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 northernmost 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 of the most modern radar in the
world. The entire collection of buildings and domes are one color,
solid white, from the plastering of ice and snow. The picture that
the outpost makes could be described as fascinating, something out of
a Walt Disney fantasy--but talk to somebody who's been there--it's
miserable.
At 0020, twenty minutes after midnight, an airman watching one of
the outpost's radarscopes saw a target appear. It looked like an
airplane because it showed up as a bright, distinct spot. But it was
unusual because it was northeast of the radar site, and very few
airplanes ever flew over this area. Off to the northeast of the
station there was nothing but ice, snow, and maybe a few Eskimos
until you got to Russia. Occasionally a B-50 weather reconnaissance
plane ventured into the area, but a quick check of the records showed
that none was there on this night.
By the time the radar crew had gotten three good plots of the
target, they all knew that it was something unusual--it was at 23,000
feet and traveling 1,500 miles an hour. The duty controller, an Air
Force captain, was quickly called; he made a fast check of the
targets that had now been put on the plotting board and called to a
jet fighter-interceptor base for a scramble.
The fighter base, located about 100 miles south of the radar site,
acknowledged the captain's call and in a matter of minutes an F-94
jet was climbing out toward the north.
While the F-94 was heading north, the radar crew at the outpost
watched the unidentified target. The bright dots that marked its path
had moved straight across the radarscope, passing within about 50
miles of the site. It was still traveling about 1,500 miles an hour.
The radar had also picked up the F-94 and was directing it toward its
target when suddenly the unidentified target slowed down, stopped,
and reversed its course. Now it was heading directly toward the radar
station. When it was within about 30 miles of the station, the radar
operator switched his set to a shorter range and lost both the F-94
and the unidentified target.
While the radar operator was trying to pick up the target again, the
F-94 arrived in the area. The ground controller told the pilot that
they had lost the target and asked him to cruise around the area to
see if he and his radar operator could pick up anything on the F-94's
radar. The pilot said he would but that he was having a little
difficulty, was low on fuel, and would have to get back to his base
soon. The ground controller acknowledged the pilot's message, and
called back to the air base telling them to scramble a second F-94.
The first F-94 continued to search the area while the ground radar
tried to pick up the target but neither could find it.
About this time the second F-94 was coming in, so the ground radar
switched back to long range. In a minute they had both of the F-94's
and the unidentified target on their scope. The ground controller
called the second F-94 and began to vector him into the target.
The first F-94 returned to its base.
As both the second F-94 and the target approached the radar site,
the operator again switched to short range and again he lost the jet
and the target. He switched back to long range, but by now they were
too close to the radar site and he couldn't pick up either one.
The pilot continued on toward where the unidentified target should
have been. Suddenly the F-94 radar operator reported a weak target
off to the right at 28,000 feet. They climbed into it but it faded
before they could make contact.
The pilot swung the F-94 around for another pass, and this time the
radar operator reported a strong return. As they closed in, the F-
94's radar showed that the target was now almost stationary, just
barely moving. The F-94 continued on, but the target seemed to make a
sudden dive and they lost it. The pilot of the jet interceptor
continued to search the area but couldn't find anything. As the F-94
moved away from the radar station, it was again picked up on the
ground radar, but the unidentified target was gone.
A third F-94 had been scrambled, and in the meantime its crew took
over the search. They flew around for about ten minutes without
detecting any targets on their radar. They were making one last pass
almost directly over the radar station when the radar operator in the
back seat of the F-94 yelled over the interphone that he had a target
on his scope. The pilot called ground radar, but by this time both
the F-94 and the unidentified target were again too close to the
radar station and they couldn't be picked up. The F-94 closed in
until it was within 200 yards of the target; then the pilot pulled
up, afraid he might collide with whatever was out in the night sky
ahead of him. He made another pass, and another, but each time the
bright spot on the radar operator's scope just stayed in one spot as
if something were defiantly sitting out in front of the F-94 daring
the pilot to close in. The pilot didn't take the dare. On each pass
he broke off at 200 yards.
The F-94 crew made a fourth pass and got a weak return, but it was
soon lost as the target seemed to speed away. Ground radar also got a
brief return, but in a matter of seconds they too lost the target as
it streaked out of range on a westerly heading.
