Project Blue Book Exposed (2020) Movie Script
1
For 22 years, starting officially in 1948,
the United States Air
Force was responsible
for investigating reports
of unidentified flying objects.
That investigation began
with a serious high-priority status
to search for answers.
About a year later,
those involved created
an estimate of the situation.
That was an
intelligence analysis
of the events that
had taken place.
The conclusion was
that the flying saucers
were interplanetary craft.
The Air Force Chief of Staff,
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg,
rejected the analysis and
nearly everyone involved
in its creation found
themselves reassigned.
The UFO project, then
known as Sign, fell into disarray.
After a series of officers
had been put in charge
and the name changed first
to Grudge, then Blue Book,
investigations
became a priority.
They didn't last very long
and eventually Blue
Book became little more
than a public
relations operation
designed to convince the public
that the Air Force
was doing its job,
that there was no threat
to national security,
and that there was nothing
to the tales of flying saucers.
During the Second World War,
they were called foo fighters,
and in 1946 as they
flew over Scandinavia,
they were known
as ghost rockets.
It wasn't until Boise, Idaho
businessman Kenneth Arnold
saw them near Mount
Rainier, Washington,
that they became flying saucers.
Although the official
investigation
wouldn't be launched
for another six months,
the Arnold sighting
was the first one
to receive major
coverage in the United States.
Army Air Forces
investigations working
out of the Fourth Air
Force Headquarters
became deeply involved
in the Arnold sighting.
Arnold made his sighting
of these strange objects
flying one behind the
other at about 9,500 feet
at a speed he estimated to be
more than 1,500 miles an hour.
This was something that
clearly wasn't made
in secret projects hidden in
the mountains of New Mexico
and it wasn't something that
was made by the Soviet Union
as they began to press
for world domination.
This was something strange
that had no ready explanation
other than it was strange
and almost impossible to believe.
When Arnold landed
later in the afternoon
on June 24th in
Yakima, Washington,
he told the assembled
reporters what he had seen.
In the course of
describing the objects,
he said they moved with a motion
like that of saucers
skipping across the water.
The shape, however,
according to drawings
that Arnold completed
for the Army,
showed objects that were
keel-shaped with a blunt nose.
In later drawings,
Arnold had elaborated,
showing objects that
were crescent-shaped
with a scalloped trailing edge
and even a clear canopy
over the cockpit.
Later, Arnold would
provide the military
with a written description of the events
in a document that was
originally classified
but that has long
since been released.
Arnold wrote...
On June 24th,
I'd finished my work.
At about two o'clock,
I took off for Chehalis
Washington Airport
with the intention of
going to Yakima, Washington.
I flew directly
toward Mount Rainier
after reaching an
altitude of about 9,500 feet
which is the
approximate elevation
of the high plateau from
which Mount Rainier rises.
There was a DC-4 to the
left and to the rear of me
approximately 15
miles' distance,
and I should judge a
14,000 foot elevation.
I hadn't flown more than
two or three minutes
on my course when a bright
flash reflected on my airplane.
It startled me as I
thought I was too close
to some other aircraft.
I looked every place in the sky
and couldn't find where
the reflection had come from
until I looked to the left and
the north of Mount Rainier
where I observed a chain of
nine peculiar-looking aircraft
flying from north to the south
at approximately
9,500 foot elevation
and going seemingly in
a definite direction
of about 170 degrees.
They, the objects,
were approaching Mount
Rainier very rapidly
and I merely assumed
they were jet planes.
Anyhow, I discovered that this
was where the
reflection had come from
as two or three of them
every few seconds would dip
or change their course
slightly just enough
for the sun to strike
them at an angle
that reflected
brightly on my plane.
I thought it was very peculiar
that I couldn't their tails
but assumed they were
some type of jet plane.
I was determined to
clock their speed
as I had two definite
points I could clock them by.
I watched these objects
with great interest
as I had never before
observed airplanes
flying so close to
the mountaintops.
I would estimate their
elevationcould've varied 1,000 feet
one way or another, up or down.
They flew like many times I
have observed geese to fly
in a rather diagonal
chain-like line
as if they were linked together.
Their speed at the time did
not impress me particularly
because I knew that our
Army and Air Forces had planes
that went very fast.
A number of newsmen
and experts suggested
that I might've been
seeing reflections
or even a mirage.
This I know to be
absolutely false
as I observed these objects
not only through the glass
of my airplane, but turned
my airplane sideways
where I could open my
window and observe them
with a completely
unobstructed view.
When these objects were
flying approximately straight
and level, they were
just a black thin line,
and when they flipped
was the only time
I could get a judgment
as to their size.
Arnold's sightings didn't gain
front-page status immediately.
Stories about it appeared in
newspapers a day or two later,
usually on page eight or
nine, and then with a comment
about strange objects
in fast flight.
It was, at that time,
the story of an oddity.
Arnold claimed later that
he thought he had seen
some sort of new jet aircraft
and he was a little concerned
about breaking the
security around it.
In the Project Blue
Book files is a note
about the Arnold case
which labeled it as
incident number 37.
The Air Force officers who
reviewed the case wrote,
"The report cannot bear
even superficial examination,"
"therefore, must be disregarded."
"There are strong
indications that this report"
"and its attendant publicity
is largely responsible"
"for subsequent reports."
Note content with a
negative note in the file.
The unidentified
officer also wrote,
"It is to be noted that
the observer has profited"
"from his story by selling
it to 'FATE Magazine'."
Here for the first time
were two accusations
that would be made
about many UFO cases,
that is, the witnesses
were in it for the money
and a suggestion that
UFO reports were the result
of the snowball effect.
It seems to suggest that
Arnold invented his tale
with an eye to writing a
story about it for "FATE".
There is no evidence
to support this
and Arnold had not
written any articles
for any magazines
prior to this sighting.
The editors of "FATE",
and Ray Palmer specifically,
who would become
one of the first
and most vocal proponents
of the flying saucers,
induced Arnold into writing
about what he had seen.
The point then
becomes irrelevant.
The article doesn't seem to
have been a motive for Arnold
but more of a
serendipitous reward
for seeing and reporting
the objects in the first place.
It seems that those
investigating the flying saucers
didn't see a link between his
sighting and photographs taken
on July 7th, 1947,
in Phoenix, Arizona.
William A. Rhodes, a
self-employed scientist
living in Phoenix,
claimed he had taken
what might be considered
the first good photographs
of one of the flying saucers.
Initially puzzled by the case,
the military did take
the report seriously.
The investigation
that included the FBI,
whose agent asked not to
be identified as an FBI agent,
accompanied the Army
Air Force's officer
to interview Rhodes.
Rhodes would first
tell reporters
and then various government investigators,
including those from the FBI
and the Army's Counter
Intelligence Corps
that he had been on
his way to his workshop
at the rear of his house when
he heard a distinctive whoosh
that he believed to be from a
P-80 Shooting Star fighter jet
which was the fastest airplane
at that particular moment.
Overhead he saw something
that didn't have the shape
of a conventional aircraft.
He hurried to his lab, grabbed
his camera from his workbench
and hurried outside to a
small mound in his backyard.
Rhodes sighted along
the side of his camera
and it took the
first photograph.
He estimated that the
object was circling in the east.
He advanced the film
and then hesitated,
thinking that he would wait
for the object to get closer.
Worried that it would
disappear without coming closer,
he snapped the second
picture, finished the film roll,
and his ability to
record the event further.
Rhodes' story, along
with the pictures, appeared
in the Phoenix newspaper "The
Arizona Republic" on July 9th.
In that article,
men long experienced
in aircraft recognition
studied both the print
and the negative from
which they were made
and declined to make a guess
on what the flying
object might be.
Rhodes said that the object
appeared to be elliptical
in shape and to have a
diameter of 20 to 30 feet.
It appeared to be at
5,000 feet when first seen
and was traveling
according to Rhodes
at 400 to 600 miles per hour.
It was gray, which
tended to blend
with the gray overcast
background of the sky.
The object had,
according to Rhodes
and a confidential report
from the Project Blue Book files,
what appeared to be a
cockpit canopy in the center
which extended toward the
back and beneath the object.
The cockpit did not
protrude from the surface
but was clearly visible
with the naked eye.
Then on August 29th,
according to a memorandum
from the office in charge,
George Fugate, Jr,
a special agent of
the CIC and stationed
at Fourth Air
Force Headquarters,
interviewed Rhodes in person.
Fugate was accompanied
by Special Agent Brower
of the Phoenix FBI Office.
This interview is important
because of some of the confusion
about location of the
negatives and prints
of the photograph that
would develop later.
During the interview,
Rhodes again told the story,
suggesting that he
thought at first
it might have been the
Navy's Flying Flapjack
which had been featured
on the May 1947 cover
of "Mechanix Illustrated".
He rejected the idea
because he saw no propellors
or landing gear, though
the overall shape
of the craft matched
that of the Flapjack.
Later, research by
various investigators,
both military and civilian,
showed that the Navy built
two Flapjacks but
neither had flown
outside the Bridgeport,
Connecticut area.
The project was canceled in 1947
as the Navy moved to
jet-powered aircraft.
While Rhodes was being
interviewed in his home in Phoenix,
Arnold, because he
lived in the Northwest,
Lieutenant Frank Brown
with Captain William Davidson
took a B-25 and flew up
to Tacoma, Washington,
where Arnold was
investigating Maury Island.
They all got together
in Arnold's hotel room
late in the evening where
Arnold showed them the debris
that had been recovered
on Maury Island
that Dahl and Crisman
had given him.
Both Army officers, Brown
and Davidson, believed
that the material was nothing
more than smelter slag.
They were unimpressed but
both man respected Arnold.
They didn't tell
him they believed
the Maury Island
tale to be a hoax.
All of this takes
us back to Rhodes.
According to Early, Arnold
asked the two officers
what Army intelligence
had learned
about UFOs in the days
after his sighting.
Davidson sat down and then
drew a picture of an object.
He told Arnold, "This
is a drawing of one"
"of several photographs
we consider to be authentic."
Brown then added the information
that tied it to the
Rhodes photograph.
He said, "It came from
Phoenix, Arizona, the other day."
"We have prints of
it at Hamilton Field"
"but the original negatives
were flown to Washington, D.C."
It is clear that those
pictures were the ones
that Rhodes had taken
since there were no other
UFO photographs taken
in July, 1947, in
Phoenix, Arizona.
It's interesting that Brown
mentioned Hamilton Field
because Rhodes does
the same thing,
and Hamilton Field was
part of the Fourth Air Force
in 1947, and Rhodes had
communications with officers
at Fourth Air Force about
his photograph as well.
