Edward Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects

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THE REPORT ON UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

BY EDWARD J. RUPPELT
Former Head of the Air Force Project Blue Book

Published by
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
Garden City, New York

Note: This work was originally Copyright ? 1956 by Edward J. Ruppelt.
This book is now in the public domain because it was not renewed in a
timely fashion at the US Copyright Office, as required by law at the
time.

Contents

Foreword
1 Project Blue Book and the UFO Story
2 The Era of Confusion Begins
3 The Classics
4 Green Fireballs, Project Twinkle, Little Lights, and Grudge
5 The Dark Ages
6 The Presses Roll--The Air Force Shrugs
7 The Pentagon Rumbles
8 The Lubbock Lights, Unabridged
9 The New Project Grudge
10 Project Blue Book and the Big Build-Up
11 The Big Flap
12 The Washington Merry-Go-Round
13 Hoax or Horror?
14 Digesting the Data
15 The Radiation Story
16 The Hierarchy Ponders
17 What Are UFO's?
18 And They're Still Flying
19 Off They Go into the Wild Blue Yonder
20 Do They or Don't They?

to ELIZABETH and KRIS

Foreword

This is a book about unidentified flying objects--UFO's--"flying
saucers." It is actually more than a book; it is a report because it
is the first time that anyone, either military or civilian, has
brought together in one document all the facts about this fascinating
subject. With the exception of the style, this report is written
exactly the way I would have written it had I been officially asked
to do so while I was chief of the Air Force's project for
investigating UFO reports--Project Blue Book.

In many instances I have left out the names of the people who
reported seeing UFO's, or the names of certain people who were
associated with the project, just as I would have done in an official
report. For the same reason I have changed the locale in which some
of the UFO sightings occurred. This is especially true in chapter
fifteen, the story of how some of our atomic scientists detected
radiation whenever UFO's were reported near their "UFO-detection
stations." This policy of not identifying the "source," to borrow a
term from military intelligence, is insisted on by the Air Force so
that the people who have co-operated with them will not get any
unwanted publicity. Names are considered to be "classified
information."

But the greatest care has been taken to make sure that the omission
of names and changes in locale has in no way altered the basic facts
because this report is based on the facts--all of the facts--nothing
of significance has been left out.

It was only after considerable deliberation that I put this report
together, because it had to be told accurately, with no holds barred.
I finally decided to do it for two reasons. First, there is world-
wide interest in flying saucers; people want to know the facts. But
more often than not these facts have been obscured by secrecy and
confusion, a situation that has led to wild speculation on one end of
the scale and an almost dangerously blas? attitude on the other. It
is only when all of the facts are laid out that a correct evaluation
can be made.

Second, after spending two years investigating and analyzing UFO
reports, after talking to the people who have seen UFO's--
industrialists, pilots, engineers, generals, and just the plain man-
on-the-street, and after discussing the subject with many very
capable scientists, I felt that I was in a position to be able to put
together the complete account of the Air Force's struggle with the
flying saucer.

The report has been difficult to write because it involves something
that doesn't officially exist. It is well known that ever since the
first flying saucer was reported in June 1947 the Air Force has
officially said that there is no proof that such a thing as an
interplanetary spaceship exists. But what is not well known is that
this conclusion is far from being unanimous among the military and
their scientific advisers because of the one word, _proof_; so the
UFO investigations continue.

The hassle over the word "proof" boils down to one question: What
constitutes proof? Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to
the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof
when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept
it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have
the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet
pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of
court-martial? Does this constitute proof?

The at times hotly debated answer to this question may be the answer
to the question, "Do the UFO's really exist?"

I'll give you the facts--all of the facts--you decide.

_July_ _1955_, E. J. RUPPELT

CHAPTER ONE

Project Blue Book and the UFO Story

In the summer of 1952 a United States Air Force F-86 jet interceptor
shot at a flying saucer.

This fact, like so many others that make up the full flying saucer
story, has never before been told.

