword

This is a book about unidentified flying objects – UFOs – flying saucers.” It is actually more than a book; it is a report because it is the first time that anyone, either military or civilian, has brought together in one document all the facts about this fascinating subject. With the exception of the style, this report is written exactly the way I would have written it had I been officially asked to do so while I was chief of the Air Force’s project for investigating UFO reports – Project Blue Book. . . .

It was only after considerable deliberation that I put this report together, because it had to be told accurately, with no holds barred. I finally decided to do it for two reasons. First, there is world-wide interest in flying saucers; people want to know the facts. But more often than not these facts have been obscured by secrecy and confusion, a situation that has led to wild speculation on one end of the scale and an almost dangerously blasé’ attitude on the other. It is only when all of the facts are laid out that a correct evaluation can be made.

Second, after spending two years investigating and analyzing UFO reports, after talking to the people who have seen UFO’s – industrialists, pilots, engineers, generals, and just the plain man-on-the-street, and after discussing the subject with many very capable scientists, I felt that I was in a position to be able to put together the complete account of the Air Force’s struggle with the flying saucer.

The report has been difficult to write because it involves something that doesn’t officially exist. It is well known that ever since the first flying saucer was reported in June 1947 the Air Force has “officially” [emphasis added] said that there is no proof that such a thing as an interplanetary spaceship exists. But what is not well known is that this conclusion is far from being unanimous among the military and their scientific advisers because of the one word, proof; so the UFO investigations continue.

The hassle over the word “proof” boils down to one question: What constitutes proof? Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof? . . .

Chapter One

Project Blue Book and the UFO Story

. . . The UFO story started soon after June 24, 1947, when newspapers all over the United States carried the first flying saucer report. The story told how nine very bright, disk shaped objects were seen by Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman, while he was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington. With journalistic license, reporters converted Arnold’s description of the individual motion of each of the objects like “a saucer skipping across water”- into “flying saucer,” a name for the objects themselves. In the eight years that have passed since Arnold’s memorable sighting, the term has become so common that it is now in Webster’s Dictionary and is known today in most languages in the world.

For a while after the Arnold sighting the term “flying saucer” was used to describe all disk shaped objects that were seen flashing through the sky at fantastic speeds. Before long, reports were made of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying saucers. Today the words are popularly applied to anything seen in the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object.

Thus a flying saucer can be a formation of lights, a single light, a sphere, or any other shape; and it can be any color. Performance wise, flying saucers can hover, go fast or slow, go high or low, turn 90 degree corners, or disappear almost instantaneously.

Obviously the term “flying saucer” is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.

Officially the military uses the term “flying saucer” on only two occasions. First in an explanatory sense, as when briefing people who are unacquainted with the term “UFO”: “UFO – you know- flying saucers.” And second in a derogatory sense, for purposes of ridicule, as when it is observed, “He says he saw a flying saucer.”

This second form of usage is the exclusive property of those persons who positively know that all UFO’s are nonsense. Fortunately, for the sake of good manners if for no other reason, the ranks of this knowing category are constantly dwindling. One by one these people drop out, starting with the instant they see their first UFO.

Some weeks after the first UFO was seen on June 24, 1947, the Air Force established a project to investigate and analyze all UFO reports. The attitude toward this task varied from a state of near panic, early in the life of the project, to that of complete contempt for anyone who even mentioned the words “flying saucer.”

This contemptuous attitude toward “flying saucer nuts” prevailed from mid 1949 to mid 1950. During that interval many of the people who were, or had been, associated with the project believed that the public was suffering from “war nerves.”

Early in 1950 the project, for all practical purposes, was closed out; at least it rated only minimum effort. Those in power now reasoned that if you didn’t mention the words “flying saucers” the people would forget them and the saucers would go away. But this reasoning was false, for instead of vanishing, the UFO reports got better and better.

Airline pilots, military pilots, generals, scientists, and dozens of other people were reporting UFO’s, and in greater detail than in reports of the past. Radars, which were being built for air defense, began to pick up some very unusual targets, thus lending technical corroboration to the unsubstantiated claims of human observers.

As a result of the continuing accumulation of more impressive UFO reports, official interest stirred. Early in 1951 verbal orders came down from Major General Charles P. Cabell, then Director of Intelligence for Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, to make a study reviewing the UFO situation for Air Force Headquarters. . . .

ATIC soon got the word to set up a completely new project for the investigation and analysis of UFO reports. Since I had made the review of past UFO reports I was the expert, and I got the new job. It was given the code name Project Blue Book, and I was in charge of it until late in 1953. During this time members of my staff and I traveled close to half a million miles. We investigated dozens of UFO reports, and read and analyzed several thousand more. These included every report ever received by the Air Force.

For the size of the task involved Project Blue Book was always under- staffed, even though I did have ten people on my regular staff plus many paid consultants representing every field of science. All of us on Project Blue Book had Top Secret security clearances so that security was no block in our investigations. “Behind this organization was a reporting network made up of every Air Force base intelligence officer and every Air Force radar station in the world, and the Air Defense Command’s Ground Observer Corps.” [Emphasis added] This reporting net sent Project Blue Book reports on every conceivable type of UFO, by every conceivable type of person. . . .

If all the UFO reports that the Air Force has received in the past eight years could be put in this “psychological quirk” category, Project Blue Book would never have been organized. It is another class of reports that causes the Air Force to remain interested in UFO’s. This class of reports are called “Unknowns.”

In determining the identity of a UFO, the project based its method of operation on a well known psychological premise. This premise is that to get a reaction from one of the senses there must be a stimulus. If you think you see a UFO you must have seen something. Pure hallucinations are extremely rare. . . .

On Project Blue Book our problem was to identify these stimuli. We had methods for checking the location, at any time, of every balloon launched anywhere in the United States. To a certain degree the same was true for airplanes. The UFO observer’s estimate of where the object was located in the sky helped us to identify astronomical bodies. Huge files of UFO characteristics, along with up-to-the-minute weather data, and advice from specialists, permitted us to identify such things as sun dogs, paper caught in updrafts, huge meteors, etc.

This determination of the stimuli that triggered UFO sightings, while not an insurmountable task, was a long, tedious process. The identification of known objects was routine, and caused no excitement. The excitement and serious interest occurred when we received UFO reports in which the observer was reliable and the stimuli could not be identified. These were the reports that challenged the project and caused me to spend hours briefing top U.S. officials. These were the reports that we called “Unknowns.”

Of the several thousand UFO reports that the Air Force has received since 1947, some 15 to 20 per cent fall into this category called unknown. [Emphasis added] This means that the observer was not affected by any determinable psychological quirks and that after exhaustive investigation the object that was reported could not be identified. To be classed as an unknown, a UFO report also had to be “good”, meaning that it had to come from a competent observer and had to contain a reasonable amount of data. . . .

There is a great deal of interest in UFO’s and the interest shows no signs of diminishing. Since the first flying saucer skipped across the sky in the summer of 1947, thousands of words on this subject have appeared in every newspaper and most magazines in the United States. During a six-month period in 1952 alone 148 of the nation’s leading newspapers carried a total of over 16,000 items about flying saucers.

During July 1952 reports of flying saucers sighted over Washington, D.C., cheated the Democratic National Convention out of precious head-line space.

The subject of flying saucers, which has generated more unscientific behavior than any other topic of modern times, has been debated at the meetings of professional scientific societies, causing scientific tempers to flare where unemotional objectivity is supposed to reign supreme.

Yet these thousands of written words and millions of spoken words – all attesting to the general interest – have generated more heat than light. Out of this avalanche of print and talk, the full, factual, true story of UFO’s has emerged only on rare occasions. “The general public, for its interest in UFO’s, has been paid off in misinformation.”