In the end, the
Air Force decided
that Arnold had been
fooled by mirages created
as the wind whipped up the snow
at the highest levels
of the mountain.
Rhodes had created a
hoax, no real evidence of that,
but when they had no
other explanation,
they claimed the
sighting was a hoax.
What they couldn't
explain, and didn't try,
was how Rhodes could
photograph an object
that looked like that
reported by Arnold
without having seen the
Arnold illustrations.
The belief at the beginning
of the official investigation
was that trained
military personnel
and law enforcement
officers made the best,
most credible witnesses.
Using this criteria, they
selected a number of reports
that seemed inexplicable to them
and that seemed to suggest
that the observed craft
were beyond the
technical capability
of any nation on Earth.
On July 4th, 1947, there
were a series of sightings
over several Northwest states
that Air Force officers labeled
as either insufficient data
for a scientific analysis
or as unidentified.
These involved police
officers and airline flight crews
as well as local civilians.
Many of the reports were
independent of one another
but can be linked by location,
time of day, and other factors.
Combined rather than separated,
they make a powerful statement
about the nature of
the flying saucers.
Although the first reports
were made by civilians,
it was just a few
minutes after one p.m.
that police officer
Kenneth A. McDowell,
who was near the
Portland Police Station,
noticed that the pigeons
began fluttering as if frightened.
Overhead he saw five
large disks east of the city.
According to the report
he gave to military officers,
three disks were flying east
and two were headed
to the south.
All were flying at high speed
and all appeared
to be oscillating.
McDowell alerted other
police officers in an all-car alert
and they immediately
broadcast the information
over the police radio.
Two other police officers, Walter A. Lissy
and Robert Ellis, after
hearing the broadcast,
stopped near a park.
Overhead they saw three
disks moving at high speed.
Neither heard any sound,
but both did see
flashes of brightness
that could've been
sunlight reflecting
from a metallic surface.
According to them, the
objects moved erratically
and changed their
direction of flight.
They were in sight
for about 30 seconds.
Both men were veterans
of the Second World War
and both were civilian pilots,
which suggested they
had some experience
around aviation and
aviation assets.
Patrolman Earl Patterson,
after hearing the broadcast,
stopped to search
for any of the disks.
The broadcast had
suggested that the saucers
were coming out of the sun
which meant they were coming
from the direction of the sun.
At first, Patterson
noticed nothing,
but a few seconds later,
he saw one object
coming out the west
and heading towards
the southwest.
He said that the craft
seemed to be either aluminum
or eggshell white and
didn't flash or reflect the sun.
He also said that he didn't
think they were airplanes
like so many of the others.
Their flight path was erratic,
wobbling and weaving.
Patterson thought they
were radio-controlled
rather than having a
living pilot on board.
On the far side of
the Columbia River
in nearby Vancouver, Washington,
sheriff's deputies Sergeant
John Sullivan, Clarence McKay,
and Fred Krives also
heard the alert broadcast
and ran outside to
look for themselves.
Over Portland three
to five miles away,
they saw 20 to 30 disks
that looked to them
like a flight of geese.
They heard a low humming sound
which might or might not
have been related to the objects.
Not long after that,
three Harvard patrolmen
who had also been
monitoring the police radio band
stepped outside, Captain
K.A. Prehn, A.T. Austad,
and Patrolman K.C. Hoff,
saw three to six disks
traveling at high speed.
They couldn't get a
good count on the number
because of the bright
flashes surrounding them.
According to witnesses,
the objects looked like
huge chrome hubcaps
and oscillated as they flew.
Sometimes the witnesses
could see a full disk,
then a half-moon, and
then nothing at all.
They did see a plane
overhead as well,
but all the witnesses said
that what they were
watching was not aircraft.
This would cause Air Force
investigations to wonder
if aircraft might be a
plausible explanation
for the sightings, despite
the suggestion by the witness.
They thought that
something the plane's pilot did,
such as tossing shiny
disks from the cockpit,
might have caused the confusion.
And later in the day,
there was another report
with a similar claim.
The Air Force files
contained a report
that a former Air Corps
veteran said the object he saw
was unlike any plane
he had ever seen.
He thought it appeared
radio-controlled
because the disk
could change direction
at a 90-degree angle
without difficulty.
Another witness suggested
that he had seen three objects
fly east across the
Willamette River.
The objects did not
appear to be very high
but they were
traveling very fast.
He said that they looked
like a metallic disk
glinting in the sun.
He also said that
he and a neighbor
saw a single disk
later that afternoon.
About four p.m., more
civilians reported more disks.
A woman called the
police telling them
she had watched a single object
as shiny as a new
dime flipping around.
An unidentified
man called to say
that he had seen three disks,
one flying to the east
and the two heading north.
They were shining, shaped
like flattened saucers,
and were traveling
at high speed.
About an hour later, a man said
that he spotted two
white or silver objects
flying southeast over Portland.
Half an hour later, he
sighted a single disk
headed to the northeast.
In Milwaukee, Oregon,
not far from Portland,
Sergeant Claude Cross
reported three objects
flying to the north.
All were disk-shaped, all
were moving at high speed.
But disks overhead weren't
the only things being reported.
There were objects
falling from the sky as well.
Near Eugene, Oregon, a
railroad cashier said
he saw silver
disks being dropped
out of a white plane
flying over the city.
A man in Portland recovered
a large piece of paper
he had seen fall
from a great height.
According to reports, the time
that the paper fell coincided
with some of the
flying saucer sightings
which might explain
some of them.
The best of the sightings,
and the one that was labeled
as unidentified,
occurred about dusk
as a United Airlines flight
crew saw a single disk.
Minutes later, they
spotted several others.
Captain E.J. Smith, the
captain of the flight,
explained it this way.
As our flight
number 105 took off
from Boise, Idaho at
four p.m. Pacific time,
the tower joshingly warned us
to be on the lookout
for flying saucers.
My co-pilot, Ralph
Stevens, was in control
shortly after we
got into the air.
Suddenly, he switched
on the landing lights.
He said he thought
he saw an aircraft
approaching us head-on.
I noticed the objects
then for the first time.
We saw four or five somethings.
One was larger than the
rest, and for the most part,
kept off the right of the
other three or four similar
but smaller objects.
Since we were flying
northwest, roughly into the sunset,
we saw whatever they
were in at least partial light.
We saw them clearly.
We followed them in a
northwesterly direction
for about 45 miles.
Then I called the attendant
at the Ontario,
Oregon radio tower,
giving an approximate location
and course for the objects.
The attendant acknowledged
our call, went outside to look,
but was unable to see anything
like what we'd described.
Finally the object
disappeared in a burst of speed.
We were unable to tell
whether they outsped
us or disintegrated.
We were never able to
catch them in our DC-3.
Our airspeed at the time
was 185 miles per hour.
Through the Boise air tower,
we radioed another United plane
to see if it had seen anything.
That plane flying
eastbound into the night
had not sighted them.
Because we were
following the objects
at roughly the same altitude,
we can't say anything
about their shape
except they were thin and
were smooth on the bottom
and rough-appearing on the top.
Smith called the flight attendant,
Marty Morrow, to the
cockpit to, in Smith's words,
verify they were actually seeing the disks.
He saw four or more disks,
three clustered together
and a fourth flying off
in the distance by itself.
The objects were in
sight for 10 to 15 minutes
which means that she was
able to get a good look at them.
Not everyone was convinced
that the sightings were
of unconventional aircraft.
Colonel G.R. Dodson,
a commander in the
Oregon National Guard,
told reporters that he had
made an inspection of the area
from the air but that he had
found nothing suspicious.
Solutions were offered by
some of the local residents.
One thought that the
sightings were the result
of cottonwood blossoms
drifting on the wind.
Another complained
about the news coverage,
believing it all to be a hoax.
He said that he had seen
an airplane fly over
and about a minute later
he saw what he believed
to be bits of aluminum foil
that might have been
cigarette wrappers.
Air Force officers mentioned
that radar chaff had been seen
in the area but offered no
evidence to back up the claim.
The idea that a
private plane pilot
was dropping small silver
disks took on greater importance.
In the only news story that
might have been of importance,
the Oregon Journal noted
that the only known airplanes
in the area at the
time of the reports
were 23 B-29 bombers
near Astoria.
A formation of that size
would've been difficult
to misidentify, not to
mention that the roar
that the engines
would've caused.
Dr. James McDonald, an
atmospheric scientist,
interviewed Smith, the
United Airlines captain,
about his sighting.
In a prepared statement
to United States
House of Representatives
Committee
on Science and
Astronomics' Symposium
of the Unidentified
Flying Objects
in July, 1968,
McDonald reported...
Smith emphasized to me
that there were no cloud
phenomena to confuse them here
and that they observed
these objects long enough
to be quite certain that they
were no conventional aircraft.
They appeared flat on the
bottom, rounded on the top,
he told me, and he added
that there seems to be
a perceptible roughness
of some sort on top,
though he could not
refine the description.
Almost immediately after
they lost sight of the first five,
a second formation of four,
three in a line and a
fourth off to the side,
moved in ahead of
their position,
again traveling westward but
at a somewhat higher altitude
than the DC-3's 8,000 feet.
These passed quickly out
of sight to the west at speeds
which they felt were far
beyond then known speeds.
Smith emphasized that they
were never certain of sizes
and distances but that they
had the general impression
that these disk-like craft
were appreciably larger
than ordinary aircraft.
Smith emphasized that he
had not taken seriously
the previous week's
news accounts
that coined the since
persistent term flying saucer
but after seeing this total
of nine unconventional
high-speed wingless craft
on the evening of
July 4th, 1947,
he became much more
interested in the matter.
Nevertheless, in
talking with me,
he stressed that he
would not speculate
on their real nature or origin.
These reports were investigated
by Army officers at the time,
though the reports seemed
to be fairly superficial.
That is, there were
objects seen high in the sky
for seconds or a minute or two.
As part of the Project
Grudge final report
written in 1949, one
of the officers wrote,
"This investigation can
offer no definitive hypothesis"
"but in passing, would like
to note the incidents occurred"
"on the 4th of July and
that if relatively small pieces"
"of aluminum foil
had been dropped"
"from a plane over the area,"
"then any one object
would be visible"
"at a relatively short distance."
"Even moderate wind
velocities would give the illusion"
"that fluttering gyrating
disks had gone by"
"at great velocities."
"Various observers
would not, of course,"
"in this case, have
seen the same objects."
The officer also noted that
the above is not to be regarded
as a very likely explanation,
but only as a possibility.
The occurrence on these
incidents on July 4th
may have been more
than coincidence.
Some prankster might
have tossed such objects
out of an airplane as part
of an Independence
Day celebration.