I know the full story about flying saucers and I know that it has
never before been told because I organized and was chief of the Air
Force's Project Blue Book, the special project set up to investigate
and analyze unidentified flying object, or UFO, reports. (UFO is the
official term that I created to replace the words "flying saucers.")

There is a fighter base in the United States which I used to visit
frequently because, during 1951, 1952, and 1953, it got more than its
share of good UFO reports.

The commanding officer of the fighter group, a full colonel and
command pilot, believed that UFO's were real. The colonel believed in
UFO's because he had a lot of faith in his pilots--and they had
chased UFO's in their F-86's. He had seen UFO's on the scopes of his
radar sets, and he knew radar.

The colonel's intelligence officer, a captain, didn't exactly
believe that UFO's were real, but he did think that they warranted
careful investigation. The logic the intelligence officer used in
investigating UFO reports--and in getting answers to many of them--
made me wish many times that he worked for me on Project Blue Book.

One day the intelligence officer called me at my base in Dayton,
Ohio. He wanted to know if I was planning to make a trip his way
soon. When I told him I expected to be in his area in about a week,
he asked me to be sure to look him up. There was no special hurry, he
added, but he had something very interesting to show me.

When we got wind of a good story, Project Blue Book liked to start
working on it at once, so I asked the intelligence officer to tell me
what he had. But nothing doing. He didn't want to discuss it over the
phone. He even vetoed the idea of putting it into a secret wire. Such
extreme caution really stopped me, because anything can be coded and
put in a wire.

When I left Dayton about a week later I decided to go straight to
the fighter base, planning to arrive there in midmorning. But while I
was changing airlines my reservations got fouled up, and I was faced
with waiting until evening to get to the base. I called the
intelligence officer and told him about the mix-up. He told me to
hang on right there and he would fly over and pick me up in a T-33 jet.

As soon as we were in the air, on the return trip, I called the
intelligence officer on the interphone and asked him what was going
on. What did he have? Why all the mystery? He tried to tell me, but
the interphone wasn't working too well and I couldn't understand what
he was saying. Finally he told me to wait until we returned to his
office and I could read the report myself.

Report! If he had a UFO report why hadn't he sent it in to Project
Blue Book as he usually did?

We landed at the fighter base, checked in our parachutes, Mae Wests,
and helmets, and drove over to his office. There were several other
people in the office, and they greeted me with the usual question,
"What's new on the flying saucer front?" I talked with them for a
while, but was getting impatient to find out what was on the
intelligence officer's mind. I was just about to ask him about the
mysterious report when he took me to one side and quietly asked me
not to mention it until everybody had gone.

Once we were alone, the intelligence officer shut the door, went
over to his safe, and dug out a big, thick report. It was the
standard Air Force reporting form that is used for all intelligence
reports, including UFO reports. The intelligence officer told me that
this was the only existing copy. He said that he had been told to
destroy all copies, but had saved one for me to read.

With great curiosity, I took the report and started to read. What
_had_ happened at this fighter base?

About ten o'clock in the morning, one day a few weeks before, a
radar near the base had picked up an unidentified target. It was an
odd target in that it came in very fast--about 700 miles per hour--
and then slowed down to about 100 miles per hour. The radar showed
that it was located northeast of the airfield, over a sparsely
settled area.

Unfortunately the radar station didn't have any height-finding
equipment. The operators knew the direction of the target and its
distance from the station but they didn't know its altitude. They
reported the target, and two F-86's were scrambled.

The radar picked up the F-86's soon after they were airborne, and
had begun to direct them into the target when the target started to
fade on the radarscope. At the time several of the operators thought
that this fade was caused by the target's losing altitude rapidly and
getting below the radar's beam. Some of the other operators thought
that it was a high-flying target and that it was fading just because
it was so high.

In the debate which followed, the proponents of the high-flying
theory won out, and the F-86's were told to go up to 40,000 feet. But
before the aircraft could get to that altitude, the target had been
completely lost on the radarscope.