As usual, the first thing I did when I read this report was to check
the weather. But there was no weather report for this area that was
detailed enough to tell whether a weather inversion could have caused
the radar targets.
But I took the report over to Captain Roy James, anyway, in hopes
that he might be able to find a clue that would identify the UFO.
Captain James was the chief of the radar section at ATIC. He and his
people analyzed all our reports where radar picked up UFO's. Roy had
been familiar with radar for many years, having set up one of the
first stations in Florida during World War II, and later he took the
first aircraft control and warning squadron to Saipan. Besides
worrying about keeping his radar operating, he had to worry about the
Japs' shooting holes in his antennae.
Captain James decided that this Alaskan sighting I'd just shown him
was caused by some kind of freak weather. He based his analysis on
the fact that the unknown target had disappeared each time the ground
radar had been switched to short range. This, he pointed out, is an
indication that the radar was picking up some kind of a target that
was caused by weather. The same weather that caused the ground radar
to act up must have caused false targets on the F-94's radar too, he
continued. After all, they had closed to within 200 yards of what
they were supposedly picking up; it was a clear moonlight night, yet
the crews of the F-94's hadn't seen a thing.
Taking a clue from the law profession, he quoted a precedent. About
a year before over Oak Ridge, Tennessee, an F-82 interceptor had
nearly flown into the ground three times as the pilot attempted to
follow a target that his radar operator was picking up. There was a
strong inversion that night, and although the target appeared as if
it were flying in the air, it was actually a ground target.
Since Captain James was the chief of the radar section and he had
said "Weather," weather was the official conclusion on the report.
But reports of UFO's' being picked up on radar are controversial, and
some of the people didn't agree with James's conclusion.
A month or two after we'd received the report, I was out in Colorado
Springs at Air Defense Command Headquarters. I was eating lunch in
the officers' club when I saw an officer from the radar operations
section at ADC. He asked me to stop by his office when I had a spare
minute, and I said that I would. He said that it was important.
It was the middle of the afternoon before I saw him and found out
what he wanted. He had been in Alaska on TDY when the UFO had been
picked up at the outpost radar site. In fact, he had made a trip to
both the radar site and the interceptor base just two days after the
sighting, and he had talked about the sighting with the people who
had seen the UFO on the radar. He wanted to know what we thought
about it.
When I told him that the sighting had been written off as weather, I
remember that he got a funny look on his face and said, "Weather!
What are you guys trying to pull, anyway?"
It was obvious that he didn't agree with our conclusion. I was
interested in learning what this man thought because I knew that he
was one of ADC's ace radar trouble shooters and that he traveled all
over the world, on loan from ADC, to work out problems with radars.
"From the description of what the targets looked like on the
radarscopes, good, strong, bright images, I can't believe that they
were caused by weather," he told me.
Then he went on to back up his argument by pointing out that when
the ground radar was switched to short range both the F-94 and the
unknown target disappeared. If just the unknown target had
disappeared, then it could have been weather. But since both
disappeared, very probably the radar set wasn't working on short
ranges for some reason. Next he pointed out that if there was a
temperature inversion, which is highly unlikely in northern Alaska,
the same inversion that would affect the ground radar wouldn't be
present at 25,000 feet or above.
I told him about the report from Oak Ridge that Captain James had
used as an example, but he didn't buy this comparison. At Oak Ridge,
he pointed out, that F-82 was at only 4,000 feet. He didn't know how
the F-94's could get to within 200 yards of an object without seeing
it, unless the object was painted a dull black.
"No," he said, "I can't believe that those radar targets were caused
by weather. I'd be much more inclined to believe that they were
something real, something that we just don't know about."
During the early spring of 1952 reports of radar sightings increased
rapidly. Most of them came from the Air Defense Command, but a few
came from other agencies. One day, soon after the Alaskan Incident, I
got a telephone call from the chief of one of the sections of a
civilian experimental radar laboratory in New York State. The people
in this lab were working on the development of the latest types of
radar. Several times recently, while testing radars, they had
detected unidentified targets. To quote my caller, "Some damn odd
things are happening that are beginning to worry me." He went on to
tell how the people in his lab had checked their radars, the weather,
and everything else they could think of, but they could find
absolutely nothing to account for the targets; they could only
conclude that they were real. I promised him that his information
would get to the right people if he'd put it in a letter and send it
to ATIC. In about a week the letter arrived--hand-carried by no less
than a general. The general, who was from Headquarters, Air Materiel
Command, had been in New York at the radar laboratory, and he had
heard about the UFO reports. He had personally checked into them
because he knew that the people at the lab were some of the sharpest
radar engineers in the world. When he found out that these people had
already contacted us and had prepared a report for us, he offered to
hand-carry it to Wright-Patterson.