The thing that the
Air Force did here
was link the case
by date and location
but didn't think of them as a
continuation of one sighting.
Once a police officer had
alerted his fellow officers
to the object, they,
in different locations
and at different times,
went outside or looked up
and were able to spot them.
The descriptions are
of a similar type,
dish-shaped object flying
alone or in formations.
That they were
seeing the same thing
from different locations
suggested something
that was very high or
that there was more
than one formation.
The thing to be remembered
that even if the police officers
in the one location were
fooled by something,
those officers observing it
from a different perspective
might have been
able to identify it
if there was a
terrestrial explanation.
Since that didn't
happen, it would seem
that there was something
very strange going on here.
Add to this the sighting by
Smith and his airline crew
which we can do because
they observed the craft
on the same day and in
the same general location.
We have a new
dimension to the case.
Smith's report was
labeled unidentified,
meaning that he and
his crew were able
to give a detailed description
of what they had seen.
We have to wonder if that
was because they were met
by reporters when he landed.
Had his report not
received the attention it did
and had he not provided
the detail he did,
might it have ended up
with only a little information
and a label of insufficient
data for scientific analysis?
Army Air Force's investigation
which took the report
seriously in the summer of 1947
failed to find a
satisfactory explanation
for these sightings.
It should be remembered
that in this case,
there was nothing other
than witness testimony,
witnesses who were
separated by distance
but who, in some
cases, had been warned
about the flying saucers
by the police radio
and who had claimed to have
seen basically the same thing.
These sightings are interesting
and we have to wonder what
more might have been learned
had a little more
effort been made
in the investigation of them.
Although it has been
said there is a single case
in the Blue Book files
in which alien creatures
were reported that
wasn't labeled
as some sort of
psychological program,
there are several good
cases hidden in there.
Skeptics, disbelievers,
and debunkers like to say
that there is no evidence
that alien creatures
have visited the planet.
They ignore, reject,
or are unaware
that the Blue Book files
do contain examples
of physical evidence
that has been recovered.
The best of those cases came
from Socorro, New Mexico,
on April 24th, 1964.
Lonnie Zamora, then a
police officer in Socorro,
saw a landed object
and two small humanoids
standing near it.
According to Project Blue Book,
Zamora was chasing a speeder
when he heard a loud
roar and saw a flash of light
in the southwestern sky.
Fearing that a dynamite
shed on the edge of town
might have exploded,
Zamora broke off the chase
and headed in that direction.
Captain Hector Quintanilla
added more detail to the story
as it was told by Zamora
during the official investigation.
Quintanilla later wrote...
It was off the road to
the left in the arroyo,
and at first glance it
looked like a car turned over,
but when he drove closer it
appeared to be aluminum clay,
not chrome, and
oval-shaped like a football.
Zamora drove about 50
feet along the hill crest,
radioing back to the
sheriff's office,
"10-44," meaning accident, "I'll be 10-6,"
meaning busy, out of the car,
"Checking a wreck down
in the arroyo," Zamora said.
From this point,
seated in the car,
he could not see the object
over the edge of the hill.
As he stopped the car, he
was still talking on the radio,
and while he was getting
out he dropped his mic.
He picked it up and put it back
and started down
towards the object.
Zamora then said, "As soon
as I saw flames and heard roar",
"ran away from object but
did turn, head towards object."
"Object was in shape."
"It was smooth, no
windows or doors."
"As roar started, it
was still on the ground."
Quintanilla said,
"I was determined"
"to solve the case, and
come hell or high water,"
"I was going to find the
vehicle or the stimulus."
"I decided that it was
imperative for me to talk"
"to the base commander
at Holloman Air Force Base."
"I wanted to interview the
base commander at length"
"about special activities from his base."
"I needed help to pull this off"
"so I called Lieutenant
Colonel Maston Jacks at SAFOI."
"I told him what I
wanted to do and he asks,"
"'Do you think it
will do any good?'"
"I replied, 'Goddammit
Maston, if there is an answer"
"'to this case, it has to be in
some hanger at Holloman.'"
He went to work with his
position at the Pentagon
and the approval for
his visit came through.
Colonel Garman was the
base commander during his visit.
"He was most
cooperative and told me"
"that I could go anywhere
and visit any activity"
"which interested me."
"I went from one end of
the base to the other."
"I spent four days talking
to everybody I could"
"and spent almost a whole day"
"with the down-range controllers"
"at the White
Sands Missile Range."
"I left Holloman dejected
and convinced that the answer"
"to Zamora's experience
did not originate"
"and terminate at this base."
"On my way back to
Wright-Patterson, I hit upon an idea."
"Why not a lunar
landing vehicle?"
"I knew that some research had
been done at Wright-Patterson"
"so as soon as I got back
I asked for some briefings."
"The briefings were
extremely informative,"
"but the Lunar Landers
were not operational"
"in April of 1964."
"I got the names of the
companies that were doing research"
"in this field and I
started writing letters."
"The companies were
most cooperative,"
"but their answers
were all negative."
"I labeled the case
unidentified and the UFO buffs"
"and hobby clubs had
themselves a field day."
"According to them,
there was proof"
"that our beloved
planet had been visited"
"by an extraterrestrial vehicle."
"Although I labeled
the case unidentified,"
"I've never been satisfied
with that classification."
It has been claimed
that the only case
involving occupants,
creatures associated
with a landed UFO that
was labeled as unidentified,
was that from
Socorro, New Mexico.
Although somewhat hidden
in the Project Blue Book files,
there is another that took
place almost two years later.
Hynek mentioned it in his
book, "The Hynek UFO Report",
but he doesn't give a location
and he dates it with
a newspaper clipping
from the "Dallas Times Herald".
Although Hynek suggests the case
is from the Wichita
Falls, Texas, area
and the witness, W.E.
Laxson, was a civilian employee
at Sheppard Air Force
Base in Wichita Falls,
the government files list the
case as Temple, Oklahoma.
The newspaper clipping
cited by Hynek
is dated March 27th, 1966,
but the sighting occurred
on March 23rd, 1966.
With the misdirection from
Hynek probably as a result
of the classified nature of the
case when he wrote his book,
it took a while to
deduce the facts.
Hynek, using the
newspaper account,
said there was nothing
in it that varied
from what was in
the government file.
That file said, "Observer
W.E. Eddie Laxson"
"was driving his car
along the highway"
"at approximately 5:05 a.m.
on the 23rd of March, 1966,"
"when he noticed
an object parked"
"on the road
in front of him."
"He stopped the car and got out"
"so to get a better
view of the object."
"The object was so parked
that it blocked out a portion"
"of the road curb sign."
"There were no sharp
edges noticed by the observer."
"The object had the appearance
of a conventional aircraft,"
"a C-124, without
wings or motors."
"There was a Plexiglas
bubble on top"
"similar to a B-26 canopy."
"As the observer approached,"
"he noticed a man wearing a
baseball cap enter the object"
"by steps from the bottom."
"After the man
entered the object,"
"it began to rise
from the pavement"
"and headed on a
southeasterly direction"
"at approximately
720 miles per hour."
"The object had
forward and aft lights"
"that were very bright."
"As the object rose
from the ground,"
"a high-speed drill
type of sound was heard"
"plus a sound like
that of a welding rod"
"when an arc is struck."
"The object was 75 feet long,"
"about eight feet from
the top to the bottom,"
"and about 12 feet wide."
"There was some type of supports"
"on the bottom of the object."
"After the object disappeared,"
"the witness got
back into his car"
"and drove approximately
15 miles down the highway."
"At this time, the
original witness stopped"
"and talked with
another individual"
"who had also stopped
along the roadway"
"to watch some
lights over Red River"
"which is approximately five
or six miles to the southeast."
"Various organizations
were contacted"
"around the Temple,
Oklahoma area"
"for a possible experimental
or conventional aircraft."
"The observer stated
that he thought the object"
"was some type of Army or
Air Force research aircraft."
"All attempts at such an
explanation proved fruitless"
"since there were no
aircraft in the area"
"at the time of the sightings."
"Although there are
numerous helicopter"
"and other
experimentals in the area,"
"none could be put
in the area of Temple"
"at approximately five o'clock
on the 23rd of March, 1966."
"Because of this factor,
the case is listed"
"as unidentified
by the Air Force."
The second witness who was
not interviewed by the Air Force
and who, according to the
government file, did not fill out
their long and involved
form, was C.W. Anderson.
Anderson confirmed
for the newspaper
that he had seen
the craft as well.
He told the reporter, "I
know that people will say"
"that Laxson is durned
crazy, but that's what I say."
Anderson said that he thought
the object had been
following him down the road.
He had watched it in his rear
view mirror for several miles.
The problem for the Air Force
was that Anderson did
not complete their form.
He didn't see the pilot
or crewmen either.
The drawing of the object
made by Laxson resembled that
which Lonnie Zamora had
made of the craft he had saw,
which means it was
sort of egg-shaped.
It was certainly longer
and was lying on its side.
Like Zamora, Laxson said that
he saw symbols on the object,
but unlike Zamora,
he recognized them.
He told the reporter
that, "On the side",
"I made out T-L-A, with
the last two figures 38."
In what might be
described as a fit of honesty,
the Air Force admitted they
had no solution for the case.
The description of the alien
was more human than humanoid
and he seemed to be dressed
in conventional clothing,
right to the mechanic's hat.
Investigations revealed
a second witness
and that might have
influenced the Air Force,
especially since the
men had never met
prior to the sighting.
In the end, they labeled
the case as unidentified.
In a review of
government records,
another case, also labeled
as unidentified, was found.
This one took place
in Pittsburg, Kansas.
The case is a single witness
and has gone nearly unreported
for more than 60 years.
William Squires was
on his way to work
along Highway 160 about
eight miles from Pittsburg
when he sighted an unknown
object hovering over a field.
It was about 27 feet in
length at about 12 feet high.
Squires thought it had
the appearance of an airfoil.
He said that he saw
smallpropellors around the perimeter.
They were about a
foot in diameter.
There were also a number
of windows in the craft
and through one of them,
Squires could see a man
who seemed to be
controlling the object.
He was facing forward to
the edge of the object.
The windows were
described as blue,
becoming darker as time passed.
This seems to be
the type of sighting
the Air Force would
dismiss as psychological,
which would be a nice way
of saying that it was a hoax
and there was something
wrong with the witness.
However, there was some
physical evidence left behind
according to the
government file.
The object reported as
hovering over an open field
used for cattle grazing,
general area under the exact
location was pressed down
and formed a round
60-foot-diameter impression
with the grass in a
recognizable concentric pattern.
Loose grass lay on
top of the impression
as if drawn in by suction
when the object ascended
vertically at a high speed.