Many civilian groups must have sensed this, for while I was chief of Project Blue Book I had dozens of requests to speak on the subject of UFO’s. These civilian requests had to be turned down because of security regulations.

I did give many official briefings, however, behind closed doors, to certain groups associated with the government – all of them upon request.

The subject of UFO’s was added to a regular series of intelligence briefings given to students at the Air Force’s Command and Staff School, and to classes at the Air Force’s Intelligence School.

I gave briefings to the technical staff at the Atomic Energy Commission’s Los Alamos laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was built. The theater where this briefing took place wouldn’t hold all of the people who tried to get in, so the briefing was recorded and replayed many times. The same thing happened at AEC’s Sandia Base, near Albuquerque.

Many groups in the Pentagon and the Office of Naval Research requested UFO briefings. Civilian groups, made up of some of the nation’s top scientists and industrialists, and formed to study special military problems, worked in a UFO briefing. Top Air Force commanders were given periodic briefings.

Every briefing I gave was followed by a discussion that lasted anywhere from one to four hours.

In addition to these, Project Blue Book published a classified monthly report on UFO activity. Requests to be put on distribution for this report were so numerous that the distribution had to be restricted to major Air Force Command Headquarters.

This interest was not caused by any revolutionary information that was revealed in the briefings or reports. It stemmed only from a desire to get the facts about an interesting subject.

Many aspects of the UFO problem were covered in these official briefings. I would give details of many of the better reports we received, our conclusions about them, and how those conclusions were reached. If we had identified a UFO, the audience was told how the identification was made. If we concluded that the answer to a UFO sighting was “Unknown,” the audience learned why we were convinced it was unknown. . . .

The briefings included a description of how Project Blue Book operated and a survey of the results of the many studies that were made of the mass of UFO data we had collected. Also covered were our interviews with a dozen North American astronomers, the story of the unexplained green fireballs of New Mexico, and an account of how a committee of six distinguished United States scientists spent many hours attempting to answer the question, “Are the UFO’s from outer space?” [Emphasis added]

Unfortunately the general public was never able to hear these briefings. For a long time, contrary to present thinking in military circles, I have believed that the public also is entitled to know the details of what was covered in these briefings (less, of course, the few items pertaining to radar that were classified “Secret,” and the names of certain people). But withholding these will not alter the facts in any way.

A lot has already been written on the subject of UFO’s, but none of it presents the true, complete story. Previous forays into the UFO field have been based on inadequate information and have been warped to fit the personal biases of the individual writers. Well-meaning though these authors may be, the degree to which their books have misinformed the public is incalculable.

It is high time that we let the people know. . . .

Chapter Two

The Era of Confusion Begins

On September 23, 1947, the chief of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, one of the Air Force’s most highly specialized intelligence units, sent a letter to the Commanding General of the then Army Air Forces. The letter was in answer to the Commanding General’s verbal request to make a preliminary study of the reports of unidentified flying objects. The letter said that after a preliminary study of UFO reports, ATIC concluded that, to quote from the letter, “the reported phenomena were real.” [Emphasis added] The letter strongly urged that a permanent project be established at ATIC to investigate and analyze future UFO reports. It requested a priority for the project, a registered code name, and an over-all security classification. ATIC’s request was granted and Project Sign, the forerunner of Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, was launched. “It was given a 2A priority, lA being the highest priority an Air Force project could have.” [Emphasis added] With this the Air Force dipped into the most prolonged and widespread controversy it has ever, or may ever, encounter. The Air Force grabbed the proverbial bear by the tail and to this day it hasn’t been able to let loose.

The letter to the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces from the chief of ATIC had used the word “phenomena.” History has shown that this was not a too well chosen word. But on September 23, 1947, when the letter was written, ATIC’s intelligence specialists were confident that within a few months or a year they would have the answer to the question, “What are UFO’s?” The question, “Do UFO’s exist?” was never mentioned. The only problem that confronted the people at ATIC was, “Were the UFO’s of Russian or interplanetary origin?” [Emphasis added] Either case called for a serious, secrecy shrouded project. Only top people at ATIC were assigned to Project Sign.

Although a formal project for UFO investigation wasn’t set up until September 1947, the Air Force had been vitally interested in UFO reports ever since June 24, 1947, the day Kenneth Arnold made the original UFO report.

. . . By the end of July 1947 the UFO security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S.’s atomic arsenal. No one, outside of a few high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, knew what the people in the barbed wire enclosed Quonset huts that housed the Air Technical Intelligence Center were thinking or doing. [Emphasis added]

The memos and correspondence that Project Blue Book inherited from the old UFO projects told the story of the early flying saucer era. These memos and pieces of correspondence showed that the UFO situation was considered to be serious; in fact, very serious. [Emphasis added] The paper work of that period also indicated the confusion that surrounded the investigation; confusion almost to the point of panic. The brass wanted an answer, quickly, and people were taking off in all directions. Everyone’s theory was as good as the next and each person with any weight at ATIC was plugging and investigating his own theory. The ideas as to the origin of the UFO’s fell into two main categories, earthly and non earthly. In the earthly category the Russians led, with the U.S. Navy and their XF-5-U-l, the “Flying Flapjack,” pulling a not too close second. The desire to cover all leads was graphically pointed up to be a personal handwritten note I found in a file. It was from ATIC’s chief to a civilian intelligence specialist. It said, “Are you positive that the Navy junked the XF-5-U-1 project?” The non earthly category ran the gamut of theories, with space animals trailing interplanetary craft about the same distance the Navy was behind the Russians.

This confused speculating lasted only a few weeks. . . .

At first there was no co-ordinated effort to collect data on the UFO reports. Leads would come from radio reports or newspaper items. Military intelligence agencies outside of ATIC were hesitant to investigate on their own initiative because, as is so typical of the military, they lacked specific orders. When no orders were forthcoming, they took this to mean that the military had no interest in the UFO’s. But before long this placid attitude changed, and changed drastically. Classified orders came down to investigate all UFO sightings. Get every detail and send it direct to ATIC at Wright Field. The order carried no explanation as to why the information was wanted. This lack of an explanation and the fact that the information was to be sent directly to a high-powered intelligence group within Air Force Headquarters stirred the imagination of every potential cloak- and- dagger man in the military intelligence system. Intelligence people in the field who had previously been free with opinions now clammed up tight. . . .

Early statements to the press, which shaped the opinion of the public, [Emphasis added] didn’t reduce the confusion factor. While ATIC was grimly expending maximum effort in a serious study, “certain high placed officials” were officially chuckling at the mention of UFO’s. . . .

The “experts,” in their stories of saucer lore, have said that these brush offs of the UFO sightings were intentional smoke screens to cover the facts by adding confusion. This is not true; it was merely a lack of coordination. But had the Air Force tried to throw up a screen of confusion, they couldn’t have done a better job. . . .

As 1947 drew to a close, the Air Force’s Project Sign had outgrown its initial panic and had settled down to a routine operation. Every intelligence report dealing with the Germans’ World War II aeronautical research had been studied to find out if the Russians could have developed any of the late German designs into flying saucers. Aerodynamicists at ATIC and at Wright Field’s Aircraft Laboratory computed the maximum performance that could be expected from the German designs. The designers of the aircraft themselves were contacted. “Could the Russians develop a flying saucer from their designs?” The answer was, “No, there was no conceivable way any aircraft could perform that would match the reported maneuvers of the UFO’s.” The Air Force’s Aeromedical Laboratory concurred. If the aircraft could be built, the human body couldn’t stand the violent maneuvers that were reported. The aircraft structures people seconded this, no material known could stand the loads of the reported maneuvers and heat of the high speeds.