I can't divulge how high these targets were flying or how fast they
were going because it would give an indication of the performance of
our latest radar, which is classified Secret. I can say, however,
that they were flying mighty high and mighty fast.
I turned the letter over to ATIC's electronics branch, and they
promised to take immediate action. They did, and really fouled it up.
The person who received the report in the electronics branch was one
of the old veterans of Projects Sign and Grudge. He knew all about
UFO's. He got on the phone, called the radar lab, and told the chief
(a man who possibly wrote all of the textbooks this person had used
in college) all about how a weather inversion can cause false targets
on weather. He was gracious enough to tell the chief of the radar lab
to call if he had any more "trouble."
We never heard from them again. Maybe they found out what their
targets were. Or maybe they joined ranks with the airline pilot who
told me that if a flying saucer flew wing tip to wing tip formation
with him, he'd never tell the Air Force.
In early February I made another trip to Air Defense Command
Headquarters in Colorado Springs. This time it was to present a
definite plan of how ADC could assist ATIC in getting better data on
UFO's. I briefed General Benjamin W. Chidlaw, then the Commanding
General of the Air Defense Command, and his staff, telling them about
our plan. They agreed with it in principle and suggested that I work
out the details with the Director of Intelligence for ADC, Brigadier
General W. M. Burgess. General Burgess designated Major Verne
Sadowski of his staff to be the ADC liaison officer with Project
Grudge.
This briefing started a long period of close co-operation between
Project Grudge and ADC, and it was a pleasure to work with these
people. In all of my travels around the government, visiting and
conferring with dozens of agencies, I never had the pleasure of
working with or seeing a more smoothly operating and efficient
organization than the Air Defense Command. General Chidlaw and
General Burgess, along with the rest of the staff at ADC, were truly
great officers. None of them were believers in flying saucers, but
they recognized the fact that UFO reports were a problem that must be
considered. With technological progress what it is today, you can't
afford to have _anything_ in the air that you can't identify, be it
balloons, meteors, planets or flying saucers.
The plan that ADC agreed to was very simple. They agreed to issue a
directive to all of their units explaining the UFO situation and
telling specifically what to do in case one was detected. All radar
units equipped with radarscope cameras would be required to take
scope photos of targets that fell into the UFO category--targets that
were not airplanes or known weather phenomena. These photos, along
with a completed technical questionnaire that would be made up at
ATIC by Captain Roy James, would be forwarded to Project Grudge.
The Air Defense Command UFO directive would also clarify the
scrambling of fighters to intercept a UFO. Since it is the policy of
the Air Defense Command to establish the identity of any unidentified
target, there were no _special_ orders issued for scrambling fighters
to try to identify reported UFO's. A UFO was something unknown and
automatically called for a scramble. However, there had been some
hesitancy on the part of controllers to send airplanes up whenever
radar picked up a target that obviously was not an airplane. The
directive merely pointed out to the controllers that it was within
the scope of existing regulations to scramble on radar targets that
were plotted as traveling too fast or too slow to be conventional
airplanes. The decision to scramble fighters was still up to the
individual controller, however, and scrambling on UFO's would be a
second or third priority.
The Air Defense Command UFO directive did not mention shooting at a
UFO. This question came up during our planning meeting at Colorado
Springs, but, like the authority to scramble, the authority to shoot
at anything in the air had been established long ago. Every ADC pilot
knows the rules for engagement, the rules that tell him when he can
shoot the loaded guns that he always carries. If anything in the air
over the United States commits any act that is covered by the rules
for engagement, the pilot has the authority to open fire.
The third thing that ADC would do would be to integrate the Ground
Observer Corps into the UFO reporting net. As a second priority, the
GOC would report UFO's--first priority would still be reporting
aircraft.
