Coast-to-Coast AM: Secrecy and Updates

 

And I say, once again, welcome to 1947. I’ve mentioned in the past that in 1947, the military created a project to investigate the flying saucers. They treated the topic as something real and not imaginary. They were concerned about national security implications and Ed Ruppelt reported that high-ranking officers were in something of a panic. The project was classified and the official name was not releasable to the general public given the classified nature of the investigation. It was called Project Saucer in public but was code named Project Sign officially.

Just this last weekend, Christopher Mellon reported that the military, the government and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) had issued new guidelines that would classify as “Secret” the videos like those released publicly in 2017. These “Tic-Tac) videos were not classified at the time, but would now, under the new guidelines, be classified. These new guidelines state, “Except for its existence, and the mission/purpose, virtually everything else about the UAPTF is classified, per the signed Security Classification Guide.”

This seems to suggest that everything that will be gathered by the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, which seems to be a much more complicated name than necessary, will be operating under the same guidelines. In other words, nearly everything will be classified, which keeps it out of our hands, but more importantly, would inhibit the sharing of the information among the various government agencies that would benefit from easy access to the information. The Navy, because the information is now classified might be inclined to deny access to the Air Force, and the Air Force might be inclined to deny access to the Army. It is a situation that has plagued the military and various government agencies for decades.

As I say, so much for transparency.

This doesn’t mean that we no longer have access to interesting UFO reports. On February 15 of this year, in Aurora, Illinois, the witness opened the living room blinds and saw what he believed was a plane flying very low, just under the clouds. Which provides us with a suggestion that the object, whatever it was, was not an astronomical phenomenon, eliminating these explanations.

Although the witness thought it might be landing at a nearby airport, the craft did not look like a conventional airplane. It was triangular shaped with a white light at each corner. The object was in sight for about two minutes and then it just vanished rather than landing.

Near Holloman AFB in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the witness saw what was described as a formation of six lights on two separate craft on January 26 of this year. The witness was driving towards town and saw the lights that were stationary. The witness said that there were many aircraft and drones in the area, but the light configuration was nothing like those. The witness mentioned a good knowledge of the various aircraft and drone configurations that were often seen around Holloman. Although the witness stopped to take a picture with a cell phone, the UFOs simply disappeared before any photograph was taken. The witness said that these were UFOs and that weird things had been happening around Holloman.

Finally, on Christmas Eve last year, the witness reported a formation of steady red lights that were traveling north to south in Bettendorf, Iowa. As the UFOs approached, they suddenly disappeared. There was no noise and the witness said he originally thought they were drones until they disappeared. The witness took pictures of the formation.

Bettendorf, Iowa on Christmas Even, 2021.

I’ll note here that I selected these last cases because the witnesses’ first thoughts were about drones. This seems to be a growing problem because there are now so many drones around and by putting a few LEDs on them, a rather convincing sighting can be faked. It’s just one more thing that we must watch for as we investigate UFO sightings.

The Congressional UAP Report

 

As many of you know, I have been suggesting that the report due to Congress Friday will be less than startling. I believe, based on the past, and on some of the things being said, that the report will focus on about 140 cases in which there were limited, obstructed views of the UFOs/UAPs and there will be a suggestion that drones, which are unmanned so that the effects of excessive accelerations won’t have a human crew to crush, are responsible for many of those sightings.

We have also heard that the equipment being used and the tactics employed during these events are considered top secret. The fear inside the military and the Department of Defense is that the revelation of these classified tactics and equipment will negatively affect national security. Or, in other words, these national security concerns will conceal the real nature of the UFOs/UAPs and we’ll be left with the same sort of nonsense that has been going on for decades.

Jacques Vallee

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with Jacques Vallee about a classified section of Project Blue Book. He suggested that the cases hadn’t been classified, but that was not accurate. Many of the early cases were classified as secret. You can see where the classification markings have been crossed out. And that didn’t address the issue of a secret, hidden part of Blue Book.

I had asked about this because of information I had received while writing UFOs and the Deep State. I had heard that there was a classified section to Project Blue Book and those files had never been released to the public. It could be said that national security was the reason but that is just an excuse to hide information that the DoD and the government, and by extension, the Deep State doesn’t want published. This hints at a less than comprehensive report.