Still convinced that the UFO’s were real objects, the people at ATIC began to change their thinking. Those who were convinced that the UFO’s were of Soviet origin now began to eye outer space, not because there was any evidence that the UFO’s did come from outer space but because they were convinced that UFO’s existed and only some unknown race with a highly developed state of technology could build such vehicles. As far as the effect on the human body was concerned, why couldn’t these people, whoever they might be, stand these horrible maneuver forces? Why judge them by earthly standards? I found a memo to this effect was in the old Project Sign files.

Project Sign ended 1947 with a new problem. How do you collect interplanetary intelligence? During World War II the organization that was ATIC’s forerunner, the Air Materiel Command’s secret “T-2” had developed highly effective means of wringing out every possible bit of information about the technical aspects of enemy aircraft. ATIC knew these methods, but how could this be applied to spaceships? The problem was tackled with organized confusion.

If the confusion in the minds of Air Force people was organized the confusion in the minds of the public was not. Publicized statements regarding the UFO were conflicting.

A widely printed newspaper release, quoting an unnamed Air Force official in the Pentagon, said:

The “flying saucers” are one of three things:

1. Solar reflections on low hanging clouds.

2. Small meteors that break up, their crystals catching the rays of the sun.

3. Icing conditions could have formed large hailstones and they might have flattened out and glided.

A follow-up, which quoted several scientists, said in essence that the unnamed Air Force official was crazy. Nobody even heard of crystallized meteors, or huge, flat hailstones, and the solar reflection theory was absurd.

Life, Time, Newsweek, and many other news magazines carried articles about the UFO’s. Some were written with tongue in cheek, others were not. All the articles mentioned the Air Force’s mass hysterical induced hallucinations. But a Veterans’ Administration psychiatrist publicly pooh-poohed this. “Too many people are seeing things,” he said.

It was widely suggested that all the UFO’s were meteors. Two Chicago astronomers queered this. Dr. Gerard Kuiper, director of the University of Chicago observatory, was quoted as flatly saying the UFO’s couldn’t be meteors. “They are probably man-made,” he told the Associated Press. Dr. Oliver Lee, director of Northwestern University’s observatory, agreed with Dr. Kuiper and he threw in an additional confusion factor that had been in the back of many people’s minds. Maybe they were our own aircraft.

The government had been denying that UFO’s belonged to the U.S. from the first, but Dr. Vannevar Bush, the world-famous scientist, and Dr. Merle Tuve, inventor of the proximity fuse, added their weight. “Impossible,” they said. [Emphasis added]

All of this time unnamed Air Force officials were disclaiming serious interest in the UFO subject. Yet every time a newspaper reporter went out to interview a person who had seen a UFO, intelligence agents had already been flown in, gotten the detailed story complete with sketches of the UFO, and sped back to their base to send the report to Project Sign. Many people had supposedly been “warned” not to talk too much. [Emphasis added] The Air Force was mighty interested in hallucinations.

Thus 1947 ended with various sized question marks in the mind of the public. If you followed flying saucers closely the question mark was big, if you just noted the UFO story titles in the papers it was smaller, but it was there and it was growing. Probably none of the people, military or civilian, who had made the public statements were at all qualified to do so but they had done it, their comments had been printed, and their comments had been read. Their comments formed the question mark.

Chapter Three

The Classics

1948 was only one hour and twenty-five minutes old when a gentleman from Abilene, Texas, made the first UFO report of the year. What he saw, “a fan shaped glow” in the sky, was insignificant as far as UFO reports go, but it ushered in a year that was to bring feverish activity to Project Sign.

With the Soviets practically eliminated as a UFO source, the idea of interplanetary spaceships was becoming more popular. During 1948 the people in ATIC were openly discussing the possibility of interplanetary visitors without others tapping their heads and looking smug. During 1948 the novelty of UFO’s had worn off for the press and every John and Jane Doe who saw one didn’t make the front pages as in 1947. Editors were becoming hardened, only a few of the best reports got any space. Only the “Classics” rated headlines. “The Classics” were three historic reports that were the highlights of 1948. They are called “The Classics,” a name given them by the Project Blue Book staff, because: (1) they are classic examples of how the true facts of a UFO report can be twisted and warped by some writers to prove their point, (2) they are the most highly publicized reports of this early era of the UFO’s, and (3) they “proved” to ATIC’s intelligence specialists that UFO’s were real.

The apparent lack of interest in UFO reports by the press was not a true indication of the situation. I later found out, from talking to writers, that all during 1948 the interest in UFO’s was running high. The Air Force Press Desk in the Pentagon was continually being asked what progress was being made in the UFO investigation. The answer was, “Give us time. This job can’t be done in a week.” The press respected this and was giving them time. But every writer worth his salt has contacts, those “usually reliable sources” you read about, and these contacts were talking. All during 1948 contacts in the Pentagon were telling how UFO reports were rolling in at the rate of several per day and how ATIC UFO investigation teams were flying out of Dayton to investigate them. They were telling how another Air Force investigative organization had been called in to lighten ATIC’s load and allow ATIC to concentrate on the analysis of the reports. The writers knew this was true because they had crossed paths with these men whom they had mistakenly identified as FBI agents. [Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)] The FBI was never officially interested in UFO sightings. The writers’ contacts in the airline industry told about the UFO talk from V.P.’s down to the ramp boys. Dozens of good, solid, reliable, experienced airline pilots were seeing UFO’s. All of this led to one conclusion: whatever the Air Force had to say, when it was ready to talk, would be newsworthy. But the Air Force wasn’t ready to talk.

Project Sign personnel were just getting settled down to work after the New Year’s holiday when the “ghost rockets” came back to the Scandinavian countries of Europe. Air attaché’s in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway fired wires to ATIC telling about the reports. Wires went back asking for more information.

The “ghost rockets”, so tagged by the newspapers, had first been seen in the summer of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in the U.S. There were many different descriptions for the reported objects. They were usually seen in the hours of darkness and almost always traveling at extremely high speeds. They were shaped like a ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red, or yellow and sometimes made sounds. Like their American cousins, they were always so far away that no details could be seen. For no good reason, other than speculation and circulation, the newspapers had soon begun to refer authoritatively to these “ghost rockets” as guided missiles, and implied that they were from Russia. Peenemunde, the great German missile development center and birthplace of the V-2 and V-2 guided missiles, came in for its share of suspicion since it was held by the Russians. By the end of the summer of 1946 the reports were widespread, coming from Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey. In 1947, after no definite conclusions as to identity of the “rockets” had been established, the reports died out. Now in early January 1948 they broke out again. But Project Sign personnel were too busy to worry about European UFO reports, they were busy at home. A National Guard pilot had just been killed chasing a UFO.

On January 7 all of the late papers in the U.S. carried headlines similar to those in the Louisville Courier: “F-51 and Capt. Mantell Destroyed Chasing Flying Saucer.” This was Volume I of “The Classics,” the Mantell Incident. . . .

The people on Project Sign worked fast on the Mantell Incident. Contemplating a flood of queries from the press as soon as they heard about the crash, they realized that they had to get a quick answer. Venus had been the target of a chase by an Air Force F-51 several weeks before and there were similarities between this sighting and the Mantell Incident. So almost before the rescue crews had reached the crash, the word “Venus” went out. This satisfied the editors, and so it stood for about a year; Mantell had unfortunately been killed trying to reach the planet Venus.

