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Author | Edward J. Ruppelt |
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Subject | Unidentified flying objects |
Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1956 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 315 |
LC Class | TL789 .R8 |
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects is a 1956 book by then-retired Air Force UFO investigator Edward J. Ruppelt, detailing his experience running Project Bluebook. [1] The book was noted for its suggestion that a few UFO sightings might be linked to spikes of atomic radiation. [2] Contemporary media summarized four topics discussed in the book: [3]
In 1960, Ruppelt authored a second edition in which he reported being "positive" that UFOs do not exist. [4]
Ruppelt was a captain in the US Air Force who served as director of official investigations into UFOs: Project Grudge and Project Bluebook. [5] During his time as director, Ruppelt had coined the term UFO.
In the foreword, Ruppelt argues: "It is well known that ever since the first flying saucer was reported in June 1947 the Air Force has officially said that there is no proof that such a thing as an interplanetary spaceship exists. But what is not well known is that this conclusion is far from being unanimous among the military and their scientific advisers". [6] [7]
Ruppelt begins Chapter One with a tale, set in Summer 1952, where an unnamed F-86 fighter pilot fires on an unidentified target, only to be ridiculed as having 'cracked up' or panicked. [8] Ruppelt claims the report on the incident was burned and never submitted to Bluebook—Ruppelt claims he learned of the incident through informal channels. [8]
Ruppelt describes how Bluebook handled income UFO reports. Many stories were classed "Insufficient Data for Evaluation", while a "Crackpot" file held reports from people "who had talked with flying saucer crews, who had inspected flying saucers that had landed in the United States, who had ridden in flying saucers, or who were members of flying saucer crews." [8] In contrast, potentially-"good" reports were those from trusted, trained observers like higher-ranking military personnel. [8]
Ruppelt describes giving briefings to students at Air Force's Command and Staff school, Air Force Intelligence School, Office of Naval Research, as well as the Atomic Energic Commission's Los Alamos laboratory and Sandia Base. [8]
Ruppelt notes the discrepancy between public denials of official interest during the same era his groups was actively studying UFOs: "All of this time unnamed Air Force officials were disclaiming serious interest in the UFO subject. Yet every time a newspaper reporter went out to interview a person who had seen a UFO, intelligence agents had already been flown in, gotten the detailed story complete with sketches of the UFO, and sped back to their base to send the report to Project Sign. Many people had supposedly been "warned" not to talk too much. The Air Force was mighty interested in hallucinations." [8]
Chapter Two, "The Era of Confusion Begins", discusses the Arnold Sighting and the subsequent 1947 flying disc craze. After initial skepticism, sightings from military personnel caught the attention of the Air Force Technical Intelligence Center. [9] Ruppelt explains that "as more UFO's were observed near the Air Force's Muroc Test Center, the Army's White Sands Proving Ground, and atomic bomb plants, ATIC's efforts became more concentrated." [9]
Ruppelt described the Maury Island Incident, in which original saucer witness Kenneth Arnold was given mundane lava rocks claimed to have come from flying saucer. [9] Arnold contacted Air Force investigators, who flew to investigate. [9] On their return, the two investigators died when their plane suffered engine trouble. [10] [9]
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects was the first to reveal that on September 23, 1947, Lieutenant General Nathan Twining had issued a memo to Brigadier General George Schulgen of the Army Air Forces. [11] The subject line of the memo read "AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs. [11] '" The general tone of the memo was that unidentified objects seen in the skies by military personnel were not weather, astronomical or other phenomenon but rather objects that warranted further investigation. Twining wrote "The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." [11]
The Twining memo should not be confused with the "Cutler/Twining memo" dated July 14, 1954, included as part of the alleged Majestic 12 documents in 1985. [12] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared those documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. [12]
Chapter Three, "The Classics" discusses the three most prominent reports of 1948: The Mantell Incident, where a National Guard pilot died chasing as UFO; The Chiles-Whitted Incident, where airline pilots reported a near-collision with a UFO; and the Gorman Dogfight, where a National Guard pilot engaged a UFO. Ruppelt discusses alleged incidents at Oak Ridge and Hanford, both major US atomic plants. Ruppelt discusses a report from Germany, dated November 23, 1948, which marked the first report featuring visual contact while simultaneously being picked up on radar. [13]
Chapter Four, "Green Fireballs, Project Twinkle, Little Lights, and Grudge", being with descriptions of green fireballs first seen over New Mexico in November 1948. [14] Ruppelt recalls "They might be common meteorites, psychologically enlarged flares, or true UFO's, but whatever they were they were playing around in one of the most sensitive security areas in the United States." [14] Ruppelt reports that a conference was called at Los Alamos in February 1949. [14]
In Summer 1949, the Air Force's Cambridge Research Laboratories established "Project Twinkle" to attempt to photograph the objects; It yields no results. [14]
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects was the first to reveal the existence of Project Sign. Ruppelt also claimed that Sign had produced an "Estimate of the Situation" which endorsed an interplanetary explanation for UFOs, but General Hoyt Vandenberg, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, shut down Project Sign for lack of proof. [15]