Vegetation and grass
approximately three
to four inches high.
Area was extremely
dry at present.
Grass showed where
Squires had walked in
to a fence and stopped.
L.V. Baxter and D. Whitener,
local employees of KOMA,
went to the place of
the sighting, 11:35 CST,
with Squires and confirmed
his path to the fence
and the 60-foot-diameter
impression in the tall grass.
Robert E. Greens
visited the site at 1600
on the 25th of August of 1952,
with source and reports that
the vegetation was laid down
in concentric circles but with
the impression less distinct
than reported by
Whitener and Baxter.
Green obtained grass
and soil samples
at the immediate area where
the impression was made
and also gathered
control samples
200 yards removed from the site.
He is sending some to the Air
Technical Intelligence Center,
airmail, special delivery.
What is strange about
this case is the fact
that there seemed to
be little interest
in the pilot of the craft.
Although there is another
point where he was discussed,
there's no real addition
to the information.
Clearly, based on these
descriptions, that alien was human,
or human enough to be in
distinguish able from a human.
Squires did suggest that the
occupant seemed to be frenzied
in his activities
inside the craft.
Although this case is
essentially single-witness,
there was the physical
evidence left by the craft.
Others, Baxter, Whitener, and
Green, did see the impressions
in the ground left by the craft.
Eventually this sort of
evidence would become known
as a saucer nest, meaning simply
that the crushed vegetation
left by a UFO on the ground
had somewhat similar features
to other parts of the country
and other parts of the world.
The ultimate description
would be of a crop circle.
Here, rather than
an elaborate design,
it was a simple circle of
crushed or flattened grass.
The soil samples taken by Green
were analyzed by the Air Force.
In a short report of
a single paragraph,
the technician said they
had found no radiation,
burning, or stress of any kind.
In other words, there
was nothing to the sample
to distinguish those
taken from the landing area
or from those taken
200 yards away.
There's one final
aspect to the case
that is mildly interesting.
In a couple of the letters
from the government files,
there is a notation that
reminds all of paragraph seven
which is a paragraph
in the regulations
that requires unidentified
cases be classified.
Those who have information about the case
are not allowed to
discuss it with those
who do not have the
proper clearances.
J. Allen Hynek, writing in
"The Hynek UFO Report",
provides a glimpse
into the thinking
at Blue Book at the
time of this sighting.
He wrote, "My skepticism
was so great at that time"
"that I was quite willing to
dismiss it as a hallucination."
Even with that admitted
bias against the case
which never received
wide exposure,
there's another which
the witness said
that he had seen the
pilot of an unidentified craft
and that was left as
unidentified by the Air Force.
In their zeal to label cases,
this seems to be another
that they missed.
They could've easily
labeled it as psychological,
if not for the darned
landing traces.
Keeping with their
tradition of labeling cases
but not solving them, the
Air Force officers decided
that witnesses had
psychological problems
if they claimed to
have seen the beings
outside of their craft.
There's no need to investigate
if the witness is unreliable
or under the influence of
some kind of mental problem.
In the Pittsburg, Kansas
case, there is the same problem.
Here was a case in which
the object interacted
with the environment.
True, it was a single witness,
but it left marks on the ground.
Rather than send in
someone to review it carefully,
the Air Force allowed samples
to be gathered by a civilian.
They may have provided
some guidance,
but it would seem that an
expert with the proper training
should have been sent if
the Air Force was serious
about investigating UFOs.
There is another
aspect to this case
and that is that
a military officer
did gather some of the data.
Green was apparently
a second lieutenant
in the Army Reserve.
He is the man who
collected the samples.
But this is not to suggest
that his military training
had covered that,
but his membership in the
Reserve caused one problem.
The report he filed with
his chain of command
made its way eventually
to the Air Force,
but they delayed it.
Zamora seemed to
be a single witness
but there was physical
evidence left behind.
Here, the Air Force
responded quickly,
gathering evidence, and
analyzed the situation.
They found no answer
that satisfied them.
There is the possibility that
there were two witnesses.
They appeared after the fact
but are not from
the Socorro area,
and their stories seem
to have been embellished
with facts from news reports.
In fact, in all the cases,
there was some physical
evidence to be examined.
The cases did not rest solely
on the testimony
of the witnesses.
If there wasn't some
kind of physical evidence,
there was another witness
to corroborate the sightings.
The Cisco Grove occupantreport
is just one more example
of an opportunity
that was missed,
or rather, one that seems
to have been missed.
There was some
corroborative testimony
from the other hunters.
There was the
damage to the arrows
and then there was the report
that the area had been cleaned.
What we don't know
is who had been out
in the forest cleaning the areas
in which the witness claimed
to have seen the alien beings.
Just who could have done that?
There is evidence
that not all sightings
made it to Project Blue Book
even though the regulations
seemed to require that.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who
was a scientific consultant
to Project Blue
Book for many years,
often said that the really
good cases didn't make it
into the Blue Book files.
He suspected another
reporting system
but he couldn't prove
that there was one.
Hints about this
other investigation
came from Brigadier
General Arthur Exon
who was the base commander
at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in the mid 1960s.
Exon said that while
he was base commander,
he would periodically
receive telephone calls
which ordered him to
prepare an aircraft
for a mission outside the
local Wright-Patterson area.
Exon himself described
this in May 19 of 1991
in a recorded interview.
He said, "I know that
while I was there",
"I had charge of all the
administrative airplanes"
"and had to sign priority
airplanes to the members"
"who would go out and
investigate reported sightings."
"I remember several out
in Wyoming and Montana"
"and that area in the
'60s, '64 and '65."
"I knew there were
certain teams of people,"
"they're representing headquarters
United States Air Force"
"as well as the
organizations there"
"at Wright-pat, and so on."
"When a crew came back,
it was their own business."
"Nobody asked any questions."
He expanded on this, saying,
"The way this happened to
me is that I would get a call"
"and say that the crew
or team was leaving."
"There was such and such a time
and they wanted an airplane"
"and pilots to take X
number of people to wherever."
"They might be gone
two or three days"
"or might be gone a week."
"They would come back and
that would be the end of it."
Asked about the overall
control of the teams, Exon said,
"I always thought they
were part of that unholy crew"
"in Washington that started
keeping the lid on this thing."
Everything said to
this point suggests
that the operation
was run from FTD,
the parent organization to
Blue Book at Wright-Patterson,
but in an interview
conducted about a month later
on June the 18th of 1991,
Exon clarified what he had meant.
Asked if these teams of eight
to 15 people were stationed
at Wright-Patterson,
he said, "They were."
"They would come
from Washington, D.C."
"They'd ask for an
airplane tomorrow morning"
"and that would give the
guys a chance to get there."
"Wright-Patterson, by
commercial airline."
"Sometimes they'd be
gone for three days"
"and sometimes they'd
be gone for a week."
"I know they went to
Montana and Wyoming"
"and the northwest
states a number of times"
"in a year and a half."
"They went to Arizona
once or twice."
He also said, "Our contact
was a man, a telephone number."
"He'd call, he'd
set the airplane up."
"I just knew there was
an investigative team."
What all this boils
down to is an attempt
to cover the activity.
The team, whoever they were,
would fly into Dayton, Ohio,
on commercial air and
then drive out to the base.
If a reporter attempted
to trace the movements
of the team after it
had been deployed,
the trail led back
to Wright-Patterson.
After that, it just disappeared.
This team, or those
teams, was made up
of eight to 15
individuals at a time
when Project Blue
Book was composed
of two Air Force officers,
an NCO, and a secretary.
They were stationed
at Wright-Patterson
but these other teams were
assigned somewhere else
and there is no reason to assume
that all members of a team
were assigned at the same base.
They would come
together as needed.
On October 20th, 1969,
Brigadier General C.H.
Bolenderprovided the documentation
to prove that there was
another investigation.
In paragraph four of his
memo, Bolender wrote,
"As early as 1953, the
Robertson Panel concluded"
"that the evidence presented
on unidentified flying objects"
"shows no indication
that these phenomena"
"constitute a direct physical
threat to national security."
"In spite of this finding,
the Air Force continued"
"to maintain a special
reporting system."
"There is still,
however, no evidence"
"that Project Blue Book reports"
"have served any
intelligence function."
"Moreover, reports of
unidentified flying objects"
"which could affect
national security are made"
"in accordance with JANAP 146,"
"the Joint Army, Navy,
Air Force Publication,"
"or Air Force Manual 55-11,"
"and are not part of
the Blue Book system."
In other words, the
suspicions of Hynek and Exon
were confirmed by this document
from the government files.
This organization dealt with
matters of national security
and the sightings at Malmstrom
because of the missile shutdown
and it was a matter
of national security.
Those sightings and the
information collected about them
would not be part of
the Blue Book system
and therefore would
not be in the files.
That they are missing is
the significant point.
In the beginning, in
the summer of 1947,
the military was concerned
about the sightings
of flying saucers.
They didn't know what they were.
But the reports from
military pilots,
civilian pilots, and police
officers concerned them.
They believed the
reports to be accurate
and thought they represented an advancement
in technology by our
competitors in the world.
Alien visitation,
though discussed,
was not the top explanation.
When the official investigation,
known officially
as Project Sign,
the officers assigned were
motivated to find an explanation.
In July, 1948, they
produced a document
known as the estimate
of the situation.
According to Ed Ruppelt,
one-time chief of
Project Blue Book,
that situation
was flying saucers
and the conclusion was that
they were from another world.
The Air Force chief of staff,
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg,
rejected the estimate and
those who had been responsible
found themselves with new jobs.
The fire went out of
the investigation.
No longer did they worry
about the explanation.
They just worried about
providing solutions for the cases.
Sign eventually
evolved into Grudge
and then Project Blue Book.
For a brief period, Blue
Book was more interested
in the truth than
in explaining cases
regardless of the facts.
An explanation of
the Blue Book files,
a reinvestigation of
many of the cases,
reveals the flaws in them.
There are radar cases,
physical evidence cases,
photographic cases,
landing cases,
and reports of
humanoid creatures
that have no solid
terrestrial explanations.
The truth is that for
most of its existence,
Blue Book was a public
relations operation
designed to convince people
that there were no flying
saucers, no alien visitation,
and finally, no reason
for continued research.
Blue Book ended in 1969
after the University of
Colorado accepted more
than a half million dollars
to investigate UFOs.
There were three caveats:
they must say something positive
about the Air Force
investigation,
they must conclude
their investigation
the way the Air Force
wanted, and then must show
that there was no national security threat.
With these three goals
accomplished, the Air Force said
they were through
investigating flying saucers.
Like so much else, that
statement was also untrue.
10, nine,
ignition sequence start,
six, five, four, three,
two, one, zero.