Ever since the new Project Grudge had been organized, we hadn't had
to deal with any large-scale publicity about UFO's. Occasionally
someone would bring in a local item from some newspaper about a UFO
sighting, but the sightings never rated more than an inch or two
column space. But on February 19, 1952, the calm was broken by the
story of how a huge ball of fire paced two B-29's in Korea. The story
didn't start a rash of reports as the story of the first UFO sighting
did in June 1947, but it was significant in that it started a slow
build-up of publicity that was far to surpass anything in the past.
This Korean sighting also added to the growing official interest in
Washington. Almost every day I was getting one or two telephone calls
from some branch of the government, and I was going to Washington at
least once every two weeks. I was beginning to spend as much time
telling people what was going on as I was doing anything about it.
The answer was to get somebody in the Directorate of Intelligence in
the Pentagon to act as a liaison officer. I could keep this person
informed and he could handle the "branch office" in Washington.
Colonel Dunn bought this idea, and Major Dewey J. Fournet got the
additional duty of manager of the Pentagon branch. In the future all
Pentagon inquiries went to Major Fournet, and if he couldn't answer
them he would call me. The arrangement was excellent because Major
Fournet took a very serious interest in UFO's and could always be
counted on to do a good job.
Sometime in February 1952 I had a visit from two Royal Canadian Air
Force officers. For some time, I learned, Canada had been getting her
share of UFO reports. One of the latest ones, and the one that
prompted the visit by the RCAF officers, occurred at North Bay,
Ontario, about 250 miles north of Buffalo, New York. On two occasions
an orange-red disk had been seen from a new jet fighter base in the
area.
The Canadians wanted to know how we operated. I gave them the
details of how we were currently operating and how we hoped to
operate in the future, as soon as the procedures that were now in the
planning stages could be put into operation. We agreed to try to set
up channels so that we could exchange information and tie in the
project they planned to establish with Project Grudge.
Our plans for continuing liaison didn't materialize, but through
other RCAF intelligence officers I found out that their plans for an
RCAF-sponsored project failed. A quasi-official UFO project was set
up soon after this, however, and its objective was to use instruments
to detect objects coming into the earth's atmosphere. In 1954 the
project was closed down because during the two years of operation
they hadn't officially detected any UFO's. My sources of information
stressed the word "officially."
During the time that I was chief of the UFO project, the visitors
who passed through my office closely resembled the international
brigade. Most of the visits were unofficial in the sense that the
officers came to ATIC on other business, but in many instances the
other business was just an excuse to come out to Dayton to get filled
in on the UFO story. Two RAF intelligence officers who were in the
U.S. on a classified mission brought six single-spaced typed pages of
questions they and their friends wanted answered. On many occasions
Air Force intelligence officers who were stationed in England,
France, and Germany, and who returned to the U.S. on business, took
back stacks of unclassified flying saucer stories. One civilian
intelligence agent who frequently traveled between the U.S. and
Europe also acted as the unofficial courier for a German group--
transporting hot newspaper and magazine articles about UFO's that I'd
collected. In return I received the latest information on European
sightings--sightings that never were released and that we never
received at ATIC through official channels.
Ever since the fateful day when Lieutenant Jerry Cummings dropped
his horn-rimmed glasses down on his nose, tipped his head forward,
peered at Major General Cabell over his glasses and, acting not at
all like a first lieutenant, said that the UFO investigation was all
fouled up, Project Grudge had been gaining prestige. Lieutenant
Colonel Rosengarten's promise that I'd be on the project for only a
few months went the way of all military promises. By March 1952,
Project Grudge was no longer just a project within a group; we had
become a separate organization, with the formal title of the Aerial
Phenomena Group. Soon after this step-up in the chain of command the
project code name was changed to Blue Book. The word "Grudge" was no
longer applicable. For those people who like to try to read a hidden
meaning into a name, I'll say that the code name Blue Book was
derived from the title given to college tests. Both the tests and the
project had an abundance of equally confusing questions.
Project Blue Book had been made a separate group because of the
steadily increasing number of reports we were receiving. The average
had jumped from about ten a month to twenty a month since December
1951. In March of 1952 the reports slacked off a little, but April
was a big month. In April we received ninety-nine reports.
