Category: The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 1

This is the entire text of the book “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” by Edward J. Ruppelt, former head of the United States Air Force Project Blue Book. CONTENTS: CHAPTER ONE Project Blue Book and the UFO Story, 1 (This page) CHAPTER TWO The Era of Confusion Begins, 15 CHAPTER THREE The Classics, 29 CHAPTER FOUR Green Fireballs, Project Twinkle, Little Lights, and Grudge, 47 CHAPTER FIVE The Dark Ages, 59 CHAPTER SIX The Presses Roll-The Air Force Shrugs, 69 CHAPTER SEVEN The Pentagon Rumbles, 82 CHAPTER EIGHT The Lubbock Lights, Unabridged, 96 CHAPTER NINE The New Project Grudge, 111 CHAPTER TEN Project Blue Book and the Big Build-Up, 123 CHAPTER ELEVEN The Big Flap, 139 CHAPTER TWELVE The Washington Merry-Go-Round, 156 CHAPTER […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2: 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.” 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. […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3, THE CLASSICS: 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 […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4, GREEN FIREBALLS, PROJECT TWINKLE, LITTLE LIGHTS AND GRUDGE: At exactly midnight on September 18, 1954, my telephone rang. It was Jim Phalen, a friend of mine from the Long Beach Press-Telegram, and he had a “good flying saucer report,” hot off the wires. He read it to me. The lead line was: “Thousands of people saw a huge fireball light up dark New Mexico skies tonight.” The story went on to tell about how a “blinding green” fireball the size of a full moon had silently streaked southeast across Colorado and northern New Mexico at eight forty that night. Thousands of people had seen the fireball. It had passed right over a crowded football stadium at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and people […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5, THE DARK AGES: The order of February 11, 1949, that changed the name of Project Sign to Project Grudge had not directed any change in the operating policy of the project. It had, in fact, pointed out that the project was to continue to investigate and evaluate reports of sightings of unidentified flying objects. In doing this, standard intelligence procedures would be used. This normally means the unbiased evaluation of intelligence data. But it doesn’t take a great deal of study of the old UFO files to see that standard intelligence procedures were no longer being used by Project Grudge. Everything was being evaluated on the premise that UFO’s couldn’t exist. No matter what you see or hear, don’t believe it. New […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 6

The presses roll – the Air Force shrugs: The Grudge Report was supposedly not for general distribution. A few copies were sent to the Air Force Press Desk in the Pentagon and reporters and writers could come in and read it. But a good many copies did get into circulation. The Air Force Press Room wasn’t the best place to sit and study a 600 page report, and a quick glance at the report showed that it required some study – if no more than to find out what the authors were trying to prove – so several dozen copies got into circulation. I know that these “liberated” copies of the Grudge Report had been thoroughly studied because nearly every writer who came to […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7, THE PENTAGON RUMBLES: On June 25, 1950, the North Korean armies swept down across the 38th parallel and the Korean War was on – the UFO was no longer a news item. But the lady, or gentleman, who first said, “Out of sight is out of mind,” had never reckoned with the UFO. 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 […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8, THE LUBBOCK LIGHTS, UNABRIDGED: When four college professors, a geologist, a chemist, a physicist, and a petroleum engineer, report seeing the same UFO’s on fourteen different occasions, the event can be classified as, at least, unusual. Add the facts that hundreds of other people saw these UFO’s and that they were photographed, and the story gets even better. Add a few more facts – that these UFO’s were picked up on radar and that a few people got a close look at one of them, and the story begins to convince even the most ardent skeptics. This was the situation the day the reports of the Lubbock Lights arrived at ATIC. Actually the Lubbock Lights, as Project Blue Book calls them, involved […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9, THE NEW PROJECT GRUDGE: While I was in Lubbock, Lieutenant Henry Metscher, who was helping me on Project Grudge, had been sorting out the many bits and pieces of information that Lieutenant Jerry Cummings and Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten had brought back from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and he had the answers. The UFO that the student radar operator had assumed to be traveling at a terrific speed because he couldn’t lock on to it turned out to be a 400-mile-an-hour conventional airplane. He’d just gotten fouled up on his procedures for putting the radar set on automatic tracking. The sighting by the two officers in the T-33 jet fell apart when Metscher showed how they’d seen a balloon. The second radar sighting […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10, PROJECT BLUE BOOK AND THE BIG BUILD UP: Just twenty minutes after midnight on January 22, 1952, nineteen and a half hours after the Navy lieutenant commander had chased the UFO near Mitchel AFB, another incident involving an airplane and something unknown was developing in Alaska. In contrast with the unusually balmy weather in New York, the temperature in Alaska that night, according to the detailed account of the incident we received at ATIC, was a miserable 47 degrees below zero. The action was unfolding at one of our northern-most radar outposts in Alaska. This outpost was similar to those you may have seen in pictures, a collection of low, sprawling buildings grouped around the observatory like domes that house the antennae […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11, THE BIG FLAP: In early June 1952, Project Blue Book was operating according to the operational plan that had been set up in January 1952. It had taken six months to put the plan into effect, and to a person who has never been indoctrinated into the ways of the military, this may seem like a long time. But consult your nearest government worker and you’ll find that it was about par for the red tape course. We had learned early in the project that about 60 per cent of the reported UFO’s were actually balloons, airplanes, or astronomical bodies viewed under unusual conditions, so our operational plan was set up to quickly weed out this type of report. This would give […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12, THE WASHINGTON MERRY GO ROUND: No flying saucer report in the history of the UFO ever won more world acclaim than the Washington National Sightings. When radars at the Washington National Airport and at Andrews AFB, both close to the nation’s capital, picked up UFO’s, the sightings beat the Democratic National Convention out of headline space. They created such a furor that I had inquiries from the office of the President of the United States and from the press in London, Ottawa, and Mexico City. A junior sized riot was only narrowly averted in the lobby of the Roger Smith Hotel in Washington when I refused to tell U.S. newspaper reporters what I knew about the sightings. Besides being the most highly […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13, HOAX OR HORROR?: To the military and the public who weren’t intimately associated with the higher levels of Air Force Intelligence during the summer of 1952 – and few were – General Samford’s press conference seemed to indicate the peak in official interest in flying saucers. It did take the pressure off Project Blue Book – reports dropped from fifty per day to ten a day inside of a week – but behind the scenes the press conference was only the signal for an all out drive to find out more about the UFO. Work on the special cameras continued on a high priority basis, and General Samford directed us to enlist the aid of top ranking scientists. During the past four […] Read More

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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14, DIGESTING THE DATA: It was soon after we had written a finish to the Case of the Scoutmaster that I went into Washington to give another briefing on the latest UFO developments. Several reports had come in during early August that had been read with a good deal of interest in the military and other governmental agencies. By late August 1952 several groups in Washington were following the UFO situation very closely. The sighting that had stirred everyone up came from Haneda AFB, now Tokyo International Airport, in Japan. Since the sighting came from outside the U.S., we couldn’t go out and investigate it, but the intelligence officers in the Far East Air Force had done a good job, so we had […] Read More