For 22 years, starting officially in 1948,
the United States Air
Force was responsible
for investigating reports
of unidentified flying objects.
That investigation began
with a serious high-priority status
to search for answers.
About a year later,
those involved created
an estimate of the situation.
That was an
intelligence analysis
of the events that
had taken place.
The conclusion was
that the flying saucers
were interplanetary craft.
The Air Force Chief of Staff,
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg,
rejected the analysis and
nearly everyone involved
in its creation found
themselves reassigned.
The UFO project, then
known as Sign, fell into disarray.
After a series of officers
had been put in charge
and the name changed first
to Grudge, then Blue Book,
investigations
became a priority.
They didn't last very long
and eventually Blue
Book became little more
than a public
relations operation
designed to convince the public
that the Air Force
was doing its job,
that there was no threat
to national security,
and that there was nothing
to the tales of flying saucers.
During the Second World War,
they were called foo fighters,
and in 1946 as they
flew over Scandinavia,
they were known
as ghost rockets.
It wasn't until Boise, Idaho
businessman Kenneth Arnold
saw them near Mount
Rainier, Washington,
that they became flying saucers.
Although the official
investigation
wouldn't be launched
for another six months,
the Arnold sighting
was the first one
to receive major
coverage in the United States.
Army Air Forces
investigations working
out of the Fourth Air
Force Headquarters
became deeply involved
in the Arnold sighting.
Arnold made his sighting
of these strange objects
flying one behind the
other at about 9,500 feet
at a speed he estimated to be
more than 1,500 miles an hour.
This was something that
clearly wasn't made
in secret projects hidden in
the mountains of New Mexico
and it wasn't something that
was made by the Soviet Union
as they began to press
for world domination.
This was something strange
that had no ready explanation
other than it was strange
and almost impossible to believe.
When Arnold landed
later in the afternoon
on June 24th in
Yakima, Washington,
he told the assembled
reporters what he had seen.
In the course of
describing the objects,
he said they moved with a motion
like that of saucers
skipping across the water.
The shape, however,
according to drawings
that Arnold completed
for the Army,
showed objects that were
keel-shaped with a blunt nose.
In later drawings,
Arnold had elaborated,
showing objects that
were crescent-shaped
with a scalloped trailing edge
and even a clear canopy
over the cockpit.
Later, Arnold would
provide the military
with a written description of the events
in a document that was
originally classified
but that has long
since been released.
Arnold wrote...
On June 24th,
I'd finished my work.
At about two o'clock,
I took off for Chehalis
Washington Airport
with the intention of
going to Yakima, Washington.
I flew directly
toward Mount Rainier
after reaching an
altitude of about 9,500 feet
which is the
approximate elevation
of the high plateau from
which Mount Rainier rises.
There was a DC-4 to the
left and to the rear of me
approximately 15
miles' distance,
and I should judge a
14,000 foot elevation.
I hadn't flown more than
two or three minutes
on my course when a bright
flash reflected on my airplane.
It startled me as I
thought I was too close
to some other aircraft.
I looked every place in the sky
and couldn't find where
the reflection had come from
until I looked to the left and
the north of Mount Rainier
where I observed a chain of
nine peculiar-looking aircraft
flying from north to the south
at approximately
9,500 foot elevation
and going seemingly in
a definite direction
of about 170 degrees.
They, the objects,
were approaching Mount
Rainier very rapidly
and I merely assumed
they were jet planes.
Anyhow, I discovered that this
was where the
reflection had come from
as two or three of them
every few seconds would dip
or change their course
slightly just enough
for the sun to strike
them at an angle
that reflected
brightly on my plane.
I thought it was very peculiar
that I couldn't their tails
but assumed they were
some type of jet plane.
I was determined to
clock their speed
as I had two definite
points I could clock them by.
I watched these objects
with great interest
as I had never before
observed airplanes
flying so close to
the mountaintops.
I would estimate their
elevationcould've varied 1,000 feet
one way or another, up or down.
They flew like many times I
have observed geese to fly
in a rather diagonal
chain-like line
as if they were linked together.
Their speed at the time did
not impress me particularly
because I knew that our
Army and Air Forces had planes
that went very fast.
A number of newsmen
and experts suggested
that I might've been
seeing reflections
or even a mirage.
This I know to be
absolutely false
as I observed these objects
not only through the glass
of my airplane, but turned
my airplane sideways
where I could open my
window and observe them
with a completely
unobstructed view.
When these objects were
flying approximately straight
and level, they were
just a black thin line,
and when they flipped
was the only time
I could get a judgment
as to their size.
Arnold's sightings didn't gain
front-page status immediately.
Stories about it appeared in
newspapers a day or two later,
usually on page eight or
nine, and then with a comment
about strange objects
in fast flight.
It was, at that time,
the story of an oddity.
Arnold claimed later that
he thought he had seen
some sort of new jet aircraft
and he was a little concerned
about breaking the
security around it.
In the Project Blue
Book files is a note
about the Arnold case
which labeled it as
incident number 37.
The Air Force officers who
reviewed the case wrote,
"The report cannot bear
even superficial examination,"
"therefore, must be disregarded."
"There are strong
indications that this report"
"and its attendant publicity
is largely responsible"
"for subsequent reports."
Note content with a
negative note in the file.
The unidentified
officer also wrote,
"It is to be noted that
the observer has profited"
"from his story by selling
it to 'FATE Magazine'."
Here for the first time
were two accusations
that would be made
about many UFO cases,
that is, the witnesses
were in it for the money
and a suggestion that
UFO reports were the result
of the snowball effect.
It seems to suggest that
Arnold invented his tale
with an eye to writing a
story about it for "FATE".
There is no evidence
to support this
and Arnold had not
written any articles
for any magazines
prior to this sighting.
The editors of "FATE",
and Ray Palmer specifically,
who would become
one of the first
and most vocal proponents
of the flying saucers,
induced Arnold into writing
about what he had seen.
The point then
becomes irrelevant.
The article doesn't seem to
have been a motive for Arnold
but more of a
serendipitous reward
for seeing and reporting
the objects in the first place.
It seems that those
investigating the flying saucers
didn't see a link between his
sighting and photographs taken
on July 7th, 1947,
in Phoenix, Arizona.
William A. Rhodes, a
self-employed scientist
living in Phoenix,
claimed he had taken
what might be considered
the first good photographs
of one of the flying saucers.
Initially puzzled by the case,
the military did take
the report seriously.
The investigation
that included the FBI,
whose agent asked not to
be identified as an FBI agent,
accompanied the Army
Air Force's officer
to interview Rhodes.
Rhodes would first
tell reporters
and then various government investigators,
including those from the FBI
and the Army's Counter
Intelligence Corps
that he had been on
his way to his workshop
at the rear of his house when
he heard a distinctive whoosh
that he believed to be from a
P-80 Shooting Star fighter jet
which was the fastest airplane
at that particular moment.
Overhead he saw something
that didn't have the shape
of a conventional aircraft.
He hurried to his lab, grabbed
his camera from his workbench
and hurried outside to a
small mound in his backyard.
Rhodes sighted along
the side of his camera
and it took the
first photograph.
He estimated that the
object was circling in the east.
He advanced the film
and then hesitated,
thinking that he would wait
for the object to get closer.
Worried that it would
disappear without coming closer,
he snapped the second
picture, finished the film roll,
and his ability to
record the event further.
Rhodes' story, along
with the pictures, appeared
in the Phoenix newspaper "The
Arizona Republic" on July 9th.
In that article,
men long experienced
in aircraft recognition
studied both the print
and the negative from
which they were made
and declined to make a guess
on what the flying
object might be.
Rhodes said that the object
appeared to be elliptical
in shape and to have a
diameter of 20 to 30 feet.
It appeared to be at
5,000 feet when first seen
and was traveling
according to Rhodes
at 400 to 600 miles per hour.
It was gray, which
tended to blend
with the gray overcast
background of the sky.
The object had,
according to Rhodes
and a confidential report
from the Project Blue Book files,
what appeared to be a
cockpit canopy in the center
which extended toward the
back and beneath the object.
The cockpit did not
protrude from the surface
but was clearly visible
with the naked eye.
Then on August 29th,
according to a memorandum
from the office in charge,
George Fugate, Jr,
a special agent of
the CIC and stationed
at Fourth Air
Force Headquarters,
interviewed Rhodes in person.
Fugate was accompanied
by Special Agent Brower
of the Phoenix FBI Office.
This interview is important
because of some of the confusion
about location of the
negatives and prints
of the photograph that
would develop later.
During the interview,
Rhodes again told the story,
suggesting that he
thought at first
it might have been the
Navy's Flying Flapjack
which had been featured
on the May 1947 cover
of "Mechanix Illustrated".
He rejected the idea
because he saw no propellors
or landing gear, though
the overall shape
of the craft matched
that of the Flapjack.
Later, research by
various investigators,
both military and civilian,
showed that the Navy built
two Flapjacks but
neither had flown
outside the Bridgeport,
Connecticut area.
The project was canceled in 1947
as the Navy moved to
jet-powered aircraft.
While Rhodes was being
interviewed in his home in Phoenix,
Arnold, because he
lived in the Northwest,
Lieutenant Frank Brown
with Captain William Davidson
took a B-25 and flew up
to Tacoma, Washington,
where Arnold was
investigating Maury Island.
They all got together
in Arnold's hotel room
late in the evening where
Arnold showed them the debris
that had been recovered
on Maury Island
that Dahl and Crisman
had given him.
Both Army officers, Brown
and Davidson, believed
that the material was nothing
more than smelter slag.
They were unimpressed but
both man respected Arnold.
They didn't tell
him they believed
the Maury Island
tale to be a hoax.
All of this takes
us back to Rhodes.
According to Early, Arnold
asked the two officers
what Army intelligence
had learned
about UFOs in the days
after his sighting.
Davidson sat down and then
drew a picture of an object.
He told Arnold, "This
is a drawing of one"
"of several photographs
we consider to be authentic."
Brown then added the information
that tied it to the
Rhodes photograph.
He said, "It came from
Phoenix, Arizona, the other day."
"We have prints of
it at Hamilton Field"
"but the original negatives
were flown to Washington, D.C."
It is clear that those
pictures were the ones
that Rhodes had taken
since there were no other
UFO photographs taken
in July, 1947, in
Phoenix, Arizona.
It's interesting that Brown
mentioned Hamilton Field
because Rhodes does
the same thing,
and Hamilton Field was
part of the Fourth Air Force
in 1947, and Rhodes had
communications with officers
at Fourth Air Force about
his photograph as well.
In the end, the
Air Force decided
that Arnold had been
fooled by mirages created
as the wind whipped up the snow
at the highest levels
of the mountain.