The F-86's continued to search the area at 40,000 feet, but could
see nothing. After a few minutes the aircraft ground controller
called the F-86's and told one to come down to 20,000 feet, the other
to 5,000 feet, and continue the search. The two jets made a quick
letdown, with one pilot stopping at 20,000 feet and the other heading
for the deck.

The second pilot, who was going down to 5,000 feet, was just
beginning to pull out when he noticed a flash below and ahead of him.
He flattened out his dive a little and headed toward the spot where
he had seen the light. As he closed on the spot he suddenly noticed
what he first thought was a weather balloon. A few seconds later he
realized that it couldn't be a balloon because it was staying ahead
of him. Quite an achievement for a balloon, since he had built up a
lot of speed in his dive and now was flying almost straight and level
at 3,000 feet and was traveling "at the Mach."

Again the pilot pushed the nose of the F-86 down and started after
the object. He closed fairly fast, until he came to within an
estimated 1,000 yards. Now he could get a good look at the object.
Although it had looked like a balloon from above, a closer view
showed that it was definitely round and flat--saucer-shaped. The
pilot described it as being "like a doughnut without a hole."

As his rate of closure began to drop off, the pilot knew that the
object was picking up speed. But he pulled in behind it and started
to follow. Now he was right on the deck.

About this time the pilot began to get a little worried. What should
he do? He tried to call his buddy, who was flying above him somewhere
in the area at 20,000 feet. He called two or three times but could
get no answer. Next he tried to call the ground controller but he was
too low for his radio to carry that far. Once more he tried his buddy
at 20,000 feet, but again no luck.

By now he had been following the object for about two minutes and
during this time had closed the gap between them to approximately 500
yards. But this was only momentary. Suddenly the object began to pull
away, slowly at first, then faster. The pilot, realizing that he
couldn't catch _it_, wondered what to do next.

When the object traveled out about 1,000 yards, the pilot suddenly
made up his mind--he did the only thing that he could do to stop the
UFO. It was like a David about to do battle with a Goliath, but he
had to take a chance. Quickly charging his guns, he started shooting.
. . . A moment later the object pulled up into a climb and in a few
seconds it was gone. The pilot climbed to 10,000 feet, called the
other F-86, and now was able to contact his buddy. They joined up and
went back to their base.

As soon as he had landed and parked, the F-86 pilot went into
operations to tell his story to his squadron commander. The mere fact
that he had fired his guns was enough to require a detailed report,
as a matter of routine. But the circumstances under which the guns
actually were fired created a major disturbance at the fighter base
that day.

After the squadron commander had heard his pilot's story, he called
the group commander, the colonel, and the intelligence officer. They
heard the pilot's story.

For some obscure reason there was a "personality clash," the
intelligence officer's term, between the pilot and the squadron
commander. This was obvious, according to the report I was reading,
because the squadron commander immediately began to tear the story
apart and accuse the pilot of "cracking up," or of just "shooting his
guns for the hell of it and using the wild story as a cover-up."

Other pilots in the squadron, friends of the accused pilot--
including the intelligence officer and a flight surgeon--were called
in to "testify." All of these men were aware of the fact that in
certain instances a pilot can "flip" for no good reason, but none of
them said that he had noticed any symptoms of mental crack-up in the
unhappy pilot.

None, except the squadron commander. He kept pounding home his idea--
that the pilot was "psycho"--and used a few examples of what the
report called "minor incidents" to justify his stand.

Finally the pilot who had been flying with the "accused" man was
called in. He said that he had been monitoring the tactical radio
channel but that he hadn't heard any calls from his buddy's low-
flying F-86. The squadron commander triumphantly jumped on this
point, but the accused pilot tended to refute it by admitting he was
so jumpy that he might not have been on the right channel. But when
he was asked if he had checked or changed channels after he had lost
the object and before he had finally contacted the other F-86, he
couldn't remember.

So ended the pilot's story and his interrogation.

The intelligence officer wrote up his report of a UFO sighting, but
at the last minute, just before sending it, he was told to hold it
back. He was a little unhappy about this turn of events, so he went
in to see why the group commander had decided to delay sending the
report to Project Blue Book.