To the press, the nonchalant, offhand manner with which the sighting was written off by the Air Force public relations officer showed great confidence in the conclusion, Venus, but behind the barbed wire fence that encircled ATIC the nonchalant attitude didn’t exist among the intelligence analysts. One man had already left for Louisville and the rest were doing some tall speculating. The story about the tower-to-air talk, “It looks metallic and it’s tremendous in size,” spread fast. Rumor had it that the tower had carried on a running conversation with the pilots and that there was more information than was so far known. Rumor also had it that this conversation had been recorded. Unfortunately neither of these rumors was true.

Over a period of several weeks the file on the Mantell Incident grew in size until it was the most thoroughly investigated sighting of that time, at least the file was the thickest.

About a year later the Air Force released its official report on the incident. To use a trite term, it was a masterpiece in the art of “weasel wording.” It said that the UFO might have been Venus or it could have been a balloon. Maybe two balloons. It probably was Venus except that this is doubtful because Venus was too dim to be seen in the afternoon. This jolted writers who had been following the UFO story. Only a few weeks before, The Saturday Evening Post had published a two-part story entitled “What You Can Believe About flying Saucers.” The story had official sanction and had quoted the Venus theory as a positive solution. To clear up the situation, several writers were allowed to interview a major in the Pentagon, who was the Air Force’s Pentagon “expert” on UFO’s. The major was asked directly about the conclusion of the Mantell Incident, and he flatly stated that it was Venus. The writers pointed out the official Air Force analysis. The major’s answer was, “They checked again and it was Venus.” He didn’t know who “they” were, where they had checked, or what they had checked, but it was Venus. The writers then asked, “If there was a later report they had made why wasn’t it used as a conclusion?” “Was it available?” The answer to the last question was “No,” and the lid snapped back down This interview gave the definite impression that the Air Force was unsuccessfully trying to cover up some very important information, using Venus as a front. Nothing excites a newspaper or magazine writer more than to think he has stumbled onto a big story and that someone is trying to cover it up. Many writers thought this after the interview with the major, and many still think it. You can’t really blame them either.

In early 1952 I got a telephone call on ATIC’s direct line to the Pentagon. It was a colonel in the Director of Intelligence’s office. The Office of Public Information had been getting a number of queries about all of the confusion over the Mantell Incident. What was the answer?

I dug out the file. In 1949 all of the original material on the incident had been microfilmed, but something had been spilled on the film. Many sections were so badly faded they were illegible. As I had to do with many of the older sightings that were now history, I collected what I could from the file, filling in the blanks by talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era. Many of these people were still around, “Red” Honnacker, George Towles, Al Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others. Most of them were civilians, the military had been transferred out by this time.

Some of the press clippings in the file mentioned the Pentagon major and his concrete proof of Venus. I couldn’t find this concrete proof in the file so I asked around about the major. The major, I found, was an officer in the Pentagon who had at one time written a short intelligence summary about UFO’s. He had never been stationed at ATIC, nor was he especially well versed on the UFO problem. When the word of the press conference regarding the Mantell Incident came down, a UFO expert was needed. The major, because of his short intelligence summary on UFO’s, became the “expert.” He had evidently conjured up “they” and “their later report” to support his Venus answer because the writers at the press conference had him in a corner. I looked farther.

Fortunately the man who had done the most extensive work on the incident, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, head of the Ohio State University Astronomy Department, could be contacted. I called Dr. Hynek and arranged to meet him the next day.

Dr. Hynek was one of the most impressive scientists I met while working on the UFO project, and I met a good many. He didn’t do two things that some of them did: give you the answer before he knew the question; or immediately begin to expound on his accomplishments in the field of science. I arrived at Ohio State just before lunch, and Dr. Hynek invited me to eat with him at the faculty club. He wanted to refer to some notes he had on the Mantell Incident and they were in his office, so we discussed UFO’s in general during lunch.

Back in his office he started to review the Mantell Incident. He had been responsible for the weasel worded report that the Air Force released in late 1949, and he apologized for it. Had he known that it was going to cause so much confusion, he said, he would have been more specific. He thought the incident was a dead issue. The reason that Venus had been such a strong suspect was that it was in almost the same spot in the sky as the UFO. Dr. Hynek referred to his notes and told me that at 3:00 P.M., Venus had been south southwest of Godman and 33 degrees above the southern horizon. At 3:00 P.M. the people in the tower estimated the UFO to be southwest of Godman and at an elevation of about 45 degrees. Allowing for human error in estimating directions and angles, this was close. I agreed. There was one big flaw in the theory, however. Venus wasn’t bright enough to be seen. [Emphasis added] He had computed the brilliance of the planet, and on the day in question it was only six times as bright as the surrounding sky. Then he explained what this meant. Six times may sound like a lot, but it isn’t. When you start looking for a pinpoint of light only six times as bright as the surrounding sky, it’s almost impossible to find it, even on a clear day.

Dr. Hynek said that he didn’t think that the UFO was Venus.

I later found out that although it was a relatively clear day there was considerable haze.

I asked him about some of the other possibilities. He repeated the balloon, canopy reflection, and sundog theories but he refused to comment on them since, as he said, he was an astrophysicist and would care to comment only on the astrophysical aspects of the sightings.

I drove back to Dayton convinced that the UFO wasn’t Venus. Dr. Hynek had said Venus would have been a pinpoint of light. The people in the tower had been positive of their descriptions, their statements brought that out. They couldn’t agree on a description, they called the UFO “a parachute, an ice cream cone tipped with red,” “round and white,” “huge and silver or metallic,” “a small white object,” “one fourth the size of the full moon,” but all the descriptions plainly indicated a large object. None of the descriptions could even vaguely be called a pinpoint of light.

This aspect of a definite shape seemed to eliminate the sundog theory too. Sundogs, or perihelia, as they are technically known, are caused by ice particles reflecting a diffused light. This would not give a sharp outline. I also recalled two instances where Air Force pilots had chased sundogs. In both instances when the aircraft began to climb, the sundog disappeared. This was because the angle of reflection changed as the airplane climbed several thousand feet. These sundog-caused UFO’s also had fuzzy edges. . . .

During January and February of 1948 the reports of “ghost rockets” continued to come from air attaches in foreign countries near the Baltic Sea. People in North Jutland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany reported “balls of fire traveling slowly across the sky.” The reports were very sketchy and incomplete, most of them accounts from newspapers. In a few days the UFO’s were being seen all over Europe and South America. Foreign reports hit a peak in the latter part of February and U.S. newspapers began to pick up the stories.

The Swedish Defense Staff supposedly conducted a comprehensive study of the incidents and concluded that they were all explainable in terms of astronomical phenomena. Since this was UFO history, I made several attempts to get some detailed and official information on this report and the sightings, but I was never successful.

The ghost rockets left in March, as mysteriously as they had arrived.

All during the spring of 1948 good reports continued to come in. Some were just run-of-the-mill but a large percentage of them were good, coming from people whose reliability couldn’t be questioned. For example, three scientists reported that for thirty seconds they had watched a round object streak across the sky in a highly erratic flight path near the Army’s secret White Sands Proving Ground. And on May 28 the crew of an Air Force C-47 had three UFO’s barrel in from “twelve o’clock high” to buzz their transport.

On July 21 a curious report was received from the Netherlands, The day before several persons reported seeing a UFO through high broken clouds over The Hague. The object was rocket shaped, with two rows of windows along the side. It was a poor report, very sketchy and incomplete, and it probably would have been forgotten except that four nights later a similar UFO almost collided with an Eastern Airlines DC-3. This near collision is Volume II of “The Classics. . . .”