Rhodes had created a
hoax, no real evidence of that,
but when they had no
other explanation,
they claimed the
sighting was a hoax.
What they couldn't
explain, and didn't try,
was how Rhodes could
photograph an object
that looked like that
reported by Arnold
without having seen the
Arnold illustrations.
The belief at the beginning
of the official investigation
was that trained
military personnel
and law enforcement
officers made the best,
most credible witnesses.
Using this criteria, they
selected a number of reports
that seemed inexplicable to them
and that seemed to suggest
that the observed craft
were beyond the
technical capability
of any nation on Earth.
On July 4th, 1947, there
were a series of sightings
over several Northwest states
that Air Force officers labeled
as either insufficient data
for a scientific analysis
or as unidentified.
These involved police
officers and airline flight crews
as well as local civilians.
Many of the reports were
independent of one another
but can be linked by location,
time of day, and other factors.
Combined rather than separated,
they make a powerful statement
about the nature of
the flying saucers.
Although the first reports
were made by civilians,
it was just a few
minutes after one p.m.
that police officer
Kenneth A. McDowell,
who was near the
Portland Police Station,
noticed that the pigeons
began fluttering as if frightened.
Overhead he saw five
large disks east of the city.
According to the report
he gave to military officers,
three disks were flying east
and two were headed
to the south.
All were flying at high speed
and all appeared
to be oscillating.
McDowell alerted other
police officers in an all-car alert
and they immediately
broadcast the information
over the police radio.
Two other police officers, Walter A. Lissy
and Robert Ellis, after
hearing the broadcast,
stopped near a park.
Overhead they saw three
disks moving at high speed.
Neither heard any sound,
but both did see
flashes of brightness
that could've been
sunlight reflecting
from a metallic surface.
According to them, the
objects moved erratically
and changed their
direction of flight.
They were in sight
for about 30 seconds.
Both men were veterans
of the Second World War
and both were civilian pilots,
which suggested they
had some experience
around aviation and
aviation assets.
Patrolman Earl Patterson,
after hearing the broadcast,
stopped to search
for any of the disks.
The broadcast had
suggested that the saucers
were coming out of the sun
which meant they were coming
from the direction of the sun.
At first, Patterson
noticed nothing,
but a few seconds later,
he saw one object
coming out the west
and heading towards
the southwest.
He said that the craft
seemed to be either aluminum
or eggshell white and
didn't flash or reflect the sun.
He also said that he didn't
think they were airplanes
like so many of the others.
Their flight path was erratic,
wobbling and weaving.
Patterson thought they
were radio-controlled
rather than having a
living pilot on board.
On the far side of
the Columbia River
in nearby Vancouver, Washington,
sheriff's deputies Sergeant
John Sullivan, Clarence McKay,
and Fred Krives also
heard the alert broadcast
and ran outside to
look for themselves.
Over Portland three
to five miles away,
they saw 20 to 30 disks
that looked to them
like a flight of geese.
They heard a low humming sound
which might or might not
have been related to the objects.
Not long after that,
three Harvard patrolmen
who had also been
monitoring the police radio band
stepped outside, Captain
K.A. Prehn, A.T. Austad,
and Patrolman K.C. Hoff,
saw three to six disks
traveling at high speed.
They couldn't get a
good count on the number
because of the bright
flashes surrounding them.
According to witnesses,
the objects looked like
huge chrome hubcaps
and oscillated as they flew.
Sometimes the witnesses
could see a full disk,
then a half-moon, and
then nothing at all.
They did see a plane
overhead as well,
but all the witnesses said
that what they were
watching was not aircraft.
This would cause Air Force
investigations to wonder
if aircraft might be a
plausible explanation
for the sightings, despite
the suggestion by the witness.
They thought that
something the plane's pilot did,
such as tossing shiny
disks from the cockpit,
might have caused the confusion.
And later in the day,
there was another report
with a similar claim.
The Air Force files
contained a report
that a former Air Corps
veteran said the object he saw
was unlike any plane
he had ever seen.
He thought it appeared
radio-controlled
because the disk
could change direction
at a 90-degree angle
without difficulty.
Another witness suggested
that he had seen three objects
fly east across the
Willamette River.
The objects did not
appear to be very high
but they were
traveling very fast.
He said that they looked
like a metallic disk
glinting in the sun.
He also said that
he and a neighbor
saw a single disk
later that afternoon.
About four p.m., more
civilians reported more disks.
A woman called the
police telling them
she had watched a single object
as shiny as a new
dime flipping around.
An unidentified
man called to say
that he had seen three disks,
one flying to the east
and the two heading north.
They were shining, shaped
like flattened saucers,
and were traveling
at high speed.
About an hour later, a man said
that he spotted two
white or silver objects
flying southeast over Portland.
Half an hour later, he
sighted a single disk
headed to the northeast.
In Milwaukee, Oregon,
not far from Portland,
Sergeant Claude Cross
reported three objects
flying to the north.
All were disk-shaped, all
were moving at high speed.
But disks overhead weren't
the only things being reported.
There were objects
falling from the sky as well.
Near Eugene, Oregon, a
railroad cashier said
he saw silver
disks being dropped
out of a white plane
flying over the city.
A man in Portland recovered
a large piece of paper
he had seen fall
from a great height.
According to reports, the time
that the paper fell coincided
with some of the
flying saucer sightings
which might explain
some of them.
The best of the sightings,
and the one that was labeled
as unidentified,
occurred about dusk
as a United Airlines flight
crew saw a single disk.
Minutes later, they
spotted several others.
Captain E.J. Smith, the
captain of the flight,
explained it this way.
As our flight
number 105 took off
from Boise, Idaho at
four p.m. Pacific time,
the tower joshingly warned us
to be on the lookout
for flying saucers.
My co-pilot, Ralph
Stevens, was in control
shortly after we
got into the air.
Suddenly, he switched
on the landing lights.
He said he thought
he saw an aircraft
approaching us head-on.
I noticed the objects
then for the first time.
We saw four or five somethings.
One was larger than the
rest, and for the most part,
kept off the right of the
other three or four similar
but smaller objects.
Since we were flying
northwest, roughly into the sunset,
we saw whatever they
were in at least partial light.
We saw them clearly.
We followed them in a
northwesterly direction
for about 45 miles.
Then I called the attendant
at the Ontario,
Oregon radio tower,
giving an approximate location
and course for the objects.
The attendant acknowledged
our call, went outside to look,
but was unable to see anything
like what we'd described.
Finally the object
disappeared in a burst of speed.
We were unable to tell
whether they outsped
us or disintegrated.
We were never able to
catch them in our DC-3.
Our airspeed at the time
was 185 miles per hour.
Through the Boise air tower,
we radioed another United plane
to see if it had seen anything.
That plane flying
eastbound into the night
had not sighted them.
Because we were
following the objects
at roughly the same altitude,
we can't say anything
about their shape
except they were thin and
were smooth on the bottom
and rough-appearing on the top.
Smith called the flight attendant,
Marty Morrow, to the
cockpit to, in Smith's words,
verify they were actually seeing the disks.
He saw four or more disks,
three clustered together
and a fourth flying off
in the distance by itself.
The objects were in
sight for 10 to 15 minutes
which means that she was
able to get a good look at them.
Not everyone was convinced
that the sightings were
of unconventional aircraft.
Colonel G.R. Dodson,
a commander in the
Oregon National Guard,
told reporters that he had
made an inspection of the area
from the air but that he had
found nothing suspicious.
Solutions were offered by
some of the local residents.
One thought that the
sightings were the result
of cottonwood blossoms
drifting on the wind.
Another complained
about the news coverage,
believing it all to be a hoax.
He said that he had seen
an airplane fly over
and about a minute later
he saw what he believed
to be bits of aluminum foil
that might have been
cigarette wrappers.
Air Force officers mentioned
that radar chaff had been seen
in the area but offered no
evidence to back up the claim.
The idea that a
private plane pilot
was dropping small silver
disks took on greater importance.
In the only news story that
might have been of importance,
the Oregon Journal noted
that the only known airplanes
in the area at the
time of the reports
were 23 B-29 bombers
near Astoria.
A formation of that size
would've been difficult
to misidentify, not to
mention that the roar
that the engines
would've caused.
Dr. James McDonald, an
atmospheric scientist,
interviewed Smith, the
United Airlines captain,
about his sighting.
In a prepared statement
to United States
House of Representatives
Committee
on Science and
Astronomics' Symposium
of the Unidentified
Flying Objects
in July, 1968,
McDonald reported...
Smith emphasized to me
that there were no cloud
phenomena to confuse them here
and that they observed
these objects long enough
to be quite certain that they
were no conventional aircraft.
They appeared flat on the
bottom, rounded on the top,
he told me, and he added
that there seems to be
a perceptible roughness
of some sort on top,
though he could not
refine the description.
Almost immediately after
they lost sight of the first five,
a second formation of four,
three in a line and a
fourth off to the side,
moved in ahead of
their position,
again traveling westward but
at a somewhat higher altitude
than the DC-3's 8,000 feet.
These passed quickly out
of sight to the west at speeds
which they felt were far
beyond then known speeds.
Smith emphasized that they
were never certain of sizes
and distances but that they
had the general impression
that these disk-like craft
were appreciably larger
than ordinary aircraft.
Smith emphasized that he
had not taken seriously
the previous week's
news accounts
that coined the since
persistent term flying saucer
but after seeing this total
of nine unconventional
high-speed wingless craft
on the evening of
July 4th, 1947,
he became much more
interested in the matter.
Nevertheless, in
talking with me,
he stressed that he
would not speculate
on their real nature or origin.
These reports were investigated
by Army officers at the time,
though the reports seemed
to be fairly superficial.
That is, there were
objects seen high in the sky
for seconds or a minute or two.
As part of the Project
Grudge final report
written in 1949, one
of the officers wrote,
"This investigation can
offer no definitive hypothesis"
"but in passing, would like
to note the incidents occurred"
"on the 4th of July and
that if relatively small pieces"
"of aluminum foil
had been dropped"
"from a plane over the area,"
"then any one object
would be visible"
"at a relatively short distance."
"Even moderate wind
velocities would give the illusion"
"that fluttering gyrating
disks had gone by"
"at great velocities."
"Various observers
would not, of course,"
"in this case, have
seen the same objects."
The officer also noted that
the above is not to be regarded
as a very likely explanation,
but only as a possibility.
The occurrence on these
incidents on July 4th
may have been more
than coincidence.
Some prankster might
have tossed such objects
out of an airplane as part
of an Independence
Day celebration.