The other thing that sometimes is overlooked is that before there was an official investigation, General Twining of the Air Materiel Command, had ordered an unofficial investigation beginning in December 1946.  This was the result of the incomplete study of the Foo Fighters of the Second World War, and a failure to find an explanation for the Ghost Rockets that had been reported in Scandinavia and later in northern Europe in 1946. Colonel Howard McCoy had been one of the intelligence officers involved in both these investigations. He was privately gathering information about UFOs through military channels.

Twining’s order came six or seven months before Kenneth Arnold made his sighting in June 1947. At that point, that unofficial investigation morphed into an official one. Orders were issued and Project Sign began in January 1948… but, the public was told the name was Project Saucer. In other words, evidence of the cover up began with the creation of Project Sign. Information flowing from that investigation to the public was not as complete as it could have been.

After an internal fight in the DoD about the reality of UFOs, and a hint that the Chief of Staff of the Air Force was less than enthusiastic about the existence of alien spacecraft, it was announced that Project Sign had been concluded and an official report was issued. There were no national security issues, and no evidence that alien spacecraft were flying around.

However, it was merely a name change. Project Grudge was born with the same people in the same offices at the same base. Following the script written before, in 1952, it was announced that Project Grudge had been concluded. The huge report claimed there were no national security issues and there was no evidence that alien spacecraft were flying around.

Ed Ruppelt

But it was another name change and Project Blue Book was born into this rather chaotic system. Ed Ruppelt, at the time a first lieutenant, was given the task of reorganizing the investigation. For several months, he upgraded the system and the investigations, gathering as much information as he could.

In January, 1953, the CIA sponsored a panel to review the evidence. The chairman, Dr. H. P. Robertson, did not believe that there were alien spacecraft visiting Earth. He chose the panel members based, not on their unbiased opinions, but on their holding the same beliefs about the flying saucers as he did. It wasn’t a panel to review the data but one designed to destroy interest in the topic and convince the civilian world that there were no UFOs visiting Earth. It was hoped that this blatant appeal to authority would end interest and speculation about UFOs. The Deep State was still not interested in sharing its information with the public.

Although the panel’s report was classified, and the recommendations were that UFOs be “debunked,” Project Blue Book remained in operation until 1969. It was ended as a result of the University of Colorado study paid for by the Air Force. Dr. Edward Condon concluded that there were no national security issues, there was nothing to be learned from further study, and the Air Force had done a good job just as he had been hired to do. You might say that this was Robertson 2.0.

There were, of course other issues. The official figures for Blue Book were that the Air Force had investigation 12,618 sightings and of those, 701 remained unidentified. This is not true.

There are more than 13,000 sightings in the files. Many are in a section labeled “Additional Reported Sightings (not cases).” These are everything from newspaper clippings to intelligence reports on some of the sightings but were not, apparently, submitted through an official channel and were not investigated further. They were merely filed and then, routinely, ignored.

Although there are only 701 sightings labeled as “unidentified,” there are many more which are not identified. I took a look at a representative sample of cases labeled as “insufficient data for a scientific analysis,” and found there are something like 4000 labeled that way. It means there is no solution for the sighting but it is outside the dreaded “unidentified” category. It is labeled but not solved.

And I haven’t even mentioned those cases that do have solutions that make no sense, given the facts. The Levelland, Texas, sightings of November 1957 are a good example. Witnesses at least thirteen separate locations reported the UFO close to the ground and that the operation of their motor vehicles was impaired. The Air Force explanation is “ball lightning.” This overlooks the fact that ball lightning is extremely rare, it lasts for seconds and is rarely over 18 inches in diameter. Witness testimony refutes ball lightning as a solution, but the Air Force has the case labeled and that was the whole point.

I will note here that Condon carried on that tradition. About a third of the cases investigated by the Condon Committee had no solution to them. One was labeled as a phenomenon so rare it had never been seen before or since.” Not much of a solution but then, they didn’t leave it as unidentified.

And that brings around to Friday’s projected release of the UFO/UAP study. If history is any guide, then we will see the same sort of misdirection, misinterpretation, and misinformation. Senator Marco Rubio has suggested just that. He said that he believes the report “will provide more questions than answers,” and that it “will hold back a lot, partly because the technology we use to capture and analyze the images are top secret.” He did suggest that “If they classified something spicy in it, ain’t no way that doesn’t leak.”

