"was criticized as having a debunking mandate. Ruppelt referred to the era of Project Grudge as the ""dark ages"" of early USAF UFO investigation. Grudge concluded that all UFOs were natural phenomena or other misinterpretations, although it also stated that 23 percent of the reports could not be explained. According to Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, by the end of 1951, several high-ranking, very influential USAF generals were so dissatisfied with the state of Air Force UFO investigations that they dismantled Project Grudge and replaced it with Project Blue Book in March 1952. One of these men was Gen. Charles P."
"Major Griffin sent a report of the incident to the staff of Project Blue Book, the official Air Force research group assigned to study UFO reports. Griffin wrote that ""At this time I have been unable to arrive at a probable cause of this sighting. The three observers seem to be stable, reliable persons, especially the two patrolmen. I viewed the area of the sighting and found nothing in the area that could be the probable cause. Pease AFB had five B-47 aircraft flying in the area but I do not believe that they had any connection with this sighting."""
"Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951), the secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Brazilian Air Force's 1977 ""Operação Prato"" (Operation Saucer). France has had an ongoing investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN) within its space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) since 1977; the government of Uruguay has had a similar investigation since 1989. Project Sign in 1948 produced a highly classified finding (see Estimate of the Situation) that the best UFO reports"
"However, before Project Blue Book could send this evaluation to the Pentagon, the Air Force had already issued an explanation of Muscarello and the two policemen's sighting to the press. The Pentagon informed reporters that the three men had seen ""nothing more than stars and planets twinkling ... owing to a temperature inversion."" Project Blue Book then issued its own explanation, stating that ""Operation Big Blast ... a SAC/NORAD training mission"" had been active on the night of the sighting and that it could have accounted for the UFO. Project Blue Book's supervisor, USAF Major Hector Quintanilla, wrote policemen Bertrand"
"Cabell. Another important change came when General William Garland joined Cabell's staff; Garland thought the UFO question deserved serious scrutiny because he had witnessed a UFO. The new name, Project Blue Book, was selected to refer to the blue booklets used for testing at some colleges and universities. The name was inspired, said Ruppelt, by the close attention that high-ranking officers were giving the new project; it felt as if the study of UFOs was as important as a college final exam. Blue Book was also upgraded in status from Project Grudge, with the creation of the Aerial Phenomenon Branch."
"cover-up. UFOs had become such a controversial issue that no other government agency was willing to take on further UFO studies. Following a wave of UFO reports in 1965, astronomer and Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek wrote a letter to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AFSAB) suggesting that a panel convene to re-examine Blue Book. The AFSAB agreed and the committee it formed, chaired by Brian O'Brien, convened for one day in February, 1966, and suggested UFO studies could be undertaken ""in more detail and depth than had been possible to date"" and that the U.S. Air Force"
"Naval Research granted McDonald a small budget in order to conduct his own UFO research, ostensibly to study the idea that some UFOs were misidentified clouds. He was able to peruse the files of Project Blue Book at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and eventually concluded that the Air Force was mishandling UFO evidence. Following the Robertson Panel's recommendations in 1953, the Air Force was following a debunking directive towards UFO reports, and only discussing UFO cases which were considered solved by a mundane explanation. All unexplained UFO cases were classified ""secret"" and not released to the public (see Robertson"
"in ""Life"". Project Blue Book, the USAF's official investigation of the UFO mystery, concluded the photographs were not a hoax and showed genuine objects, but dismissed the UFOs as being either ""night-flying moths"" or a type of bird called a plover reflected in the nighttime glow of Lubbock's new street lights. However, other researchers have disputed these explanations, and for many, the ""Lubbock Lights"" remain a mystery. In 1960, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Lubbock's population as 128,691 and area as . On May 11, 1970, the Lubbock Tornado struck the city. Twenty-six people died, and damage was estimated at"
"came to the Air Force's Project Blue Book, which investigated UFO sightings, through air-traffic controllers and letters to the government. The project checked U-2 and later OXCART flight records to eliminate the majority of UFO reports it received during the late 1950s and 1960s, although it could not reveal to the letter writers the truth behind what they saw. Similarly, veterans of experimental projects such as OXCART and NERVA at Area 51 agree that their work (including 2,850 OXCART test flights alone) inadvertently prompted many of the UFO sightings and other rumors: They believe that the rumors helped maintain secrecy"
"civilians who had reported UFOs. Grudge became Project Blue Book. Its first era—directed by Ruppelt—is generally seen as its most open-minded and productive era. Project Grudge Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. Project Sign had been active from 1947 to 1949. Some of Sign's personnel, including director Robert Sneider, favored the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the best explanation for"
"area of the base - thus the reason for Institute 22's involvement and cover-up. The UFOs were explained as flares, which the Army was testing from a higher altitude. The nuclear crisis was explained as a simple test. Institute 22 The Institute 22 organization was created in 1978, by the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense in the Soviet Union. Its mission was to investigate UFOs in the Soviet Union. Institute 22 was a secret organization for 13 years (until the fall of the Soviet Union), and can be compared to the American Project Blue Book. During its"
"reorganized it as Project Blue Book in late 1951, placing Ruppelt in charge. Blue Book closed down in 1970, using the Condon Committee's negative conclusion as a rationale, thus ending official Air Force UFO investigations. However, a 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, along with later government documents, revealed that non-public U.S. government UFO investigations continued after 1970. The Bolender memo first stated that ""reports of unidentified flying objects that could affect national security ... are not part of the Blue Book system,"" indicating that more serious UFO incidents already were handled outside the public Blue Book investigation."