On April 1, Colonel S. H. Kirkland and I went to Los Angeles on
business. Before we left ATIC we had made arrangements to attend a
meeting of the Civilian Saucer Investigators, a now defunct
organization that was very active in 1952.
They turned out to be a well-meaning but Don Quixote-type group of
individuals. As soon as they outlined their plans for attempting to
solve the UFO riddle, it was obvious that they would fail. Project
Blue Book had the entire Air Force, money, and enthusiasm behind it
and we weren't getting any answers yet. All this group had was the
enthusiasm.
The highlight of the evening wasn't the Civilian Saucer
Investigators, however; it was getting a chance to read Ginna's UFO
article in an advance copy of _Life_ magazine that the organization
had obtained--the article written from the material Bob Ginna had
been researching for over a year. Colonel Kirkwood took one long look
at the article, sidled up to me, and said, "We'd better get back to
Dayton quick; you're going to be busy." The next morning at dawn I
was sound asleep on a United Airlines DC-6, Dayton-bound.
The _Life_ article undoubtedly threw a harder punch at the American
public than any other UFO article ever written. The title alone,
"Have We Visitors from Outer Space?" was enough. Other very reputable
magazines, such as True, had said it before, but coming from _Life_,
it was different. _Life_ didn't say that the UFO's were from outer
space; it just said maybe. But to back up this "maybe," it had quotes
from some famous people. Dr. Walther Riedel, who played an important
part in the development of the German V-2 missile and is presently
the director of rocket engine research for North American Aviation
Corporation, said he believed that the UFO's were from outer space.
Dr. Maurice Biot, one of the world's leading aerodynamicists, backed
him up.
But the most important thing about the _Life_ article was the
question in the minds of so many readers: "Why was it written?"
_Life_ doesn't go blasting off on flights of space fancy without a
good reason. Some of the readers saw a clue in the author's comments
that the hierarchy of the Air Force was now taking a serious look at
UFO reports. "Did the Air Force prompt _Life_ to write the article?"
was the question that many people asked themselves.
When I arrived at Dayton, newspapermen were beating down the door.
The official answer to the _Life_ article was released through the
Office of Public Information in the Pentagon: "The article is
factual, but _Life's_ conclusions are their own." In answer to any
questions about the article's being Air Force-inspired, my weasel-
worded answer was that we had furnished _Life_ with some raw data on
specific sightings.
My answer was purposely weasel-worded because I knew that the Air
Force had unofficially inspired the _Life_ article. The "maybe
they're interplanetary" with the "maybe" bordering on "they are" was
the personal opinion of several very high-ranking officers in the
Pentagon--so high that their personal opinion was almost policy. I
knew the men and I knew that one of them, a general, had passed his
opinions on to Bob Ginna.
Oddly enough, the _Life_ article did not cause a flood of reports.
The day after the article appeared we got nine sightings, which was
unusual, but the next day they dropped off again.
The number of reports did take a sharp rise a few days later,
however. The cause was the distribution of an order that completed
the transformation of the UFO from a bastard son to the family heir.
The piece of paper that made Project Blue Book legitimate was Air
Force Letter 200-5, Subject: Unidentified Flying Objects. The letter,
which was duly signed and sealed by the Secretary of the Air Force,
in essence stated that UFO's were not a joke, that the Air Force was
making a serious study of the problem, and that Project Blue Book was
responsible for the study. The letter stated that the commander of
every Air Force installation was responsible for forwarding all UFO
reports to ATIC by wire, with a copy to the Pentagon. Then a more
detailed report would be sent by airmail. Most important of all, it
gave Project Blue Book the authority to directly contact any Air
Force unit in the United States without going through any chain of
command. This was almost unheard of in the Air Force and gave our
project a lot of prestige.
The new reporting procedures established by the Air Force letter
greatly aided our investigation because it allowed us to start
investigating the better reports before they cooled off. But it also
had its disadvantages. It authorized the sender to use whatever
priority he thought the message warranted. Some things are slow in
the military, but a priority message is not one of them. When it
comes into the message center, it is delivered to the addressee
immediately, and for some reason, all messages reporting UFO's seemed
to arrive between midnight and 4:00A.M. I was considered the
addressee on all UFO reports. To complicate matters, the messages
were usually classified and I would have to go out to the air base
and personally sign for them.