The problem here is that an unnamed source leaking highly classified material about UFOs/UAPs might not be believed. It will look just like so much other false information coming from the government. Without a source and without some sort of extra evidence, the leak will be ignored.

In other words, I think this is going to be Condon 2.0. An attempt to avoid answering the questions by hiding the information under the mantle of national security and answers that provide no information. It won’t move us toward Disclosure or revelation about what is happening and what is being seen and photographed, but then that’s what the Deep State wants. Keep it buried to keep them in power.

Chasing Footnotes (almost) and Frank Scully

It has been a while since I chased a footnote or two because, frankly, I don’t look for these things. I just stumble across them in my research. But sometimes, someone provides a lead. David Gumina, an Australian, provided the information for this, though it’s not exactly chasing a footnote it comes close.

Gumina wrote that he had been listening to a program that mentioned the Aztec UFO crash and Frank Scully’s book, Behind the Flying Saucers. He wrote, “So I thought I would read Scully’s book to get a better idea of the story. However, getting to the chapter ‘The Air Force Reports’, Scully claims an astronomer by the name of Dr. Walter Lee Moore ‘reported that he personally focused his telescope on several flying disks’.”

Given the lead from Gumina, I, naturally, grabbed my copy of Scully’s book so that I could read exactly what he had written. On page 77 of the hardback edition of Behind the Flying Saucers, Scully wrote:

I take it that Air Materiel Intelligence screens its astronomers [a reference to the hiring of Dr. J. Allen Hynek as Project Sign’s scientific consultant]. Had it found itself saddled with Dr. Walter Lee Moore, astronomer of the University of Louisville, instead of Dr. Hynek of [The] Ohio State University, it might have got a different story about flying saucers. Dr. Moore reported that he personally focused his telescope on several flying disks. They headed straight toward Venus. Venus was nearer to the sun – in its pirogee (sic) [perigee] phase. The day was clear. In fact the planet could have been seen that day during the daytime with the naked eye.

According to Dr. Moore the disks headed straight toward Venus on the return trip. This led him to suspect that as little as we know of what is going on behind those Venusian cloudbanks, Venus is the point of origin of those flying saucers which he saw and those which Kenneth Arnold saw.

But Aero-Medical Laboratory men instead of Dr. Moore were called in by Air Materiel Command Intelligence to needle Arnold’s story. They stated that an object traveling at 1,200 miles per hour would not be visible to the naked eye.

But Arnold didn’t say he looked at them with a naked eye, and the Aero-Medical Laboratory men, who of course were not up there with Arnold, never reported how fast Arnold’s eyes might be at spotting objects twenty-five miles away possibly scooting by him as he jogged along at 200 miles per hour. They never checked on Dr. Moore’s either. In fact as far as I could find, Air Materiel Command Intelligence never evaluate, and, if so, never released Dr. Moore’s report at all.

Gumina followed up on this, searching for the original source of Moore’s report, or rather how Moore got involved in this at all. Moore’s report doesn’t really reflect what Scully had written. Moore was quoted in story that was related to the Mantell incident. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal on January 9, 1948:

But when Dr. Walter Lee Moore, University of Louisville astronomer, focused his telescope by measurements given him by Godman Field officers it was trained straight on the planet Venus.

Dr. Moore said Venus was near the sun at this time and added that “very exceptional atmospheric conditions” could have made it visible to the naked eye during the day.

“If they chased Venus in airplanes,” said Dr. Moore, “they certainly had a long way to go.”

Moore mentioned nothing about seeing any flying disks. He was saying that Venus was at the point in the sky where he focused his telescope and suggesting that the viewing conditions were good enough that pilots could have spotted the planet in the daylight. There was nothing about disks and certainly no suggestion that the mythical disks were aimed at Venus. The statements by Scully seem to lack any

Balloons are sometimes mistaken for
UFOs.

understanding of interplanetary flight and that those leaving Earth for another planet don’t aim at where it is, but where it will be.