In intelligence, if you have something to say about some vital problem you write a report that is known as an “Estimate of the Situation.” A few days after the DC-3 was buzzed, the people at ATIC decided that the time had arrived to make an Estimate of the Situation. The situation was the UFO’s; the estimate was that they were interplanetary! [Emphasis added]

It was a rather thick document with a black cover and it was printed on legal sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words TOP SECRET.

It contained the Air Force’s analysis of many of the incidents I have told you about plus many similar ones. All of them had come from scientists, pilots, and other equally credible observers, and each one was an unknown.

The document pointed out that the reports hadn’t actually started with the Arnold Incident. Belated reports from a weather observer in Richmond, Virginia, who observed a “silver disk” through his theodolite telescope; an F47 pilot and three pilots in his formation who saw a “silver flying wing,” and the English “ghost airplanes” that had been picked up on radar early in 1947 proved this point. Although reports on them were not received until after the Arnold sighting, these incidents all had taken place earlier.

When the estimate was completed, typed, and approved, it started up through channels to higher command echelons. It drew considerable comment but no one stopped it on its way up.

A matter of days after the Estimate of the Situation was signed, sealed, and sent on its way, the third big sighting of 1948, Volume III of “The Classics,” took place. The date was October 1, and the place was Fargo, North Dakota; it was the famous Gorman Incident, in which a pilot fought a “duel of death” with a UFO.

The pilot was George F. Gorman, a twenty-five-year-old second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard. . . .

“I had the distinct impression that its maneuvers were controlled by thought or reason,” Gorman later told ATIC investigators.

Four other observers at Fargo partially corroborated his story, an oculist, Dr. A. D. Cannon, the Cub’s pilot, and his passenger, Einar Neilson. They saw a light “moving fast,” but did not witness all the maneuvers that Gorman reported. Two CAA employees on the ground saw a light move over the field once.

Project Sign investigators rushed to Fargo. They had wired ahead to ground the plane. They wanted to check it over before it flew again. When they arrived, only a matter of hours after the incident, they went over the airplane, from the prop spinner to the rudder trim tab, with a Geiger counter. A chart in the official report shows where every Geiger counter reading was taken. For comparison they took readings on a similar airplane that hadn’t been flown for several days. Gorman’s airplane was more radioactive. They rushed around, got sworn statements from the tower operators and oculist, and flew back to Dayton.

In the file on the Gorman Incident I found an old memo reporting the meeting that was held upon the ATIC team’s return from Fargo. The memo concluded that some weird things were taking place.

The historians of the UFO agree. Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major and a professional writer, author of The Flying Saucers Are Real and Flying Saucers from Outer Space, needles the Air Force about the Gorman Incident, pointing out how, after feebly hinting that the light could have been a lighted weather balloon, they dropped it like a hot UFO. Some person by the name of Wilkins, in an equally authoritative book, says that the Gorman Incident “stumped” the Air Force. Other assorted historians point out that normally the UFO’s are peaceful, Gorman and Mantell just got too inquisitive, “they” just weren’t ready to be observed closely. If the Air Force hadn’t slapped down the security lid, these writers might not have reached this conclusion. There have been other and more lurid “duels of death.”

On June 21, 1952, at 10:58 P.M., a Ground Observer Corps spotter reported that a slow moving craft was nearing the AEC’s Oak Ridge Laboratory, an area so secret that it is prohibited to aircraft. The spotter called the light into his filter center and the filter center relayed the message to the ground control intercept radar. They had a target. But before they could do more than confirm the GOC spotter’s report, the target faded from the radarscope.

An F-47 aircraft on combat air patrol in the area was vectored in visually, spotted a light, and closed on it. They “fought” from 10,000 to 27,000 feet, and several times the object made what seemed to be ramming attacks. The light was described as white, 6 to 8 inches in diameter, and blinking until it put on power. The pilot could see no silhouette around the light. The similarity to the Fargo case was striking.

On the night of December 10, 1952, near another atomic installation, the Hanford plant in Washington, the pilot and radar observer of a patrolling F-94 spotted a light while flying at 26,000 feet. The crew called their ground control station and were told that no planes were known to be in the area. They closed on the object and saw a large, round, white “thing” with a dim reddish light coming from two “windows.” They lost visual contact, but got a radar lock-on. They reported that when they attempted to close on it again it would reverse direction and dive away. Several times the plane altered course itself because collision seemed imminent.

In each of these instances . . . the sources of the stories were trained airmen with excellent reputations. They were sincerely baffled by what they had seen. They had no conceivable motive for falsifying or “dressing up” their reports. . . .

While the people on Project Sign were pondering over Lieutenant Gorman’s dogfight with the UFO – at the time they weren’t even considering the balloon angle – the Top Secret Estimate of the Situation was working its way up into the higher echelons of the Air Force. It got to the late General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, then Chief of Staff, before it was batted back down. The general wouldn’t buy interplanetary vehicles. The report lacked proof. A group from ATIC went to the Pentagon to bolster their position but had no luck, the Chief of Staff just couldn’t be convinced.

The estimate died a quick death. Some months later it was completely declassified and relegated to the incinerator. A few copies, one of which I saw, were kept as mementos of the golden days of the UFO’s.

The top Air Force command’s refusal to buy the interplanetary theory didn’t have any immediate effect upon the morale of Project Sign because the reports were getting better.

A belated report that is more of a collectors’ item than a good UFO sighting came into ATIC in the fall of 1948. It was from Moscow. Someone, I could never find out exactly who, reported a huge “smudge like” object in the sky.

Then radar came into the picture. For months the anti saucer factions had been pointing their fingers at the lack of radar reports, saying, “If they exist, why don’t they show up on radarscopes?” When they showed up on radarscopes, the UFO won some converts.

On October 15 an F-61, a World War II “Black Widow” night fighter was on patrol over Japan when it picked up an unidentified target on its radar. The target was flying between 5,000 and 6,000 feet and traveling about 200 miles per hour. When the F-61 tried to intercept it would get to within 12,000 feet of the UFO only to have it accelerate to an estimated 1,200 miles per hour, leaving the F-61 far behind before slowing down again. The F-61 crew made six attempts to close on the UFO. On one pass, the crew said, they did get close enough to see its silhouette. It was 20 to 30 feet long and looked “like a rifle bullet.”

Toward the end of November a wire came into Project Sign from Germany. It was the first report where a UFO was seen and simultaneously picked up on radar. This type of report, the first of many to come, is one of the better types of UFO reports. The wire said:

At 2200 hours, local time, 23 November 1948, Capt. saw an object in the air directly east of this base. It was at an unknown altitude. It looked like a reddish star and was moving in a southerly direction across Munich, turning slightly to the southwest then the southeast. The speed could have been between 200 to 600 mph, the actual speed could not be estimated, not knowing the height. Capt. called base operations and they called the radar station. Radar reported that they had seen nothing on their scope but would check again. Radar then called operations to report that they did have a target at 27,000 feet, some 30 miles south of Munich, traveling at 900 mph. Capt. reported that the object that he saw was now in that area. A few minutes later radar called again to say that the target had climbed to 50,000 feet, and was circling 40 miles south of Munich.

Capt. – is an experienced pilot now flying F-80’s and is considered to be completely reliable. The sighting was verified by Capt. , also an F-80 pilot.

The possibility that this was a balloon was checked but the answer from Air Weather Service was “not a balloon.” No aircraft were in the area. Nothing we know of, except possibly experimental aircraft, which are not in Germany, can climb 23,000 feet in a matter of minutes and travel 900 miles per hour.