One such message came in about 4:30A.M. on May 8, 1952. It was from
a CAA radio station in Jacksonville, Florida, and had been forwarded
over the Flight Service teletype net. I received the usual telephone
call from the teletype room at Wright-Patterson, I think I got
dressed, and I went out and picked up the message. As I signed for it
I remember the night man in the teletype room said, "This is a lulu,
Captain."
It was a lulu. About one o'clock that morning a Pan-American
airlines DC-4 was flying south toward Puerto Rico. A few hours after
it had left New York City it was out over the Atlantic Ocean, about
600 miles off Jacksonville, Florida, flying at 8,000 feet. It was a
pitch-black night; a high overcast even cut out the glow from the
stars. The pilot and copilot were awake but really weren't
concentrating on looking for other aircraft because they had just
passed into the San Juan Oceanic Control Area and they had been
advised by radio that there were no other airplanes in the area. The
copilot was turning around to look at number four engine when he
noticed a light up ahead. It looked like the taillight of another
airplane. He watched it closely for a few seconds since no other
airplanes were supposed to be in the area. He glanced out at number
four engine for a few seconds, looked back, and he saw that the light
was in about the same position as when he'd first seen it. Then he
looked down at the prop controls, synchronized the engines, and
looked up again. In the few seconds that he had glanced away from the
light, it had moved to the right so that it was now directly ahead of
the DC-4, and it had increased in size. The copilot reached over and
slapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed. Just at that instant
the light began to get bigger and bigger until it was "ten times the
size of a landing light of an airplane." It continued to close in and
with a flash it streaked by the DC-4's left wing. Before the crew
could react and say anything, two more smaller balls of fire flashed
by. Both pilots later said that they sat in their seats for several
seconds with sweat trickling down their backs.
It was one of these two pilots who later said, "Were you ever
traveling along the highway about 70 miles an hour at night, have the
car that you were meeting suddenly swerve over into your lane and
then cut back so that you just miss it by inches? You know the sort
of sick, empty feeling you get when it's all over? That's just the
way we felt."
As soon as the crew recovered from the shock, the pilot picked up
his mike, called Jacksonville Radio, and told them about the
incident. Minutes later we had the report. The next afternoon
Lieutenant Kerry Rothstien, who had replaced Lieutenant Metscher on
the project, was on his way to New York to meet the pilots when they
returned from Puerto Rico.
When Kerry talked to the two pilots, they couldn't add a great deal
to their original story. Their final comment was the one we all had
heard so many times, "I always thought these people who reported
flying saucers were crazy, but now I don't know."
When Lieutenant Rothstien returned to Dayton he triple-checked with
the CAA for aircraft in the area--but there were none. Could there
have been airplanes in the area that CAA didn't know about? The
answer was almost a flat "No." No one would fly 600 miles off the
coast without filing a flight plan; if he got into trouble or went
down, the Coast Guard or Air Rescue Service would have no idea where
to look.
Kerry was given the same negative answer when he checked on surface
shipping.
The last possibility was that the UFO's were meteors, but several
points in the pilots' story ruled these out. First, there was a solid
overcast at about 18,000 feet. No meteor cruises along straight and
level below 18,000 feet. Second, on only rare occasions have meteors
been seen traveling three in trail. The chances of seeing such a
phenomenon are well over one in a billion.
Some people have guessed that some kind of an atmospheric phenomenon
can form a "wall of air" ahead of an airplane that will act as a
mirror and that lights seen at night by pilots are nothing more than
the reflection of the airplane's own lights. This could be true in
some cases, but to have a reflection you must have a light to
reflect. There are no lights on an airplane that even approach being
"ten times the size of a landing light."
What was it? I know a colonel who says it was the same thing that
the two Eastern Airlines' pilots, Clarence Chiles and John Whitted,
saw near Montgomery, Alabama, on July 24, 1948, and he thinks that
Chiles and Whitted saw a spaceship.
Reports for the month of April set an all-time high. These were all
reports that came from military installations. In addition, we
received possibly two hundred letters reporting UFO's, but we were so
busy all we could do was file them for future reference.