The thing that the
Air Force did here
was link the case
by date and location
but didn't think of them as a
continuation of one sighting.
Once a police officer had
alerted his fellow officers
to the object, they,
in different locations
and at different times,
went outside or looked up
and were able to spot them.
The descriptions are
of a similar type,
dish-shaped object flying
alone or in formations.
That they were
seeing the same thing
from different locations
suggested something
that was very high or
that there was more
than one formation.
The thing to be remembered
that even if the police officers
in the one location were
fooled by something,
those officers observing it
from a different perspective
might have been
able to identify it
if there was a
terrestrial explanation.
Since that didn't
happen, it would seem
that there was something
very strange going on here.
Add to this the sighting by
Smith and his airline crew
which we can do because
they observed the craft
on the same day and in
the same general location.
We have a new
dimension to the case.
Smith's report was
labeled unidentified,
meaning that he and
his crew were able
to give a detailed description
of what they had seen.
We have to wonder if that
was because they were met
by reporters when he landed.
Had his report not
received the attention it did
and had he not provided
the detail he did,
might it have ended up
with only a little information
and a label of insufficient
data for scientific analysis?
Army Air Force's investigation
which took the report
seriously in the summer of 1947
failed to find a
satisfactory explanation
for these sightings.
It should be remembered
that in this case,
there was nothing other
than witness testimony,
witnesses who were
separated by distance
but who, in some
cases, had been warned
about the flying saucers
by the police radio
and who had claimed to have
seen basically the same thing.
These sightings are interesting
and we have to wonder what
more might have been learned
had a little more
effort been made
in the investigation of them.
Although it has been
said there is a single case
in the Blue Book files
in which alien creatures
were reported that
wasn't labeled
as some sort of
psychological program,
there are several good
cases hidden in there.
Skeptics, disbelievers,
and debunkers like to say
that there is no evidence
that alien creatures
have visited the planet.
They ignore, reject,
or are unaware
that the Blue Book files
do contain examples
of physical evidence
that has been recovered.
The best of those cases came
from Socorro, New Mexico,
on April 24th, 1964.
Lonnie Zamora, then a
police officer in Socorro,
saw a landed object
and two small humanoids
standing near it.
According to Project Blue Book,
Zamora was chasing a speeder
when he heard a loud
roar and saw a flash of light
in the southwestern sky.
Fearing that a dynamite
shed on the edge of town
might have exploded,
Zamora broke off the chase
and headed in that direction.
Captain Hector Quintanilla
added more detail to the story
as it was told by Zamora
during the official investigation.
Quintanilla later wrote...
It was off the road to
the left in the arroyo,
and at first glance it
looked like a car turned over,
but when he drove closer it
appeared to be aluminum clay,
not chrome, and
oval-shaped like a football.
Zamora drove about 50
feet along the hill crest,
radioing back to the
sheriff's office,
"10-44," meaning accident, "I'll be 10-6,"
meaning busy, out of the car,
"Checking a wreck down
in the arroyo," Zamora said.
From this point,
seated in the car,
he could not see the object
over the edge of the hill.
As he stopped the car, he
was still talking on the radio,
and while he was getting
out he dropped his mic.
He picked it up and put it back
and started down
towards the object.
Zamora then said, "As soon
as I saw flames and heard roar",
"ran away from object but
did turn, head towards object."
"Object was in shape."
"It was smooth, no
windows or doors."
"As roar started, it
was still on the ground."
Quintanilla said,
"I was determined"
"to solve the case, and
come hell or high water,"
"I was going to find the
vehicle or the stimulus."
"I decided that it was
imperative for me to talk"
"to the base commander
at Holloman Air Force Base."
"I wanted to interview the
base commander at length"
"about special activities from his base."
"I needed help to pull this off"
"so I called Lieutenant
Colonel Maston Jacks at SAFOI."
"I told him what I
wanted to do and he asks,"
"'Do you think it
will do any good?'"
"I replied, 'Goddammit
Maston, if there is an answer"
"'to this case, it has to be in
some hanger at Holloman.'"
He went to work with his
position at the Pentagon
and the approval for
his visit came through.
Colonel Garman was the
base commander during his visit.
"He was most
cooperative and told me"
"that I could go anywhere
and visit any activity"
"which interested me."
"I went from one end of
the base to the other."
"I spent four days talking
to everybody I could"
"and spent almost a whole day"
"with the down-range controllers"
"at the White
Sands Missile Range."
"I left Holloman dejected
and convinced that the answer"
"to Zamora's experience
did not originate"
"and terminate at this base."
"On my way back to
Wright-Patterson, I hit upon an idea."
"Why not a lunar
landing vehicle?"
"I knew that some research had
been done at Wright-Patterson"
"so as soon as I got back
I asked for some briefings."
"The briefings were
extremely informative,"
"but the Lunar Landers
were not operational"
"in April of 1964."
"I got the names of the
companies that were doing research"
"in this field and I
started writing letters."
"The companies were
most cooperative,"
"but their answers
were all negative."
"I labeled the case
unidentified and the UFO buffs"
"and hobby clubs had
themselves a field day."
"According to them,
there was proof"
"that our beloved
planet had been visited"
"by an extraterrestrial vehicle."
"Although I labeled
the case unidentified,"
"I've never been satisfied
with that classification."
It has been claimed
that the only case
involving occupants,
creatures associated
with a landed UFO that
was labeled as unidentified,
was that from
Socorro, New Mexico.
Although somewhat hidden
in the Project Blue Book files,
there is another that took
place almost two years later.
Hynek mentioned it in his
book, "The Hynek UFO Report",
but he doesn't give a location
and he dates it with
a newspaper clipping
from the "Dallas Times Herald".
Although Hynek suggests the case
is from the Wichita
Falls, Texas, area
and the witness, W.E.
Laxson, was a civilian employee
at Sheppard Air Force
Base in Wichita Falls,
the government files list the
case as Temple, Oklahoma.
The newspaper clipping
cited by Hynek
is dated March 27th, 1966,
but the sighting occurred
on March 23rd, 1966.
With the misdirection from
Hynek probably as a result
of the classified nature of the
case when he wrote his book,
it took a while to
deduce the facts.
Hynek, using the
newspaper account,
said there was nothing
in it that varied
from what was in
the government file.
That file said, "Observer
W.E. Eddie Laxson"
"was driving his car
along the highway"
"at approximately 5:05 a.m.
on the 23rd of March, 1966,"
"when he noticed
an object parked"
"on the road
in front of him."
"He stopped the car and got out"
"so to get a better
view of the object."
"The object was so parked
that it blocked out a portion"
"of the road curb sign."
"There were no sharp
edges noticed by the observer."
"The object had the appearance
of a conventional aircraft,"
"a C-124, without
wings or motors."
"There was a Plexiglas
bubble on top"
"similar to a B-26 canopy."
"As the observer approached,"
"he noticed a man wearing a
baseball cap enter the object"
"by steps from the bottom."
"After the man
entered the object,"
"it began to rise
from the pavement"
"and headed on a
southeasterly direction"
"at approximately
720 miles per hour."
"The object had
forward and aft lights"
"that were very bright."
"As the object rose
from the ground,"
"a high-speed drill
type of sound was heard"
"plus a sound like
that of a welding rod"
"when an arc is struck."
"The object was 75 feet long,"
"about eight feet from
the top to the bottom,"
"and about 12 feet wide."
"There was some type of supports"
"on the bottom of the object."
"After the object disappeared,"
"the witness got
back into his car"
"and drove approximately
15 miles down the highway."
"At this time, the
original witness stopped"
"and talked with
another individual"
"who had also stopped
along the roadway"
"to watch some
lights over Red River"
"which is approximately five
or six miles to the southeast."
"Various organizations
were contacted"
"around the Temple,
Oklahoma area"
"for a possible experimental
or conventional aircraft."
"The observer stated
that he thought the object"
"was some type of Army or
Air Force research aircraft."
"All attempts at such an
explanation proved fruitless"
"since there were no
aircraft in the area"
"at the time of the sightings."
"Although there are
numerous helicopter"
"and other
experimentals in the area,"
"none could be put
in the area of Temple"
"at approximately five o'clock
on the 23rd of March, 1966."
"Because of this factor,
the case is listed"
"as unidentified
by the Air Force."
The second witness who was
not interviewed by the Air Force
and who, according to the
government file, did not fill out
their long and involved
form, was C.W. Anderson.
Anderson confirmed
for the newspaper
that he had seen
the craft as well.
He told the reporter, "I
know that people will say"
"that Laxson is durned
crazy, but that's what I say."
Anderson said that he thought
the object had been
following him down the road.
He had watched it in his rear
view mirror for several miles.
The problem for the Air Force
was that Anderson did
not complete their form.
He didn't see the pilot
or crewmen either.
The drawing of the object
made by Laxson resembled that
which Lonnie Zamora had
made of the craft he had saw,
which means it was
sort of egg-shaped.
It was certainly longer
and was lying on its side.
Like Zamora, Laxson said that
he saw symbols on the object,
but unlike Zamora,
he recognized them.
He told the reporter
that, "On the side",
"I made out T-L-A, with
the last two figures 38."
In what might be
described as a fit of honesty,
the Air Force admitted they
had no solution for the case.
The description of the alien
was more human than humanoid
and he seemed to be dressed
in conventional clothing,
right to the mechanic's hat.
Investigations revealed
a second witness
and that might have
influenced the Air Force,
especially since the
men had never met
prior to the sighting.
In the end, they labeled
the case as unidentified.
In a review of
government records,
another case, also labeled
as unidentified, was found.
This one took place
in Pittsburg, Kansas.
The case is a single witness
and has gone nearly unreported
for more than 60 years.
William Squires was
on his way to work
along Highway 160 about
eight miles from Pittsburg
when he sighted an unknown
object hovering over a field.
It was about 27 feet in
length at about 12 feet high.
Squires thought it had
the appearance of an airfoil.
He said that he saw
smallpropellors around the perimeter.
They were about a
foot in diameter.
There were also a number
of windows in the craft
and through one of them,
Squires could see a man
who seemed to be
controlling the object.
He was facing forward to
the edge of the object.
The windows were
described as blue,
becoming darker as time passed.
This seems to be
the type of sighting
the Air Force would
dismiss as psychological,
which would be a nice way
of saying that it was a hoax
and there was something
wrong with the witness.
However, there was some
physical evidence left behind
according to the
government file.
The object reported as
hovering over an open field
used for cattle grazing,
general area under the exact
location was pressed down
and formed a round
60-foot-diameter impression
with the grass in a
recognizable concentric pattern.
Loose grass lay on
top of the impression
as if drawn in by suction
when the object ascended
vertically at a high speed.
Vegetation and grass
approximately three
to four inches high.