"head of the USAF's Project Blue Book. Another highly classified U.S. study was conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) in the latter half of 1952 in response to orders from the National Security Council (NSC). This study concluded UFOs were real physical objects of potential threat to national security. One OS/I memo to the CIA Director (DCI) in December read: the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense"
"UFO Project has its roots in a study commissioned in 1950 by the MOD’s then Chief Scientific Adviser, the great radar scientist Sir Henry Tizard. As a result of his insistence that UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study, the Department set up the Flying Saucer Working Party (or FSWP). In August 1950, Montanan baseball manager Nicholas Mariana filmed several UFOs with his color 16mm camera. Project Blue Book was called in and, after inspecting the film, Mariana claimed it was returned to him with critical footage removed, clearly showing the objects as disc-shaped."
"the MOL program were discovered in a locked room in the Launch Complex 5/6 museum on Cape Canaveral. In July 2015, the National Reconnaissance Office declassified over 800 files and photos related to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. In the 2016 novel ""Blue Darker Than Black"" by Mike Jenne, the MOL program is secretly transferred from the Air Force to the United States Navy after its official cancellation in 1969. The Navy launches an ocean surveillance MOL in July 1972. Two Air Force Blue Gemini astronauts fly a rescue mission to the MOL after its crew is incapacitated by the"
"Grudge and Project Blue Book, as being caused by a lighted weather balloon. The Gorman Dogfight received wide national publicity and helped fuel the wave of UFO reports in the late forties. Although some UFO researchers, such as Dr. James E. McDonald, a physicist at the University of Arizona, and retired US Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe, disagreed with the Air Force's conclusions and continued to regard the case as unsolved, other UFO researchers agreed with Project Sign's conclusions in the case. As UFO historian Jerome Clark writes, ""unlike some Air Force would-be solutions this one seems plausible"" and that,"
"heart attack on September 15, 1960, at the age of 37. Edward J. Ruppelt Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term ""unidentified flying object"", to replace the terms ""flying saucer"" and ""flying disk"" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be ""misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers"
"Institute 22 The Institute 22 organization was created in 1978, by the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense in the Soviet Union. Its mission was to investigate UFOs in the Soviet Union. Institute 22 was a secret organization for 13 years (until the fall of the Soviet Union), and can be compared to the American Project Blue Book. During its existence a great number of soldiers, sailors and pilots of the Soviet Army were given orders to watch for UFOs and other unexplained events, without any further information. The orders could be handed out quite easily since the"
"Edward J. Ruppelt Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term ""unidentified flying object"", to replace the terms ""flying saucer"" and ""flying disk"" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be ""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"
"sightings had dropped from the 20-25% of the Ruppelt era, to less than 1%. Captain George T. Gregory took over as Blue Book's director in 1956. Clark writes that Gregory led Blue Book ""in an even firmer anti-UFO direction than the apathetic Hardin."" The 4602nd was dissolved, and the 1066th Air Intelligence Service Squadron was charged with UFO investigations. In fact, there was actually little or no investigation of UFO reports; a revised AFR 200-2 issued during Gregory's tenure emphasized that unexplained UFO reports must be reduced to a minimum. One way that Gregory reduced the number of unexplained UFOs"
"data from UFO sighting reports. The committee appeared to have dissolved after five meetings, as the group deemed the collected material unsuitable for scientific analysis. As a continuation of Project Sign and Project Grudge in 1951, the USAF launched Project Blue Book, led by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt. Under Ruppelt, the collection and investigation of UFO sightings became more systematic. The project issued a series of status reports, which were declassified in September 1960 and made available in 1968. Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969, following the report of the Condon Committee. Until then, 12,618 incidents had been"
"overtaking them."" According to Albert Chop, when ground control asked Patterson ""if he saw anything"", Patterson replied ""'I see them now and they're all around me. What should I do?'...And nobody answered, because we didn't know what to tell him."" After midnight on July 27, Major Dewey Fournet, Project Blue Book's liaison at the Pentagon, and Lieutenant John Holcomb, a United States Navy radar specialist, arrived at the radar center at National Airport. During the night, Lieutenant Holcomb received a call from the Washington National Weather Station. They told him that a slight temperature inversion was present over the city,"
"to this day that the photos are genuine. Curiously, the Texas Tech professors claimed that the photos did not represent what they had seen, since their objects had flown in a ""u"" formation instead of the ""v"" formation depicted in Hart's photos. In late September 1951, Lieutenant Ruppelt read about the Lubbock Lights and decided to investigate them. Project Blue Book, founded in 1948 as Project Sign, was the Air Force's official research group assigned to investigate UFO reports. Ruppelt traveled to Lubbock and interviewed the professors, Carl Hart, and others who claimed to have witnessed the lights. Ruppelt's conclusion"