We also know, today, that the cloud cover on Venus does not hide a tropical planet, but one that has a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead. Given that, we can say that any flying saucers that might have been spotted on Earth didn’t come from Venus.

And, that discussion about what Arnold might have been able to see from his cockpit is also irrelevant. The sentence, “…the Aero-Medical Laboratory men, who of course were not up there with Arnold never reported how fast Arnold’s eyes might be at spotting objects twenty-five miles away possibly scooting by him as he jogged along at 200 miles per hour,” is nonsensical.

Finally, I’m not sure why those at “Air Materiel Intelligence,” which is probably a reference to ATIC and Project Sign, would have needed to discuss anything with Moore. His observations of Venus and its relative brightness adds nothing to the investigation they were conducting, other than corroborate Hynek’s suggestion that Venus would have been bright enough to be seen in the afternoon sky, if someone knew where to look for it.

The point, however, is that Scully took a few basic facts and twisted them around to fit his belief structure. When we get to the original source, we find that he has embellished the account almost to the point that it is unrecognizable. This is just another fine example of the need to get to the original source to learn the truth. Moore’s report is nothing like Scully reported and if he could mangle the story to the point he did, you have to wonder about the accuracy of the rest of his reporting.

History's Project Blue Book

Back in the 1970s, Jack Webb of Dragnet fame created something he called Project UFO. It was based on the files of Project Blue Book and it was difficult to recognize the cases presented. The attitude of the program, if I remember it correctly, was to

Jack Webb

examine a case that might have been inexplicable and find a rational and reasonable answer before the hour expired. Although I was excited about the show, I was quickly disappointed in the final product. It reeked somewhat, again if I remember correctly, of a debunking operation.

This new incarnation, given the snappy tile of Project Blue Book, seems to be at the other end of the spectrum. It suggests a grand conspiracy that involves what most of us believe is the mythical MJ-12, Air Force officers who will go to about any length to prove a case has a terrestrial explanation and a hint of the Men in Black. In other words, it is filled with the paranoia of the UFO field and has very little to do with the reality of the situation as it was then or as it is now.

While it is suggested that it is based on the history of Project Blue Book, very little of what I saw was based on that. About the only things that were accurate were the names of some of the people such as Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Project Blue Book. Once beyond the superficial, we plunge headlong into the fantasy that has grown up around UFO investigation. In one scene, a general walks into an office that is reminiscent of Fox Mulder’s FBI office filled with photographs, newspaper clippings and drawings of alien creatures. Since this is the beginning of Hynek’s association with Blue Book (Project Sign actually), some of the material there is out of place. It shouldn’t show up for years.

And while I’m in a nitpicking mood, I’ll note that the military customs and courtesies are simply misunderstood. The civilian show runners and directors don’t understand saluting and get it wrong. You have an Air Force captain referring to Hynek as “Doc,” which seemed to be a little disrespectful. And the uniforms seemed to be a combination of Army and Air Force, meaning that elements of Army uniforms showed up on the Air Force uniforms. As I say, nitpicking.

The real trouble here is a suggestion that the stories are grounded in reality but I fear it is a reality driven by every paranoid rumor, half-truth and fantasy that has infected the UFO community since the 1940s. I just had a hard time getting beyond all of that. I was hoping for something that had a little more of a documentary atmosphere, not something that was invented for a story that has little to do with the history of Blue Book.

In other words, as Jack Webb had done decades ago, we have a show that is “based” on the truth, but that moves into fiction immediately. I was quickly disappointed again. However, this time, I recognized the case that began the tale

Lt. George Gorman on the left.

without having to have the producers tell what it was. The opening sequence and the investigation are wrapped around the October 1, 1948, sighting by Second Lieutenant George Gorman, an Air National Guard pilot, on a routine night flying mission near Fargo, North Dakota.

In the show, he buzzes a football stadium, climbs out and spots something, a glowing ball in the distance. He attempts to intercept, chases it, is apparently hit by it, and open fires on it. Once he lands, he is more than a little crazed by the events and for me, talks gibberish.  He is suffering from an acute case of PTSD and eventually ends up in the psycho ward before being given a shot and dragged off. Apparently, the shot will wipe out his short-term memory of the event.