Folklore historian Curtis Peebles described the Estimate as "the most controversial document in the early history of the flying saucer myth". [5] In the wake of the Report, top Air Force officials denied the Estimate ever existed. [16] No copy of this document or any other corroboration of Ruppelt's claim has been produced, [17] and Popular Mechanics called the report "probably more mythological than real". [18]
Chapter Five, "The Dark Ages", describes the shift from Project Sign to Project Grudge, beginning February 11, 1949. Ruppelt charges that "standard intelligence procedures were no longer being used by Project Grudge. Everything was being evaluated on the premise that UFO's couldn't exist. No matter what you see or hear, don't believe it." [19] Ruppelt alleged that some "charter members of Project Sign had been 'purged.' These were the people who had refused to change their original opinions about UFO's." [19]
Chapter Six, "The Presses Roll—The Air Force Shrugs", describes how increasing public reporting of UFOs was met with relative indifference by the Air Force, who continued to maintain such objects did not exist. Chapter Seven, "The Pentagon Rumbles", discussed the publication of Frank Scully's book Behind the Flying Saucers with its tales of the Aztec, NM UFO hoax. After a Life Magazine article, official interest in UFOs begins to climb again. [20]
Chapter Eight, "The Lubbock Lights, Unabridged", discusses the Lubbock Lights incident of September 1951. [21] In Chapter Nine, "The New Project Grudge", Air Force investigators partners with civilian researchers to improve UFO reporting and investigation. [22] Ruppelt argues that "UFO's were seen more frequently around areas vital to the defense of the United States. The Los Alamos-Albuquerque area, Oak Ridge, and White Sands Proving Ground rated high. Port areas, Strategic Air Command bases, and industrial areas ranked next... The frequency of the UFO reports was interesting. Every July there was a sudden increase in the number of reports and July was always the peak month of the year. Just before Christmas there was usually a minor peak." [23] [22] Chapter Ten, "Project Blue Book and the Big Build-Up", describes Ruppelt's activities during the first months of 1952, including a Life Magazine article titled Life Magazine article titled "Have We Visitors From Space?". [23]
Chapter Eleven, "The Big Flap", discusses the UFO 'wave' of Summer 1952, culminating in the Washington, D.C., UFO incident. [24] Chapter Twelve, "The Washington Merry-Go-Round", describes official reactions to the D.C. incident, culminating in Gen. Sanford's press conference. [25]
Chapter Thirteen, "Hoax or Horror?", describes Ruppelt's investigation of a Boy Scout leader alleged burned and rendered unconscious by a UFO. [26] In Chapter Fourteen, "Digesting the Data", Ruppelt describes plans to observe UFOs during the H-Bomb tests in the Pacific and a proposal for 'visual spotting stations' in northern New Mexico. [27] Chapter Fifteen, "The Radiation Story", examines a supposed link between UFOs and radiation. [28] [29] Chapter Sixteen, "The Hierarchy Ponders", describes the composition of the final report. [30]
In the seventeenth and final chapter, "What Are UFO's?", Ruppelt opines "I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to what the final outcome of the UFO investigation will be, but I am sure that within a few years there will be a proven answer." [31] The book concludes: "Maybe the final proven answer will be that all of the UFO's that have been reported are merely misidentified known objects. Or maybe the many pilots, radar specialists, generals, industrialists, scientists, and the man on the street who have told me, "I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it myself," knew what they were talking about. Maybe the earth is being visited by interplanetary spaceships. Only time will tell." [31]
Four years after the original publication, Ruppelt released a new edition with three additional chapters. In these, Ruppelt "seemed to have changed course", declaring UFOs to be a "Space Age Myth". [17]
In the first chapter, "And They're Still Flying", Ruppelt covered late 1950s sightings in Ohio, Colorado, and Kansas. Ruppelt discuses the formation of the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a non-profit organization established to investigate UFO reports, and his subsequent testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Government Operations. [32] In the second new chapter, "Off They Go into the Wild Blue Yonder", Ruppelt details George Adamski's wild stories of repeatedly traveling to Venus aboard a flying saucer, likening Adamski to P.T. Barnum. [33]
In the final chapter, "Do They or Don't They?", Ruppelt responds to the question "Do unidentified flying objects exist?" with the answer: "I'm positive they don't". [4]
The book has been called the "most significant" of its era. [5] The Buffalo News covered the book under the headline "You Saw a Spacehip? Air Force Won't Deny It", writing "Ruppelt reports their conclusion as one of rejection the theory that the objects are space ships, on the ground that there is no definite proof. However they did not reject the possibility and they urged the Air Force to continue investigating". [34]
A 1956 review described the Report as "the sober reporting of a man who was in charge of one of the official investigations", arguing that "Ruppelt never advances an explanation of what is inexplicable". [35] In the 1970s, UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek suggested that Ruppelt's "book should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in the history of this subject". [36]
Historian Curtis Peebles concludes that the book "should have ended the speculation about an Air Force cover-up. In fact, Ruppelt's statements were converted into support for the cover-up idea." [5]
An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.