By the end of 1948, Project Sign had received several hundred UFO reports. Of these, 167 had been saved as good reports. About three dozen were “Unknown.” Even though the UFO reports were getting better and more numerous, the enthusiasm over the interplanetary idea was cooling off. The same people who had fought to go to Godman AFB to talk to Colonel Hix and his UFO observers in January now had to be prodded when a sighting needed investigating. More and more work was being pushed off onto the other investigative organization that was helping ATIC. The kickback on the Top Secret Estimate of the Situation was beginning to dampen a lot of enthusiasms. It was definitely a bear market for UFO’s.

A bull market was on the way, however. Early 1949 was to bring “little lights” and green fireballs.

The “little lights” were UFO’s, but the green fireballs were real.

The following quotes have been excerpted from his 1956 book
‘The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects’

The UFO story started soon after

June 24, 1947, when newspapers all over the United States carried the first flying saucer report. The story told how nine very bright, disk shaped objects were seen by Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman, while he was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington. With journalistic license, reporters converted Arnold’s description of the individual motion of each of the objects like “a saucer skipping across water”- into “flying saucer,” a name for the objects themselves. In the eight years that have passed since Arnold’s memorable sighting, the term has become so common that it is now in Webster’s Dictionary and is known today in most languages in the world.

For a while after the Arnold sighting the term “flying saucer” was used to describe all disk shaped objects that were seen flashing through the sky at fantastic speeds. Before long, reports were made of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying saucers. Todaythe words are popularly applied to anything seen in the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object…

I had been back in the Air Force about six months when this happened. During the Second World War I had been a B-29 bombardier and radar operator. I went to India, China, and later to the Pacific, with the original B-29 wing. I flew two DCF’s, and some Air Medals’ worth of missions, got out of the Air Force after the war, and went back to college. To keep my reserve status while I was in school, I flew as a navigator in an Air Force Reserve Troop Carrier Wing.

Not long after I received my degree in aeronautical engineering, the Korean War started, and I went back on active duty. I was assigned to the AirTechnicalIntelligenceCenter at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio. ATIC is responsible for keeping track of all foreign aircraft and guided missiles. ATIC also had the UFO project.

I had just finished organizing a new intelligence group when General Cabell’s order to review past UFO reports came down. Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten, who received the order at ATIC, called me in and wanted to know if I’d take the job of making the review. I accepted.

When the review was finished, I went to the Pentagon and presented my findings to Major General Samford, who had replaced General Cabell as Director of Intelligence.

For the size of the task involved Project Blue Book was always under-staffed, even though I did have ten people on my regular staff plus many paid consultants representing every field of science. All of us on Project Blue Book had Top Secret security clearances so that security was no block in our investigations. Behind this organization was a reporting network made up of every Air Force base intelligence officer and every Air Force radar station in the world, and the Air Defense Command’s Ground Observer Corps. This reporting net sent Project Blue Book reports on every conceivable type of UFO, by every conceivable type of person.

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By the end of July 1947 the UFO security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S.’s atomic arsenal. No one, outside of a few high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, knew what the people in the barbed wire enclosed Quonset huts that housed the Air Technical Intelligence Center [ATIC] were thinking or doing.

The memos and correspondence that Project Blue Book inherited from the old UFO projects told the story of the early flying saucer era. These memos and pieces of correspondence showed that the UFO situation was considered to be serious; in fact, very serious. The paper work of that period also indicated the confusion that surrounded the investigation; confusion almost to the point of panic. The brass wanted an answer, quickly, and people were taking off in all directions. Everyone’s theory was as good as the next and each person with any weight at ATIC was plugging and investigating his own theory. The ideas as to the origin of the UFO’s fell into two main categories, earthly and non earthly. In the earthly category the Russians led, with the U.S. Navy and their XF-5-U-l, the “Flying Flapjack,” pulling a not too close second. The desire to cover all leads was graphically pointed up to be a personal handwritten note I found in a file. It was from ATIC’s chief to a civilian intelligence specialist. It said, “Are you positive that the Navy junked the XF-5-U-1 project?” The non earthly category ran the gamut of theories, with space animals trailing interplanetary craft about the same distance the Navy was behind the Russians.

This confused speculating lasted only a few weeks. Then the investigation narrowed down to the Soviets and took off on a much more methodical course of action…

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All of this time unnamed Air Force officials were disclaiming serious interest in the UFO subject. Yet every time a newspaper reporter went out to interview a person who had seen a UFO, intelligence agents had already been flown in, gotten the detailed story complete with sketches of the UFO, and sped back to their base to send the report to Project Sign. Many people had supposedly been “warned” not to talk too much. The Air Force was mighty interested in hallucinations…

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The apparent lack of interest in UFO reports by the press was not a true indication of the situation… All during 1948 contacts in the Pentagon were telling how UFO reports were rolling in at the rate of several per day and how ATIC UFO investigation teams were flying out of Dayton to investigate them. They were telling how another Air Force investigative organization had been called in to lighten ATIC’s load and allow ATIC to concentrate on the analysis of the reports. The writers knew this was true because they had crossed paths with these men whom they had mistakenly identified as FBI agents. The FBI was never officially interested in UFO sightings. The writers’ contacts in the airline industry told about the UFO talk from V.P.’s down to the ramp boys. Dozens of good, solid, reliable, experienced airline pilots were seeing UFO’s. All of this led to one conclusion: whatever the Air Force had to say, when it was ready to talk, would be newsworthy. But the Air Force wasn’t ready to talk…

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The “ghost rockets,” so tagged by the newspapers, had first been seen in the summer of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in the U.S. There were many different descriptions for the reported objects. They were usually seen in the hours of darkness and almost always traveling at extremely high speeds. They were shaped like a ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red, or yellow and sometimes made sounds. Like their American cousins, they were always so far away that no details could be seen. For no good reason, other than speculation and circulation, the newspapers had soon begun to refer authoritatively to these “ghost rockets” as guided missiles, and implied that they were from Russia. Peenem ünde, the great German missile development center and birthplace of the V-2 and V-2 guided missiles, came in for its share of suspicion since it was held by the Russians. By the end of the summer of 1946 the reports were widespread, coming from Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey. In 1947, after no definite conclusions as to identity of the “rockets” had been established, the reports died out. Now in early January 1948 they broke out again. But Project Sign personnel were too busy to worry about European UFO reports, they were busy at home. A National Guard pilot had just been killed chasing a UFO [Mantell incident – some of his last words were “It looks metallic and it’s tremendous in size”. Could easily have crashed due to a lack of oxygen] …

See also The Case for UFO Reality

The ghost rockets left in March, as mysteriously as they had arrived…

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Then one day I was at a meeting in Los Angeles with several other officers from ATIC, and was introduced to Dr. Joseph Kaplan. When he found we were from ATIC, his first question was, “What ever happened to the green fireballs?” None of us had ever heard of them, so he quickly gave us the story. He and I ended up discussing green fireballs. He mentioned Dr. La Paz and his opinion that the green fireballs might be man-made, and although he respected La Paz’s professional ability, he just wasn’t convinced. But he did strongly urge me to get in touch with Dr. La Paz and hear his side of the story.

When I returned to ATIC I spent several days digging into our collection of green fireball reports. All of these reports covered a period from early December 1948 to 1949. As far as Blue Book’s files were concerned, there hadn’t been a green fireball report for a year and a half…

It was six or eight months later before the subject of green fireballs came up again. I was eating lunch with a group of people at the AEC’s Los Alamos Laboratory when one of the group mentioned the mysterious kelly-green balls of fire. The strictly unofficial bull-session-type discussion that followed took up the entire lunch hour and several hours of the afternoon. It was an interesting discussion because these people, all scientists and technicians from the lab, had a few educated guesses as to what they might be. All of them had seen a green fireball, some of them had seen several.