Hynek is called in to investigate and walked over to where the plane is being examined. He is stopped by a military guard but Hynek gives him the facts of high-altitude radiation and then is allowed to not only examine the plane but to sit in the cockpit. The guard should be reprimanded because he didn’t know that Hynek was authorized to see the plane and shouldn’t have allowed him close to it. After the captain with Hynek told the guard that Hynek was authorized to examine anything he wanted should the guard allow him to pass.

But really, all of this is trivia. If you understand that this is a television drama and not a documentary, that they were not constrained by what really happened, and that they are creating situation to move the plot, then the show is enjoyable. Maybe I nitpick a little too much, but that’s half the fun for me. I am interested in where the show is going and how many elements that have nothing to do with Blue Book will be brought in. I suspect they are going for an X-Files vibe as opposed to an actually historical vibe.

For those interested in the facts of this case, I have examined the relevant documents contained in the Blue Book files. Gorman was building his nighttime flight experience at the time. As the program told us, Gorman did, in fact, fly over a football stadium but at 1500 feet, as FAA regulations required. Gorman did see a smaller aircraft about 500 feet below him. (We would later learn that it was flown by Dr. L. N. Cannon with his friend Einar Neilson thought the names are redacted in the actual files.) He then spotted another object that was flying between the Hector Airport Tower and the football field. The tower operator told Gorman that there was only one other private aircraft in the sky. Gorman said that he was going to give chase. Gorman later told the Air Force investigators:

After the initial peel off, I realized the speed of the object was too great to catch in a straight chase, so I proceeded to cut it off in turns. At this time my fighter was under full power. My speed varying between 300 and 400. The object circled to the left, I cut back to the right for a head-on pass. The pass was made at apparently 5000 feet, the object approaching head-on until a collision seemed inevitable. The object veered and passed apparently 500 feet or less over the top above me. I chandelled [a flight maneuver] around still without the object in sight. The object made a 180 degree turn and initiated a pass at me. This time I watched it approach all the way as it started to pull up, I pulled up abruptly trying to ram the object until straight up with me following at apparently 14,000 feet, I stalled out at 14,000 feet with the object apparently 2000 feet above me circling to the left. We made two circles to the left. The object then pulled out away from me and made another head-on pass. At this time the pass started and the object broke off a large distance from me heading over Hector Airport to the northwest at apparently 11,000 feet. I gave a chase circling to the left trying to cut it off until I was 25 miles southeast of Fargo. I was at 14,000 feet, the object at 11,000 when I again gave the aircraft full power… to catch it in a diving turn. The object turned around and made another head-on pass. This time when pulling up, I pulled up also and observed it traveling straight up until I lost it. I then returned to the field and landed.

Although the program suggested that Gorman had fired on the object and that his aircraft had been damaged by it, there is nothing in the Blue Book files to corroborate that. This is artistic license, I suppose, but it is important to note that this was an aspect added to the story.

Gorman did say, “I am convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvers.” He added:

I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate and although it was able to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it still followed a natural curve. When I attempted to turn with the object I blacked out temporarily due to excessive speed… I do not believe thee are many pilots who could withstand the turn and speed effected by the object, and remain conscious.

There were other witnesses, though they didn’t support all of the statements made by Gorman. One of those was Dr. Cannon and he provided a statement for Air Force investigators. It said:

I was flying and Nielson was using the phone and while circling the Football Field at the A.C. at 1600 feet, the Fargo tower advised us there was a [F]-51 in the air and a few moments later asked who the third plane might be. We had noticed the 51, and when we were over the North side of Hector Field going West a light seemingly on a plane flared above and to the North moving very swiftly toward the West. At first we thought it was the 51 but we then saw the lights of the 51 higher and more over the field. We landed… and then went up to the tower and listened to the calls from the 51 which seemed to be trying to overtake the plane or lighted object which then went southward and over the city. The plane was moving very swiftly, much faster than the 51. Tried to get a better view with a pair of binoculars but couldn’t follow it well enough…

In the tower, L. D. Jensen, said that he had seen the object or light at about 1000 feet in the northwest, pass rapidly over the field, flying in a straight line. He could see no form or shape, even through binoculars, and he could not see the maneuvers of either the F-51 or the object.