"Ruppelt, Project Blue Book Supervisor <br> General John A. Samford ... Himself <br> William Solomon ... Scientist <br> Olan Soule ... Narrator Actor Harry Morgan, who would later become famous for his role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on the television series ""M*A*S*H"", and for his role as Detective Bill Gannon on the television series ""Dragnet 1967"", portrays the voice of Air Force pilot ""Red Dog One"" during scenes describing the 1952 Washington, DC UFO incident. On ""Dragnet 1967"" Harry Morgan played Sgt. Joe Friday's (Jack Webb) partner. Jack Webb was the producer and narrator for the 1978 television series"
"“A massive build-up of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The Air Force scrambled interceptor aircraft to investigate, but they found nothing. The incidents, however, caused headlines across the country. The White House wanted to know what was happening…”. The reference to White House interest is consistent with a telephone call Captain (later Major) Edward Ruppelt, Blue Book Project Director at the time, received from Brigadier General"
"UFOs for psychological warfare purposes, exploit the gullibility of the public for the sensational, and clog intelligence channels. Under a directive from the National Security Council to review the problem, in January 1953, the CIA organized the Robertson Panel, a group of scientists who quickly reviewed the Blue Book’s best evidence, including motion pictures and an engineering report that concluded that the performance characteristics were beyond that of earthly craft. After two days' review, all cases were claimed to have conventional explanations. An official policy of public debunkery was recommended using the mass media and authority figures in order to"
"they regard approximately 2% as lacking explanation. The USAF's Project Blue Book files indicate that approximately 1% of all unknown reports came from amateur and professional astronomers or other users of telescopes (such as missile trackers or surveyors). In 1952, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then a consultant to Blue Book, conducted a small survey of 45 fellow professional astronomers. Five reported UFO sightings (about 11%). In the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock conducted two large surveys of the AIAA and American Astronomical Society (AAS). About 5% of the members polled indicated that they had had UFO sightings. Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh,"
"of Sciences to ""provide an independent assessment of the scope, the methodology, and the findings"" of the Committee. A panel chaired by Yale astronomer Gerald M. Clemence studied the Report for six weeks and concluded that ""on the basis of present knowledge the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings"" and that ""no high priority in UFO investigations is warranted by data of the past two decades."" In response to the Report's findings, the Air Force closed Project Blue Book, established in March 1952, on December 17, 1969. The Report earned a mixed"
"really flying around. A follow-up investigation by the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Ohio arrived at the same conclusion. A widespread official government study of the saucers was urged by General Nathan Twining. This led to the formation of Project Sign (also known as Project Saucer) at the end of 1947, the first public Air Force UFO study. This evolved into Project Grudge (1949–1951) and then Project Blue Book (1952–1970). The term ""flying saucer"" quickly became deeply ingrained in the English vernacular. A Gallup poll from August 1947 found that 90% had heard about the mysterious flying saucers or"
"German scientists and technicians to Wright Field, e.g., Ernst R. G. Eckert (most of the scientists eventually went to work in the various Wright Field labs.) Project Sign (Project Grudge in 1949, Project Blue Book in March 1952) was WPAFB's T-2 Intelligence investigations of unidentified flying objects (UFO) reports that began in July 1947. In 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) began analysis of crashed Soviet aircraft from the Korean war. In March 1952, ATIC established an Aerial Phenomena Group to study reported UFO sightings, including those in Washington, DC, in 1952. By 1969 the Foreign Technology Division (FTD)"
"Project Grudge Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. Project Sign had been active from 1947 to 1949. Some of Sign's personnel, including director Robert Sneider, favored the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the best explanation for UFO reports. They prepared the Estimate of the Situation arguing their case. This hypothesis was ultimately rejected by high-ranking officers, and Project Sign was"
"been provided: Edward J. Ruppelt, director of the USAF Project Blue Book UFO study, stated he visited the Los Alamos National Laboratory in early 1952 and spoke to various scientists and technicians there, all of whom had experienced green fireball sightings. None of them believed they had a conventional explanation, such as a new natural phenomenon, secret government project, or psychologically enlarged meteors. Instead, the scientists speculated that they were extraterrestrial probes ""projected into our atmosphere from a 'spaceship' hovering several hundred miles above the earth."" Ruppelt commented, ""Two years ago I would have been amazed to hear a group"
"Jerrold Baker's wife, accused him of lying about the incident, Williamson told her cryptically that ""sometimes to gain admittance, one has to go around the back door."" In his report on Adamski, Moseley wrote ""I do believe most definitely that Adamski's narrative contains enough flaws to place in very serious doubt both his veracity and his sincerity. The reader will be moved to make for himself a careful re-evaluation of the worth of Adamski's book."" In the early-to-mid 1950s USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was the head of Project Blue Book, the Air Force group assigned to investigate UFO reports."