Project Blue Book was the code name for the systematic study of unidentified flying objects by the United States Air Force from March 1952 to its termination on December 17, 1969. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was initially directed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and followed projects of a similar nature such as Project Sign established in 1947, and Project Grudge in 1949. Project Blue Book had two goals, namely, to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died when he crashed his P-51 Mustang fighter plane near Franklin, Kentucky, United States, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude, he blacked out from a lack of oxygen; his plane went into a downward spiral and crashed. The incident was among the most publicized of early UFO reports. Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which, in 1948, was a top-secret project that he would not have known about.
The Maury Island incident refers to claims made by Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl of falling debris and threats by men in black following sightings of unidentified flying objects in the sky over Maury Island, Washington, United States. The pair claimed that the events had occurred on June 21, 1947. The incident is widely regarded as a hoax, even by believers of flying saucers and UFOs.
The Flying Saucers Are Real, by Donald Keyhoe, was a book that investigated reports of UFOs by United States Air Force fighters, personnel, and other aircraft, between 1947 and 1950.
The Robertson Panel was a scientific committee which met in January 1953 headed by Howard P. Robertson. The Panel arose from a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) in December 1952 from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) review of the U.S. Air Force investigation into unidentified flying objects, Project Blue Book. The CIA review itself was in response to widespread reports of unidentified flying objects, especially in the Washington, D.C. area during the summer of 1952.
The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States as a UFO sighting, and was investigated by the U.S. Air Force. According to Ruppelt, Officially all of the sightings, except the UFO that was picked up on radar, are unknowns.
Edward James Ruppelt 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 (UFOs). 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 for short."
Project Sign or Project Saucer was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge.
Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) 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 1999.
The Mariana UFO incident occurred in August, 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The sighting, filmed by local baseball coach Nick Mariana, is believed to be among the first ever motion picture footage of what came to be called an unidentified flying object (UFO). The U.S. Air Force, after a short investigation, concluded that What Mariana had actually filmed were the reflections of two F-94 jet fighters, a claim that the Air Force would later retract.
The Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter occurred at approximately 2:45 AM on July 24, 1948, in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama, United States. Two commercial pilots, Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, claimed to have observed a "glowing object" pass by their plane before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and travel out of sight.
From July 12 to 29, 1952, a series of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings were reported in Washington, D.C., and later became known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap"—"Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports."
The Gorman dogfight was a widely publicized UFO incident which took place on October 1, 1948, in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, United States. United States Air Force (USAF) Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in his bestselling and influential The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that the "dogfight" was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that "proved to [Air Force] intelligence specialists that UFOs were real," along with the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Mantell UFO incident. In 1949, the official explanation made by the USAF was that the Gorman dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon.
UFO is a 1956 American semi-documentary about the development of the UFO phenomenon in the United States. Clips from the documentary have often been used in other UFO documentaries and television episodes related to UFOs.
The Coming of the Saucers is a 1952 book by original 'flying saucer' witness Kenneth Arnold and pulp magazine publisher Raymond Palmer. The book reprints and expands early articles the two had published in Palmer's Fate magazine. The work blends first-person accounts attributed to Arnold with third-person summations of UFO reports.
"Have We Visitors From Space?" was an article on Flying Saucers by H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna that appeared in the April 7, 1952 edition of Life magazine. The piece was strongly sympathetic to the hypothesis that UFOs might be the product of extraterrestrials. Publicity surrounding the piece is believed to have contributed to the 1952 UFO flap, a subsequent wave of reports that summer.
On the night of January 20, 1951, multiple individuals reported an unidentified cigar-shaped straight-winged aircraft over Sioux City, Iowa. By January 22, papers nationwide publicized had their reports. The incident continues to be discussed in the 21st-century.
On the night of January 29, 1952, amid the Korean War, four American military personnel aboard two different B-29 bombers reported seeing an orange globe-shaped light over two different cities in northern Korea: Wonsan and Sunchon. Air Force UFO experts argue that widespread reporting of the incident contributed to the 1952 UFO flap that culminated in sightings over the nation's capital.
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