Officers from Project Sign, the forerunner of Blue Book, arrived from Ohio and interviewed all the witnesses. Eventually, after an investigation that included testing Gorman’s aircraft for radiation [which might have had more to do with the altitude and cosmic radiation rather than alien spacecraft], they concluded that Gorman had engaged in a dogfight with a balloon. Dr. Donald Menzel believed that Jupiter had a role in the dogfight as well. The official answer in the Blue Book files is balloon.

Jerry Clark, who is one of the historians of the UFO field, and who might be THE historian of the field, wrote in his UFO Encyclopedia:

Though some knowledgeable students of the UFO phenomenon… have rejected such an explanation for this famous sighting, unlike some Air Force would-be solutions this one seems plausible, particularly in the light of the failure of ground witnesses to confirm the extraordinary performance Gorman ascribed to the object he was pursuing After the Mantell incident [in which another Air Guard pilot was killed chasing what turned out to be a balloon], the Gorman sighting may be the most overrated UFO report in the early history of the phenomenon.

I will note here that Clark is more liberal than I when it comes to UFO sightings and explanations, so his conclusion here carries extra weight. I agree with him. Gorman somehow tangled with a balloon.

There is one final point and that concerns the over reaction of the pilot in, dare I say it, the pilot of Project Blue Book. There is no evidence Gorman was completely freaked out over the encounter. True, he had trouble landing the aircraft, but that was the reaction of the encounter. It was not a long-term problem. He remained in the Air Guard and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1969.

Kenneth Arnold and the Null Hypothesis

It has become an article of faith among some that the Kenneth Arnold sighting with its misreported description of a flying saucer is the genesis of modern UFO shape. Arnold had said that the objects he saw moved with a “motion like that of saucers skipping across a pond,” which reporters took to mean that Arnold had seen disk-like objects. Skeptics have pointed out this error, suggesting that Arnold had not seen a disk, but crescent-shaped or heel-shaped craft. Others, coming after Arnold, used this error in their descriptions of UFOs because that was what had been so widely reported. Skeptics said, “Arnold didn't see a saucer--but the press reported that he did and thereafter saucers were pretty much the standard shape for UFO's. Denying the implications of this is just part of the reason that UFO belief falls outside scientific (or rational) interest.”

I had suggested a null hypothesis for this. If we found sighting reports in the months that preceded Arnold that would suggest that some were reporting what they had seen without contamination by the press reports of Arnold’s “flying saucers.” The response to that was:

I don't think so. It's a rather common shape and is documented in earlier science fiction.

It's the huge media frenzy and the resulting reports that followed that suggest that the shape followed the press report. We have no reason to think that all of those reports were anything other than at least the standard ~90% (and I suggest more like 100%) bunk that make up all UFO cases. So among those cases, it is strongly suggested that folks had learned that they should see saucers (not the off bat-wing/half plates that Arnold saw). And they dutifully began to "see" them.

Of course nothing social like this is open and shut and completely clear cut. There very well may have been earlier reports of a saucer shape. I don't think that matters.

I think there is plenty reason, particularly under media induced hysteria. I will mention the famous experiments done in the UK that David Clarke revisits in his excellent new book, "How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth" as rather clear evidence of this.

Again, ignoring or trying to feebly minimize this inconvenient truth hasn't served UFO believers well in trying to get folks outside the myth to take interest.

Or, in other words the null hypothesis was rejected because there were other influences that could account for the reported shape of these objects. The suggestion that it was documented earlier in science fiction might be seen as a corollary to the null hypothesis, or that science fiction images influenced the description of the flying saucers rather than the misreporting in 1947. It seems to me that this would nullify the idea that Arnold’s sighting was the driving force here because you couldn’t have it both ways. Either science fiction was responsible or the reports of Arnold’s flying saucers were.

I made a survey of science fiction magazine covers for the 1940s and didn’t find the saucer shape to be there. I was thinking that most people in the 1940s wouldn’t be reading science fiction and any exposure to the concepts would have come from seeing the magazine covers on the newsstands. When spacecraft were represented, they fell into the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon rockets with tail fins. A saucer shape behind the alien spacecraft just wasn’t seen all that often.