They talked over the possible reactions to the report. If it went
out it would cause a lot of excitement, maybe unnecessarily. Yet, if
the pilot actually had seen what he claimed, it was vitally important
to get the report in to ATIC immediately. The group commander said
that he would made his decision after a talk with his executive
officer. They decided not to send the report and ordered it destroyed.

When I finished reading, the intelligence officer's first comment
was, "What do you think?"

Since the evaluation of the report seemed to hinge upon conflicts
between personalities I didn't know, I could venture no opinion,
except that the incident made up the most fascinating UFO report I'd
ever seen. So I batted the intelligence officer's question back to him.

"I know the people involved," he replied, "and I don't think the
pilot was nuts. I can't give you the report, because Colonel ------
told me to destroy it. But I did think you should know about it."
Later he burned the report.

The problems involved in this report are typical. There are certain
definite facts that can be gleaned from it; the pilot did see
something and he did shoot at something, but no matter how thoroughly
you investigate the incident that something can never be positively
identified. It might have been a hallucination or it might have been
some vehicle from outer space; no one will ever know. It was a UFO.

The UFO story started soon after June 24, 1947, when newspapers all
over the United States carried the first flying saucer report. The
story told how nine very bright, disk-shaped objects were seen by
Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman, while he was flying his
private plane near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington. With
journalistic license, reporters converted Arnold's description of the
individual motion of each of the objects--like "a saucer skipping
across water"--into "flying saucer," a name for the objects
themselves. In the eight years that have passed since Arnold's
memorable sighting, the term has become so common that it is now in
Webster's Dictionary and is known today in most languages in the world.

For a while after the Arnold sighting the term "flying saucer" was
used to describe all disk-shaped objects that were seen flashing
through the sky at fantastic speeds. Before long, reports were made
of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying
saucers. Today the words are popularly applied to anything seen in
the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object.

Thus a flying saucer can be a formation of lights, a single light, a
sphere, or any other shape; and it can be any color. Performance-wise,
flying saucers can hover, go fast or slow, go high or low, turn 90-
degree corners, or disappear almost instantaneously.

Obviously the term "flying saucer" is misleading when applied to
objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason
the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name:
unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.

Officially the military uses the term "flying saucer" on only two
occasions. First in an explanatory sense, as when briefing people who
are unacquainted with the term "UFO": "UFO--you know--flying
saucers." And second in a derogatory sense, for purposes of ridicule,
as when it is observed, "He says he saw a flying saucer."

This second form of usage is the exclusive property of those persons
who positively know that all UFO's are nonsense. Fortunately, for the
sake of good manners if for no other reason, the ranks of this
knowing category are constantly dwindling. One by one these people
drop out, starting with the instant they see their first UFO.

Some weeks after the first UFO was seen on June 24, 1947, the Air
Force established a project to investigate and analyze all UFO
reports. The attitude toward this task varied from a state of near
panic, early in the life of the project, to that of complete contempt
for anyone who even mentioned the words "flying saucer."

This contemptuous attitude toward "flying saucer nuts" prevailed
from mid-1949 to mid-1950. During that interval many of the people
who were, or had been, associated with the project believed that the
public was suffering from "war nerves."

Early in 1950 the project, for all practical purposes, was closed
out; at least it rated only minimum effort. Those in power now
reasoned that if you didn't mention the words "flying saucers" the
people would forget them and the saucers would go away. But this
reasoning was false, for instead of vanishing, the UFO reports got
better and better.

Airline pilots, military pilots, generals, scientists, and dozens of
other people were reporting UFO's, and in greater detail than in
reports of the past. Radars, which were being built for air defense,
began to pick up some very unusual targets, thus lending technical
corroboration to the unsubstantiated claims of human observers.

As a result of the continuing accumulation of more impressive UFO
reports, official interest stirred. Early in 1951 verbal orders came
down from Major General Charles P. Cabell, then Director of
Intelligence for Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, to make a study
reviewing the UFO situation for Air Force Headquarters.