Area was extremely
dry at present.
Grass showed where
Squires had walked in
to a fence and stopped.
L.V. Baxter and D. Whitener,
local employees of KOMA,
went to the place of
the sighting, 11:35 CST,
with Squires and confirmed
his path to the fence
and the 60-foot-diameter
impression in the tall grass.
Robert E. Greens
visited the site at 1600
on the 25th of August of 1952,
with source and reports that
the vegetation was laid down
in concentric circles but with
the impression less distinct
than reported by
Whitener and Baxter.
Green obtained grass
and soil samples
at the immediate area where
the impression was made
and also gathered
control samples
200 yards removed from the site.
He is sending some to the Air
Technical Intelligence Center,
airmail, special delivery.
What is strange about
this case is the fact
that there seemed to
be little interest
in the pilot of the craft.
Although there is another
point where he was discussed,
there's no real addition
to the information.
Clearly, based on these
descriptions, that alien was human,
or human enough to be in
distinguish able from a human.
Squires did suggest that the
occupant seemed to be frenzied
in his activities
inside the craft.
Although this case is
essentially single-witness,
there was the physical
evidence left by the craft.
Others, Baxter, Whitener, and
Green, did see the impressions
in the ground left by the craft.
Eventually this sort of
evidence would become known
as a saucer nest, meaning simply
that the crushed vegetation
left by a UFO on the ground
had somewhat similar features
to other parts of the country
and other parts of the world.
The ultimate description
would be of a crop circle.
Here, rather than
an elaborate design,
it was a simple circle of
crushed or flattened grass.
The soil samples taken by Green
were analyzed by the Air Force.
In a short report of
a single paragraph,
the technician said they
had found no radiation,
burning, or stress of any kind.
In other words, there
was nothing to the sample
to distinguish those
taken from the landing area
or from those taken
200 yards away.
There's one final
aspect to the case
that is mildly interesting.
In a couple of the letters
from the government files,
there is a notation that
reminds all of paragraph seven
which is a paragraph
in the regulations
that requires unidentified
cases be classified.
Those who have information about the case
are not allowed to
discuss it with those
who do not have the
proper clearances.
J. Allen Hynek, writing in
"The Hynek UFO Report",
provides a glimpse
into the thinking
at Blue Book at the
time of this sighting.
He wrote, "My skepticism
was so great at that time"
"that I was quite willing to
dismiss it as a hallucination."
Even with that admitted
bias against the case
which never received
wide exposure,
there's another which
the witness said
that he had seen the
pilot of an unidentified craft
and that was left as
unidentified by the Air Force.
In their zeal to label cases,
this seems to be another
that they missed.
They could've easily
labeled it as psychological,
if not for the darned
landing traces.
Keeping with their
tradition of labeling cases
but not solving them, the
Air Force officers decided
that witnesses had
psychological problems
if they claimed to
have seen the beings
outside of their craft.
There's no need to investigate
if the witness is unreliable
or under the influence of
some kind of mental problem.
In the Pittsburg, Kansas
case, there is the same problem.
Here was a case in which
the object interacted
with the environment.
True, it was a single witness,
but it left marks on the ground.
Rather than send in
someone to review it carefully,
the Air Force allowed samples
to be gathered by a civilian.
They may have provided
some guidance,
but it would seem that an
expert with the proper training
should have been sent if
the Air Force was serious
about investigating UFOs.
There is another
aspect to this case
and that is that
a military officer
did gather some of the data.
Green was apparently
a second lieutenant
in the Army Reserve.
He is the man who
collected the samples.
But this is not to suggest
that his military training
had covered that,
but his membership in the
Reserve caused one problem.
The report he filed with
his chain of command
made its way eventually
to the Air Force,
but they delayed it.
Zamora seemed to
be a single witness
but there was physical
evidence left behind.
Here, the Air Force
responded quickly,
gathering evidence, and
analyzed the situation.
They found no answer
that satisfied them.
There is the possibility that
there were two witnesses.
They appeared after the fact
but are not from
the Socorro area,
and their stories seem
to have been embellished
with facts from news reports.
In fact, in all the cases,
there was some physical
evidence to be examined.
The cases did not rest solely
on the testimony
of the witnesses.
If there wasn't some
kind of physical evidence,
there was another witness
to corroborate the sightings.
The Cisco Grove occupantreport
is just one more example
of an opportunity
that was missed,
or rather, one that seems
to have been missed.
There was some
corroborative testimony
from the other hunters.
There was the
damage to the arrows
and then there was the report
that the area had been cleaned.
What we don't know
is who had been out
in the forest cleaning the areas
in which the witness claimed
to have seen the alien beings.
Just who could have done that?
There is evidence
that not all sightings
made it to Project Blue Book
even though the regulations
seemed to require that.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who
was a scientific consultant
to Project Blue
Book for many years,
often said that the really
good cases didn't make it
into the Blue Book files.
He suspected another
reporting system
but he couldn't prove
that there was one.
Hints about this
other investigation
came from Brigadier
General Arthur Exon
who was the base commander
at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in the mid 1960s.
Exon said that while
he was base commander,
he would periodically
receive telephone calls
which ordered him to
prepare an aircraft
for a mission outside the
local Wright-Patterson area.
Exon himself described
this in May 19 of 1991
in a recorded interview.
He said, "I know that
while I was there",
"I had charge of all the
administrative airplanes"
"and had to sign priority
airplanes to the members"
"who would go out and
investigate reported sightings."
"I remember several out
in Wyoming and Montana"
"and that area in the
'60s, '64 and '65."
"I knew there were
certain teams of people,"
"they're representing headquarters
United States Air Force"
"as well as the
organizations there"
"at Wright-pat, and so on."
"When a crew came back,
it was their own business."
"Nobody asked any questions."
He expanded on this, saying,
"The way this happened to
me is that I would get a call"
"and say that the crew
or team was leaving."
"There was such and such a time
and they wanted an airplane"
"and pilots to take X
number of people to wherever."
"They might be gone
two or three days"
"or might be gone a week."
"They would come back and
that would be the end of it."
Asked about the overall
control of the teams, Exon said,
"I always thought they
were part of that unholy crew"
"in Washington that started
keeping the lid on this thing."
Everything said to
this point suggests
that the operation
was run from FTD,
the parent organization to
Blue Book at Wright-Patterson,
but in an interview
conducted about a month later
on June the 18th of 1991,
Exon clarified what he had meant.
Asked if these teams of eight
to 15 people were stationed
at Wright-Patterson,
he said, "They were."
"They would come
from Washington, D.C."
"They'd ask for an
airplane tomorrow morning"
"and that would give the
guys a chance to get there."
"Wright-Patterson, by
commercial airline."
"Sometimes they'd be
gone for three days"
"and sometimes they'd
be gone for a week."
"I know they went to
Montana and Wyoming"
"and the northwest
states a number of times"
"in a year and a half."
"They went to Arizona
once or twice."
He also said, "Our contact
was a man, a telephone number."
"He'd call, he'd
set the airplane up."
"I just knew there was
an investigative team."
What all this boils
down to is an attempt
to cover the activity.
The team, whoever they were,
would fly into Dayton, Ohio,
on commercial air and
then drive out to the base.
If a reporter attempted
to trace the movements
of the team after it
had been deployed,
the trail led back
to Wright-Patterson.
After that, it just disappeared.
This team, or those
teams, was made up
of eight to 15
individuals at a time
when Project Blue
Book was composed
of two Air Force officers,
an NCO, and a secretary.
They were stationed
at Wright-Patterson
but these other teams were
assigned somewhere else
and there is no reason to assume
that all members of a team
were assigned at the same base.
They would come
together as needed.
On October 20th, 1969,
Brigadier General C.H.
Bolenderprovided the documentation
to prove that there was
another investigation.
In paragraph four of his
memo, Bolender wrote,
"As early as 1953, the
Robertson Panel concluded"
"that the evidence presented
on unidentified flying objects"
"shows no indication
that these phenomena"
"constitute a direct physical
threat to national security."
"In spite of this finding,
the Air Force continued"
"to maintain a special
reporting system."
"There is still,
however, no evidence"
"that Project Blue Book reports"
"have served any
intelligence function."
"Moreover, reports of
unidentified flying objects"
"which could affect
national security are made"
"in accordance with JANAP 146,"
"the Joint Army, Navy,
Air Force Publication,"
"or Air Force Manual 55-11,"
"and are not part of
the Blue Book system."
In other words, the
suspicions of Hynek and Exon
were confirmed by this document
from the government files.
This organization dealt with
matters of national security
and the sightings at Malmstrom
because of the missile shutdown
and it was a matter
of national security.
Those sightings and the
information collected about them
would not be part of
the Blue Book system
and therefore would
not be in the files.
That they are missing is
the significant point.
In the beginning, in
the summer of 1947,
the military was concerned
about the sightings
of flying saucers.
They didn't know what they were.
But the reports from
military pilots,
civilian pilots, and police
officers concerned them.
They believed the
reports to be accurate
and thought they represented an advancement
in technology by our
competitors in the world.
Alien visitation,
though discussed,
was not the top explanation.
When the official investigation,
known officially
as Project Sign,
the officers assigned were
motivated to find an explanation.
In July, 1948, they
produced a document
known as the estimate
of the situation.
According to Ed Ruppelt,
one-time chief of
Project Blue Book,
that situation
was flying saucers
and the conclusion was that
they were from another world.
The Air Force chief of staff,
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg,
rejected the estimate and
those who had been responsible
found themselves with new jobs.
The fire went out of
the investigation.
No longer did they worry
about the explanation.
They just worried about
providing solutions for the cases.
Sign eventually
evolved into Grudge
and then Project Blue Book.
For a brief period, Blue
Book was more interested
in the truth than
in explaining cases
regardless of the facts.
An explanation of
the Blue Book files,
a reinvestigation of
many of the cases,
reveals the flaws in them.
There are radar cases,
physical evidence cases,
photographic cases,
landing cases,
and reports of
humanoid creatures
that have no solid
terrestrial explanations.
The truth is that for
most of its existence,
Blue Book was a public
relations operation
designed to convince people
that there were no flying
saucers, no alien visitation,
and finally, no reason
for continued research.
Blue Book ended in 1969
after the University of
Colorado accepted more
than a half million dollars
to investigate UFOs.
There were three caveats:
they must say something positive
about the Air Force
investigation,
they must conclude
their investigation
the way the Air Force
wanted, and then must show
that there was no national security threat.
With these three goals
accomplished, the Air Force said
they were through
investigating flying saucers.
Like so much else, that
statement was also untrue.
10, nine,
ignition sequence start,
six, five, four, three,
two, one, zero.