The same can be said for the representations in science fiction movies and serials that would have had a wider audience. The few that had a space theme again fell into the rockets seen in Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon arena. When the saucer

The Day the Earth Stood Still.

shape appeared, it was post Arnold and could be said that the flying saucers being reported influenced the look of alien craft in the movies. The 1950 classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of the best examples of this.

I would suggest at this point that one of the null hypotheses has failed. Science fiction did not influence the shape of the objects reported in 1947. There were simply too few, if any, examples of saucers as spacecraft in the literature or the movies. If there was an influence, then the reports would have been of rockets rather than saucers.

That leaves the idea that there were saucers or disks reported prior to Arnold. Looking at the literature, there are many examples. Biron Savage said that he had seen a flat, disk-like object in May 1947. That was documented in the press on June 26, 1947.

And that illustrates the problem for many of those earlier sightings. Project Blue Book mentioned a number of pre-Arnold sightings, but it seems they were reported after Arnold. Any reports that had been gathered prior to Arnold disappeared when the official investigation of UFOs began. (And yes, that can be proven. Sightings mentioned in both Project Sign’s and Project Grudge’s final reports mention sightings that are not found in the Blue Book index but indicate they had been gathered.)

I did find other pre-Arnold sightings that mention disks or saucers. On February 28, a formation of disks was reported near Lake Mead. In March 1947 a Los Angeles woman said that she’d seen a disk. Also in March a disk was seen early in the morning in Putnam, Connecticut. On March 30, two women and a young girl saw several silvery disks. On April 11, a woman watched a disk-shaped object for two minutes. On June 2, a circular object was seen in Shreveport, Louisiana.  Well, you get the point. Many sightings but the problem is that the documentation for these all come from sources published after June 24, 1947.

The exception for this might be the Minczewski case from Richmond, Virginia in April. This is one of those sightings that was apparently investigated by the Army prior to the Arnold sighting. There is no record of it in the Blue Book files, but it is mentioned in the Project Grudge final report. That suggests to me that there would have been documentation for it prior to Arnold but the case file was removed from the “regular” files at some point. In all fairness, I must note that I have found no documentation dated prior to Arnold about this sighting. I merely have a suspicion that it does exist if we could access the proper records… which means we haven’t asked the right agency to review their files.

Without being able to document that these sightings were reported prior to Arnold, it can be said that they were contaminated by the press after Arnold. There is no proof of that, but then, without some sort of documentation, that is a possibility and that means the null hypothesis is unconfirmed at this point. Not that it is in error but it is unconfirmed.

There is another factor in all of this. I noticed, as I surveyed the newspapers from that era that flying saucer or flying disk was used to describe objects even when the witness used other words. In an article headlined, “Carpenter Reports ‘Discs’ in Midwest.” The last line in the article said, “He added that he could not describe the shape of the objects since he could not see them clearly.”

In an article that was headlined, “Flying Saucer Story Grows,” it was reported that George Glover, in Bellingham, Washington, said that he had seen several shiny objects that were shaped like kites. In another sighting reported in that article, the object was described as round, like the sun.

In a case that underscored this point, the article, headlined, “AKRON, O., July 5 (AP) — ‘Flying saucers’ made their appearance here Friday night,” when it was reported, “Dr. Forrest Shaver said the silvery disc he saw ‘looked like a balloon with a light inside.’ Larry E. Hoertz described it as ‘a light with a propelling device.’ Both men said they saw the ‘saucers’ about 8:30 P. M. while driving near Akron.” This suggests that the term had become generic, describing any strange thing in the sky regardless of shape.

In the end, we have a theory, that the error made by reporters in the Arnold case drove the shape of the objects seen in its wake. But what a review of the newspaper articles show is that flying saucer and flying disk became the generic term for all unidentified objects including those that were not circular or round. A review of the literature shows that many of the reports were of lights in the sky, bright flashes of light that had no shape behind them, star-like objects, streaks of light and cigar-shaped objects.

What is interesting is the claim that even if it was proven that saucer-shaped craft were seen prior to Arnold, it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters because it nullifies the theory that people saw saucers because that was what was reported by the press after Arnold.

As it stands right now, the null hypothesis is unconfirmed and the theory is unproven. Additional information and documentation can solve this riddle but it will take some in depth research. My survey of newspaper articles wasn’t as extensive as it could have been, but even though limited, I found many examples suggesting shapes other than saucer and articles that mentioned “disk sightings” but the object see was not disk shaped.

