- --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
- UFO's - 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. [Emphasis added]
-
- 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."
[Emphasis added]
-
- 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. [Emphasis added] 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. [Emphasis added] 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. [Emphasis
added] 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."
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