One of the men, a private pilot, had encountered a fireball one night while he was flying his Navion north of Santa Fe and he had a vivid way of explainihg what he’d seen. “Take a soft ball and paint it with some kind of fluorescent paint that will glow a bright green in the dark,” I remember his saying, “then have someone take the ball out about 100 feet in front of you and about 10 feet above you. Have him throw the ball right at your face, as hard as he can throw it. That’s what a green fireball looks like.”

The speculation about what the green fireballs were ran through the usual spectrum of answers, a new type of natural phenomenon, a secret U.S. development, and psychologically enlarged meteors [they also discussed the extraterrestrial possibility]… From the conversations, I assumed that these people didn’t think the green fireballs were any kind of a natural phenomenon. Not exactly, they said, but so far the evidence that said they were a natural phenomenon was vastly outweighed by the evidence that said they weren’t.

During the kidney jolting trip down the valley from Los Alamos to Albuquerque in one of the CARGO Airlines’ Bonanzas, I decided that I’d stay over an extra day and talk to Dr. La Paz.

He knew every detail there was to know about the green fireballs. He confirmed my findings, that the genuine green fireballs were no longer being seen. He said that he’d received hundreds of reports, especially after he’d written several articles about the mysterious fireballs, but that all of the reported objects were just greenish colored, common, everyday meteors.

Dr. La Paz said that some people, including Dr. Joseph Kaplan and Dr. Edward Teller, thought that the green fireballs were natural meteors. He didn’t think so, however, for several reasons. First the color was so much different. To illustrate his point, Dr. La Paz opened his desk drawer and took out a well worn chart of the color spectrum… everyone had picked this one color. The pale green, he explained, was the color reported in the cases of documented green meteors.

Then there were other points of dissimilarity between a meteor and the green fireballs. The trajectory of the fireballs was too flat… Then there was the size. Almost always such descriptive words as “terrifying,” “as big as the moon,” and “blinding” had been used to describe the fireballs. Meteors just aren’t this big and bright. A meteorite is accompanied by sound and shock waves that break windows and stampede cattle. Yet in every case of a green fireball sighting the observers reported that they did not hear any sound. But the biggest mystery of all was the fact that no particles of a green fireball had ever been found [Dr. La Paz had tried. He only succeeded when investigating regular meteors or astroids]…

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New people took over Project Grudge [started in February 1949]. ATIC’s top intelligence specialists who had been so eager to work on Project Sign were no longer working on Project Grudge. Some of them had drastically and hurriedly changed their minds about UFO’s when they thought that the Pentagon was no longer sympathetic to the UFO cause. They were now directing their talents toward more socially acceptable projects. Other charter members of Project Sign had been “purged.” These were the people who had refused to change their original opinions about UFO’s.

With the new name and the new personnel came the new objective, get rid of the UFO’s. It was never specified this way in writing but it didn’t take much effort to see that this was the goal of Project Grudge. This unwritten objective was reflected in every memo, report, and directive…

To one who is intimately familiar with UFO history it is clear that Project Grudge had a two phase program of UFO annihilation. The first phase consisted of explaining every UFO report. The second phase was to tell the public how the Air Force had solved all the sightings. This, Project Grudge reasoned, would put an end to UFO reports.

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… Before long, however, the right man came along. He was Sidney Shallet, a writer for The Saturday Evening Post. He seemed to have the prerequisites that were desired, so his visit to ATIC was cleared through the Pentagon. Harry Haberer, a crack Air Force public relations man, was assigned the job of seeing that Shallet got his story. I have heard many times, from both military personnel and civilians, that the Air Force told Shallet exactly what to say in his article – play down the UFO’s – don’t write anything that even hints that there might be something foreign in our skies. I don’t believe that this is the case. I think that he just wrote the UFO story as it was told to him, told to him by Project Grudge.

Shallet’s article, which appeared in two parts in the April 30 and May 7, 1949, issues of The Saturday Evening Post, is important in the history of the UFO and in understanding the UFO problem because it had considerable effect on public opinion. Many people had, with varying degrees of interest, been wondering about the UFO’s for over a year and a half. Very few had any definite opinions one way or the other. The feeling seemed to be that the Air Force is working on the problem and when they get the answer we’ll know. There had been a few brief, ambiguous press releases from the Air Force but these meant nothing. Consequently when Shallet’s article appeared in the Post it was widely read. It contained facts, and the facts had come from Air Force Intelligence. This was the Air Force officially reporting on UFO’s for the first time.

The article was typical of the many flying saucer stories that were to follow in the later years of UFO history, all written from material obtained from the Air Force. Shallet’s article casually admitted that a few UFO sightings couldn’t be explained, but the reader didn’t have much chance to think about this fact because 99 per cent of the story was devoted to the anti saucer side of the problem. It was the typical negative approach. I know that the negative approach is typical of the way that material is handed out by the Air Force because I was continually being told to “tell them about the sighting reports we’ve solved – don’t mention the unknowns.” I was never ordered to tell this, but it was a strong suggestion and in the military when higher headquarters suggests, you do.

Shallet’s article started out by psychologically conditioning the reader by using such phrases as “the great flying saucer scare,” “rich, full blown screwiness,” “fearsome freaks,” and so forth. By the time the reader gets to the meat of the article he feels like a rich, full blown jerk for ever even thinking about UFO’s.

He pointed out how the “furor” about UFO reports got so great that the Air Force was “forced” to investigate the reports reluctantly. He didn’t mention that two months after the first UFO report ATIC had asked for Project Sign since they believed that UFO’s did exist. Nor did it mention the once Top Secret Estimate of the Situation that also concluded that UFO’s were real. In no way did the article reflect the excitement and anxiety of the age of Project Sign when secret conferences preceded and followed every trip to investigate a UFO report. This was the Air Force being “forced” into reluctantly investigating the UFO reports…

Many famous names were quoted. The late General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, had seen a flying saucer but it was just a reflection on the windshield of his B-17. General Lauris Norstad’s UFO was a reflection of a star on a cloud, and General Curtis E. Le May found out that one out of six UFO’s was a balloon; Colonel McCoy, then chief of ATIC, had seen lots of UFO’s. All were reflections from distant airplanes. In other words, nobody who is anybody in the Air Force believes in flying saucers.

Figures in the top echelons of the military had spoken.

A few hoaxes and crackpot reports rounded out Mr. Shallet’s article.

The reaction to the article wasn’t what the Air Force and ATIC expected. They had thought that the public would read the article and toss it, and all thoughts of UFO’s, into the trash can. But they didn’t. Within a few days the frequency of UFO reports hit an all-time high. People, both military and civilian, evidently didn’t much care what Generals Vandenberg, Norstad, Le May, or Colonel McCoy thought; they didn’t believe what they were seeing were hallucinations, reflections, or balloons. What they were seeing were UFO’s, whatever UFO’s might be.

The one thing that Shallet’s article accomplished was to plant a seed of doubt in many people’s minds.

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One afternoon in February 1953 I had an opportunity to further my study of UFO sightings by airline pilots. I had been out at Air Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs and was flying back East on a United Airlines DC-6. There weren’t many passengers on the airplane that afternoon but, as usual, the captain came strolling back through the cabin to chat. When he got to me he sat down in the next seat. We talked a few minutes; then I asked him what he knew about flying saucers. He sort of laughed and said that a dozen people a week asked that question, but when I told him who I was and why I was interested, his attitude changed. He said that he’d never seen a UFO but he knew a lot of pilots on United who had. One man, he told me, had seen one several years ago. He’d reported it but he had been sloughed off like the rest. But he was so convinced that he’d seen something unusual that he’d gone out and bought a Leica camera with a 105 mm. telephoto lens, learned how to use it, and now he carried it religiously during his flights.