This discussion seems to be one that we all could end by simply surveying the newspaper articles from June 24 to July 9 (when the press seemed to mostly stop reporting saucers at the request of the Army and Navy). One of the places to begin would be Ted Bloecher’s Report on the Wave of 1947. We can actually apply some science here and reach an intelligent and proper conclusion.

The Washington National UFO Sighting Press Conference, Part 1

I have been advised, by a friend, Tim Banse, who seems to understand these things, that some of my postings are waaaaaaaay too long. He suggested that I break them up into smaller bites. In keeping with what I believe to be sage advice, here is the first part of the entire transcript, with my editorial comments, of the Air Force press conference about the Washington National UFO sightings in 1952.

This came about after the second round of Saturday night radar and visual sightings, and after a number of failed intercept attempts. The Air Force believed it necessary to call a press conference to explain the situation, at least as they saw it. Ed Ruppelt called the conference the largest and longest that had been held by the Air Force since the conclusion of the Second World War. Ruppelt also suggested that the cards had been stacked again Major General John A. Samford, the Director of Intelligence, who was the senior officer at the conference. Because Samford had to "hedge" on many of the answers to questions because the investigations had not been concluded, it seemed, to many of the assembled reporters, that the Air Force was attempting to hide the truth.

The press conference was held at the Pentagon, in room 3E-869, to be precise. Also attending for the Air Force was Major General Roger M. Ramey, then the Director of Operations for the Air Force and the same Roger Ramey who had been at 8th Air Force Headquarters in Fort Worth during the Roswell UFO crash briefings in July, 1947, as our old friend CDA thought to advise me, as if I didn’t know. Others there for the Air Force included Colonel Donald L. Bower, of ATIC, Captain Roy L. James, an expert in radar operations and also from ATIC, Ed Ruppelt, the chief of Project Blue Book, and Mr. Buroyne L. Griffing, a civilian from ATIC.

Conspicuous by their absence were Major Dewey Fournet, the military liaison officer between the Pentagon and Project Blue Book, Al Chop, the official Pentagon spokesman on UFOs, and Lt. John Holcomb, the Naval officer who was an expert on radar and electronics. Since all three had been at Washington National during the second set of sightings, their inclusion would seem to be a natural event. Apparently the Air Force had other ideas because none were there to answer questions even though all were assigned to the Pentagon in Washington.

The press conference began with an introduction by a civilian Pentagon press relations official who said:

Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind the military that, while they are welcome here, this is a press conference and let’s be sure that the press is all seated before the conference begins.

This refers to the fact that many military officers who had no role in the press conference were in the room to listen to it. They were being told to sit down and shut up.

Let me introduce General Samford, Air Force Director of Intelligence, and General Ramey, Director of Operations. General Samford.

Major General Samford: I think the plan is to have very brief opening remarks and then ask for such questions as you may want to put to us for discussion and answer. In so far as opening remarks is [sic] concerned, I just want to state our reason for concern about this.

The Air Force feels a very definite obligation to identify and analyze things that happen in the air that may have in them menace to the United States and, because of that feeling of obligation and our pursuit of that interest, since 1947, we have an activity that was known one time as Project Saucer and now, as part of another more stable and integrated organization, have undertaken to analyze between a thousand and two thousand reports dealing with this area. And out of that mass of reports that we’ve received we’ve been able to take things which were originally unidentified and dispose of them to our satisfaction in terms of bulk where we came to the conclusion that these things were either friendly aircraft erroneously recognized or reported, hoaxes, quite a few of those, electronic and meteorological phenomena of one sort of another, light aberrations, and many other things.

It is important to note that there never was a Project Saucer in a real sense. When the Air Force created its first investigation, code named Sign, it publicly called the project by the name of Saucer. Later, after the code name Sign was compromised, the Air Force announced that it had ended its investigation, but, in reality, continued it as Project Grudge. Eventually Grudge evolved into Project Blue Book, but when speaking with civilian officials and members of the press, the unofficial name of Project Saucer was often used.

The actual press conference began then and will be noted in the next installment of this posting.