In May 1952 I'd been out to George AFB in California investigating a
series of sightings and was on my way home. I remember the flight to
Dayton because the weather was bad all the way. I didn't want to miss
my connecting flight in Chicago, or get grounded, because I had
faithfully promised my wife that we would go out to dinner the night
that I returned to Dayton. I'd called her from Los Angeles to tell
her that I was coming in, and she had found a baby sitter and had
dinner reservations. I hadn't been home more than about two days a
week for the past three months, and she was looking forward to going
out for the evening.
I reached Dayton about midmorning and went right out to the base.
When I arrived at the office, my secretary was gone but there was a
big note on my desk: "Call Colonel Dunn as soon as you get in."
I called Colonel Dunn; then I called my wife and told her to cancel
the baby sitter, cancel the dinner reservations, and pack my other
bag. I had to go to Washington.
While I'd been in California, Colonel Dunn had received a call from
General Samford's office. It seems that a few nights before, one of
the top people in the Central Intelligence Agency was having a lawn
party at his home just outside Alexandria, Virginia. A number of
notable personages were in attendance and they had seen a flying
saucer. The report had been passed down to Air Force intelligence,
and due to the quality of the brass involved, it was "suggested" that
I get to Washington on the double and talk to the host of the party.
I was at his office before 5:00P.M. and got his report.
About ten o'clock in the evening he and two other people were
standing near the edge of his yard talking; he happened to be facing
south, looking off across the countryside. He digressed a bit from
his story to explain that his home is on a hilltop in the country,
and when looking south, he had a view of the entire countryside.
While he was talking to the two other people he noticed a light
approaching from the west. He had assumed it was an airplane and had
casually watched it, but when the light got fairly close, the CIA man
said that he suddenly realized there wasn't any sound associated with
it. If it were an airplane it would have been close enough for him to
hear even above the hum of the guests' conversations. He had actually
quit talking and was looking at the light when it stopped for an
instant and began to climb almost vertically. He said something to
the other guests, and they looked up just in time to see the light
finish its climb, stop, and level out. They all watched it travel
level for a few seconds, then go into a nearly vertical dive, level
out, and streak off to the east.
Most everyone at the party had seen the light before it disappeared,
and within minutes several friendly arguments as to what it was had
developed, I was told. One person thought it was a lighted balloon,
and a retired general thought it was an airplane. To settle the
arguments, they had made a few telephone calls. I might add that
these people were such that the mention of their names on a telephone
got quick results. Radar in the Washington area said that there had
been no airplanes flying west to east south of Alexandria in the past
hour. The weather station at Bolling AFB said that there were no
balloons in the area, but as a double check the weather people looked
at their records of high-altitude winds. It couldn't have been a
balloon because none of the winds up to 65,000 feet were blowing from
west to east--and to be able to see a light on a balloon, it has to
be well below 65,000 feet; the man from CIA told me that they had
even considered the possibility that the UFO was a meteor and that
the "jump" had been due to some kind of an atmospheric distortion.
But the light had been in sight too long to be a meteor. He added
that an army chaplain and two teetotaler guests had also seen the
light jump.
There wasn't much left for me to do when I finished talking to the
man. He and his guests had already made all of the checks that I'd
have made. All I could do was go back to Dayton, write up his report,
and stamp it "Unknown."
Back in March, when it had become apparent that the press was
reviving its interest in UFO's, I had suggested that Project Blue
Book subscribe to a newspaper clipping service. Such a service could
provide several things. First, it would show us exactly how much
publicity the UFO's were getting and what was being said, and it
would give us the feel of the situation. Then it would also provide a
lot of data for our files. In many cases the newspapers got reports
that didn't go to the Air Force. Newspaper reporters rival any
intelligence officer when it comes to digging up facts, and there was
always the possibility that they would uncover and print something
we'd missed. This was especially true in the few cases of hoaxes that
always accompany UFO publicity. Last, it would provide us with
material on which to base a study of the effect of newspaper
publicity upon the number and type of UFO reports.