The UFO reports had never stopped coming in since they had first started in June 1947. There was some correlation between publicity and the number of sightings, but it was not an established fact that reports came in only when the press was playing up UFO’s. Just within the past few months the number of good reports had increased sharply and there had been no publicity.

There was a lull in the conversation, then the captain said, “Do you really want to get an opinion about flying saucers?”

I said I did.

“O.K.,” I remember his saying, “how much of a layover do you have in Chicago?”

I had about two hours.

“All right, as soon as we get to Chicago I’ll meet you at Caffarello’s, across the street from the terminal building. I’ll see who else is in and I’ll bring them along.”

I thanked him and he went back up front.

I waited around the bar at Caffarello’s for an hour. I’d just about decided that he wasn’t going to make it and that I’d better get back to catch my flight to Dayton when he and three other pilots came in. We got a big booth in the coffee shop because he’d called three more off duty pilots who lived in Chicago and they were coming over too. I don’t remember any of the men’s names because I didn’t make any attempt to. This was just an informal bull session and not an official interrogation, but I really got the scoop on what airline pilots think about UFO’s.

First of all they didn’t pull any punches about what they thought about the Air Force and its investigation of UFO reports. One of the men got right down to the point: “If I saw a flying saucer flying wing tip formation with me and could see little men waving – even if my whole load of passengers saw it – I wouldn’t report it to the Air Force.” Another man cut in, “Remember the thing Jack Adams said he saw down by Memphis?” I said I did.

“He reported that to the Air Force and some red-hot character met him in Memphis on his next trip. He talked to Adams a few minutes and then told him that he’d seen a meteor. Adams felt like a fool. Hell, I know Jack Adams well and he’s the most conservative guy I know. If he said he saw something with glowing portholes, he saw something with glowing portholes – and it wasn’t a meteor.”

Even though I didn’t remember the pilots’ names I’ll never forget their comments. They didn’t like the way the Air Force had handled UFO reports and I was the Air Force’s “Mr. Flying Saucer.” As quickly as one of the pilots would set me up and bat me down, the next one grabbed me off the floor and took his turn. But I couldn’t complain too much; I’d asked for it. I think that this group of seven pilots pretty much represented the feelings of a lot of the airline pilots. They weren’t wide-eyed space fans, but they and their fellow pilots had seen something and whatever they’d seen weren’t hallucinations, mass hysteria, balloons, or meteors.

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By May 1950 the flying saucer business had hit a new all-time peak. The Air Force didn’t take any side, they just shrugged. There was no attempt to investigate and explain the various sightings. Maybe this was because someone was afraid the answer would be “Unknown.” Or maybe it was because a few key officers thought that the eagles or stars on their shoulders made them leaders of all men. If they didn’t believe in flying saucers and said so, it would be like calming the stormy Sea of Galilee. “It’s all a bunch of damned nonsense,” an Air Force colonel who was controlling the UFO investigation said. “There’s no such thing as a flying saucer.” He went on to say that all people who saw flying saucers were jokers, crackpots, or publicity hounds. Then he gave the airline pilots who’d been reporting UFO’s a reprieve. “They were just fatigued,” he said. “What they thought were spaceships were windshield reflections.”…

But the U.S. public evidently had more faith in the “crackpot” scientists who were spending millions of the public’s dollars at the White Sands Proving Grounds, in the “publicity mad” military pilots, and the “tired, old” airline pilots, because in a nationwide poll it was found that only 6 per cent of the country’s 150,697,361 people agreed with the colonel and said, “There aren’t such things.”

Ninety-four per cent had different ideas.

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On September 8, 1950, the UFO’s were back in the news. On that day it was revealed, via a book entitled Behind the Flying Saucers that government scientists had recovered and analyzed three different models of flying saucers. And they were fantastic – just like the book. They were made of an unknown super-duper metal and they were manned by little blue uniformed men who ate concentrated food and drank heavy water. The author of the book, Frank Scully, had gotten the story directly from a millionaire oilman, Silas Newton. Newton had in turn heard the story from an employee of his, a mysterious “Dr. Gee,” one of the government scientists who had helped analyze the crashed saucers.

The story made news, Newton and “Dr. Gee” made fame, and Scully made money.

A little over two years later Newton and the man who was reportedly the mysterious “Dr. Gee” again made the news. The Denver district attorney’s office had looked into the pair’s oil business and found that the pockets they were trying to tap didn’t contain oil. According to the December 6, 1952, issue of the Saturday Review, the D.A. had charged the two men with a $50,000 con game. One of their $800,000 electronic devices for their oil explorations turned out to be a $4.00 piece of war surplus junk.

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Ever since July 4, 1947, ten days after the first flying saucer report, airline pilots had been reporting that they had seen UFO’s. But the reports weren’t frequent – maybe one every few months. In the spring of 1950 this changed, however, and the airline pilots began to make more and more reports – good reports. The reports went to ATIC but they didn’t receive much attention. In a few instances there was a semblance of an investigation but it was halfhearted. The reports reached the newspapers too, and here they received a great deal more attention. The reports were investigated, and the stories checked and rechecked. When airline crews began to turn in one UFO report after another, it was difficult to believe the old “hoax, hallucination, and misidentification of known objects” routine. In April, May, and June of 1950 there were over thirty five good reports from airline crews.

UFO’s we’re seen more frequently around areas vital to the defense of the United States. The Los Alamos-Albuquerque area, Oak Ridge, and White Sands Proving Ground rated high. Port areas, Strategic Air Command bases, and industrial areas ranked next. UFO’s had been reported from every state in the Union and from every foreign country. The U.S. did not have a monopoly.

The frequency of the UFO reports was interesting. Every July there was a sudden increase in the number of reports and July was always the peak month of the year. Just before Christmas there was usually a minor peak.

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The European Flap started in the summer of 1953, when reports began to pop up in England and France… Netherlands… Sweden… Norway… Italy… Romania… Russia… The flap continued into 1954.

During 1954 and the early part of 1955 my friends in Europe tried to keep me up-to-date on all of the better reports, but this soon approached a full time job. Airline pilots saw them, radar picked them up, and military pilots chased them. The press took sides, and the controversy that had plagued the U.S. since 1947 bloomed forth in all its confusion.

Halfway around the world, in Australia, the UFO’s were busy too…

In early 1955 the flap began to die down about as rapidly as it had flared up, but it had left its mark – many more believers. Even the highly respected British aviation magazine, Aeroplane, had something to say. One of the editors took a long, hard look at the over-all UFO picture and concluded, “Really, old chaps- I don’t know.”

Probably the most unique part of the whole European Flap was the fact that the Iron Curtain countries were having their own private flap. The first indications came in October 1954, when Rumanian newspapers blamed the United States for launching a drive to induce a “flying saucer psychosis” in their country. The next month the Hungarian Government hauled an “expert” up in front of the microphone so that he could explain to the populace that UFO’s don’t really exist because, “all ‘flying saucer’ reports originate in the bourgeois countries, where they are invented by the capitalist warmongers with a view to drawing the people’s attention away from their economic difficulties.”

Next the U.S.S.R. itself took up the cry along the same lines when the voice of the Soviet Army, the newspaper Red Star, denounced the UFO’s as, you guessed it, capitalist propaganda.

In 1955 the UFO’s were still there because the day before the all important May Day celebration, a day when the Soviet radio and TV are normally crammed with programs plugging the glory of Mother Russia to get the peasants in the mood for the next day, a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences had to get on the air to calm the people’s fears. He left out Wall Street and Dulles this time – UFO’s just don’t exist.

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