I had been back in the Air Force about six months when this
happened. During the second world war I had been a B-29 bombardier
and radar operator. I went to India, China, and later to the Pacific,
with the original B-29 wing. I flew two DCF's, and some Air Medals'
worth of missions, got out of the Air Force after the war, and went
back to college. To keep my reserve status while I was in school, I
flew as a navigator in an Air Force Reserve Troop Carrier Wing.

Not long after I received my degree in aeronautical engineering, the
Korean War started, and I went back on active duty. I was assigned to
the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base, in Dayton, Ohio. ATIC is responsible for keeping track of all
foreign aircraft and guided missiles. ATIC also had the UFO project.

I had just finished organizing a new intelligence group when General
Cabell's order to review past UFO reports came down. Lieutenant
Colonel Rosengarten, who received the order at ATIC, called me in and
wanted to know if I'd take the job of making the review. I accepted.

When the review was finished, I went to the Pentagon and presented
my findings to Major General Samford, who had replaced General Cabell
as Director of Intelligence.

ATIC soon got the word to set up a completely new project for the
investigation and analysis of UFO reports. Since I had made the
review of past UFO reports I was the expert, and I got the new job.
It was given the code name Project Blue Book, and I was in charge of
it until late in 1953. During this time members of my staff and I
traveled close to half a million miles. We investigated dozens of UFO
reports, and read and analyzed several thousand more. These included
every report ever received by the Air Force.

For the size of the task involved Project Blue Book was always
understaffed, even though I did have ten people on my regular staff
plus many paid consultants representing every field of science. All
of us on Project Blue Book had Top Secret security clearances so that
security was no block in our investigations. Behind this organization
was a reporting network made up of every Air Force base intelligence
officer and every Air Force radar station in the world, and the Air
Defense Command's Ground Observer Corps. This reporting net sent
Project Blue Book reports on every conceivable type of UFO, by every
conceivable type of person.

What did these people actually see when they reported that they had
observed a UFO? Putting aside truly unidentifiable flying objects for
the present, this question has several answers.

In many instances it has been positively proved that people have
reported balloons, airplanes, stars, and many other common objects as
UFO's. The people who make such reports don't recognize these common
objects because something in their surroundings temporarily assumes
an unfamiliar appearance.

Unusual lighting conditions are a common cause of such illusions. A
balloon will glow like a "ball of fire" just at sunset. Or an
airplane that is not visible to the naked eye suddenly starts to
reflect the sun's rays and appears to be a "silver ball." Pilots in F-
94 jet interceptors chase Venus in the daytime and fight with
balloons at night, and people in Los Angeles see weird lights.

On October 8, 1954, many Los Angeles newspapers and newscasters
carried an item about a group of flying saucers, bright lights,
flying in a V formation. The lights had been seen from many locations
over Southern California. Pilots saw them while bringing their
airplanes into Los Angeles International Airport, Air Force pilots
flying out of Long Beach saw them, two CBS reporters in Hollywood
gave an eyewitness account, and countless people called police and
civil defense officials. All of them excitedly reported lights they
could not identify. The next day the Air Force identified the UFO's;
they were Air Force airplanes, KC-97 aerial tankers, refueling B-47
jet bombers in flight. The reason for the weird effect that startled
so many Southern Californians was that when the refueling is taking
place a floodlight on the bottom of the tanker airplane lights up the
bomber that is being refueled. The airplanes were flying high, and
slowly, so no sound was heard; only the bright floodlights could be
seen. Since most people, even other pilots, have never seen a night
aerial refueling operation and could not identify the odd lights they
saw, the lights became UFO's.

In other instances common everyday objects look like UFO's because
of some odd quirk in the human mind. A star or planet that has been
in the sky every day of the observer's life suddenly "takes off at
high speed on a highly erratic flight path." Or a vapor trail from a
high-flying jet--seen a hundred times before by the observer--becomes
a flying saucer.

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