Colonel Dunn liked the idea of the clipping service, and it went
into effect soon after the first publicity had appeared. Every three
or four days we would get an envelope full of clippings. In March the
clipping service was sending the clippings to us in letter-sized
envelopes. The envelopes were thin--maybe there would be a dozen or
so clippings in each one. Then they began to get thicker and thicker,
until the people who were doing the clipping switched to using manila
envelopes. Then the manila envelopes began to get thicker and
thicker. By May we were up to old shoe boxes. The majority of the
newspaper stories in the shoe boxes were based on material that had
come from ATIC.
All of these inquiries from the press were adding to Blue Book's
work load and to my problems. Normally a military unit such as ATIC
has its own public information officer, but we had none so I was it.
I was being quoted quite freely in the press and was repeatedly being
snarled at by someone in the Pentagon. It was almost a daily
occurrence to have people from the "puzzle palace" call and
indignantly ask, "Why did you tell them that?" They usually referred
to some bit of information that somebody didn't think should have
been released. I finally gave up and complained to Colonel Dunn. I
suggested that any contacts with the press be made through the Office
of Public Information in the Pentagon. These people were trained and
paid to do this job; I wasn't. Colonel Dunn heartily agreed because
every time I got chewed out he at least got a dirty look.
Colonel Dunn called General Samford's office and they brought in
General Sory Smith of the Department of Defense, Office of Public
Information. General Smith appointed a civilian on the Air Force
Press Desk, Al Chop, to handle all inquiries from the press. The plan
was that Al would try to get his answers from Major Dewey Fournet,
Blue Book's liaison officer in the Pentagon, and if Dewey didn't have
the answer, Al had permission to call me.
This arrangement worked out fine because Al Chop had been through
previous UFO publicity battles when he was in the Office of Public
Information at Wright Field.
The interest in the UFO's that was shown by the press in May was
surpassed only by the interest of the Pentagon. Starting in May, I
gave on the average of one briefing in Washington every two weeks,
and there was always a full house. From the tone of the official
comments to the public about UFO's, it would indicate that there
wasn't a great deal of interest, but nothing could be further from
the truth. People say a lot of things behind a door bearing a sign
that reads "Secret Briefing in Progress."
After one of the briefings a colonel (who is now a brigadier
general) presented a plan that called for using several flights of F-
94C jet interceptors for the specific purpose of trying to get some
good photographs of UFO's. The flight that he proposed would be an
operational unit with six aircraft--two would be on constant alert.
The F-94C's, then the hottest operational jet we had, would be
stripped of all combat gear to give them peak performance, and they
would carry a special camera in the nose. The squadrons would be
located at places in the United States where UFO's were most
frequently seen.
The plan progressed to the point of estimating how soon enough
airplanes for two flights could be stripped, how soon special cameras
could be built, and whether or not two specific Air Force bases in
the U.S. could support the units.
Finally the colonel's plan was shelved, but not because he was
considered to be crazy. After considerable study and debate at high
command level, it was decided that twelve F-94C's couldn't be spared
for the job and it would have been ineffective to use fewer airplanes.
The consideration that the colonel's plan received was an indication
of how some of the military people felt about the importance of
finding out exactly what the UFO's really were. And in the
discussions the words "interplanetary craft" came up more than once.
Requests for briefings came even from the highest figure in the Air
Force, Thomas K. Finletter, then the Secretary for Air. On May 8,
1952, Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Taylor of Colonel Dunn's staff and I
presented an hour-long briefing to Secretary Finletter and his staff.
He listened intently and asked several questions about specific
sightings when the briefing was finished. If he was at all worried
about the UFO's he certainly didn't show it. His only comment was,
"You're doing a fine job, Captain. It must be interesting. Thank you."
Then he made the following statement for the press:
"No concrete evidence has yet reached us either to prove or disprove
the existence of the so-called flying saucers. There remain, however,
a number of sightings that the Air Force investigators have been
unable to explain. As long as this is true, the Air Force will
continue to study flying saucer reports."
In May 1952, Project Blue Book received seventy-nine UFO reports
compared to ninety-nine in April. It looked as if we'd passed the
peak and were now on the downhill side. The 178 reports of the past
two months, not counting the thousand or so letters that we'd
received directly from the public, had piled up a sizable backlog
since we'd had time to investigate and analyze only the better
reports. During June we planned to clear out the backlog, and then we
could relax.
But never underestimate the power of a UFO. In June the big flap hit
--they began to deliver clippings in big cardboard cartons.