Part 14 (1/2)

”What happened to those two reports that General ------ sent in fro saucers hi report, anyway?” another person added, picking up a copy of the Grudge Report and slas and Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten came back to ATIC with orders to set up a new project and report back to General Cabell when it was ready to go But cuet a chance to do e--it was to keep the old name--because in a few days he was a civilian He'd been released from active duty because he was needed back at Cal Tech, where he'd been working on an iovernment project before his recall to active duty

The day after cuarten called me into his office The colonel was chief of the Aircraft and Missiles branch and one of his e He said that he knew that I was busy as group leader of h people, could I take Project Grudge? All he wanted ; then I could go back to trying to outguess the Russians He threw in a few co out other fouled-up projects Good old ”Rosy” With o sufficiently inflated, I said yes

On many later occasions, when I'd land at hoh for a clean clothes resupply, or when the telephone would ring at 2:00AM to report a new ”hot” sighting and wake up the baby, Mrs

Ruppelt and I have soundly cussed o

I had had the project only a few days when a ood UFO reports started It wasn't supposed to happen because the day after I'd taken over Project Grudge I'd met the ex-UFO ”expert” in the hall and he'd nearly doubled up with laughter as he said soe He predicted that I wouldn't get a report until the newspapers began to play up flying saucers again ”It's all mass hysteria,” he said

The first hysterical report of the flurry came from the Air Defense Command On Septe, two F-86's on an early patrol were approaching Long Beach, California, coe

All of a sudden the flight leader called his ground controller--high at twelve o'clock he and his wing radual turn to its left, and it wasn't another airplane The ground controller checked his radars but they had nothing, so the ground controller called the leader of the F-86's back and told hio after the object and try to identify it The two airplanes started to climb

By this time the UFO had crossed over the back Several times they tried to intercept, but they could never cli close, the UFO would lazily htly All the ti, wide circle After about ten round controller, who had been getting a running account of the unsuccessful intercept, that their fuel was low and that they'd have to break off soon They'd gotten a fairly good look at the UFO, the flight leader told the ground controller, and it appeared to be a silver airplane with highly swept-back wings The controller acknowledged theall his alert airplanes froe AFB Could the two F-86's stay in the area a few more minutes? They stayed and in a few minutes four more F- 86's arrived They saw the UFO immediately and took over

The two F-86's with nearly dry tanks went back to George AFB

For thirtyto get up to the UFO's altitude, which they estimated to be 55,000 feet, but they couldn'tand speeding up only when the F-86's seean to run out of fuel and asked for permission to break off the intercept

By this ti F-86 had been alerted and was airborne toward Long Beach He passed the four ho in, but by the tione

All the pilots except one reported a ”silver airplane with highly swept-back wings” One pilot said the UFO looked round and silver to hience officer

He'd called Edwards AFB, the big Air Force test base north of Los Angeles, but they had nothing in the air The officer concluded that the UFO was no airplane In 1951 nothing we had would fly higher than the F-86

This was a good report and I decided to dig in First I had some more questions I wanted to ask the pilots I was just in the process of for this set of questions when three better reports ca Beach Incident

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Lubbock Lights, Unabridged

When four college professors, a geologist, a che the same UFO's on fourteen different occasions, the event can be classified as, at least, unusual Add the facts that hundreds of other people saw these UFO's and that they were photographed, and the story gets even better Add a few more facts--that these UFO's were picked up on radar and that a few people got a close look at one of theins to convince even the most ardent skeptics

This was the situation the day the reports of the Lubbock Lights arrived at ATIC Actually the Lubbock Lights, as Project Blue Book calls them, involved many widespread reports Some of these incidents are known to the public, but the ones that added the eue to the case and caused hundreds of hours of ti the reports have not been told before We collected all of these reports under the one title because there appeared to be a tie- in between thes reached ATIC late in Septeirl dropped letters into my ”in” basket One of the letters was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, one was froton State, where I knew an Air Defense Command radar station was located, and the other from Reese AFB at Lubbock, Texas

I opened the Albuquerque letter first It was a report from 34th Air Defense at Kirtland AFB The report said that on the evening of August 25, 1951, an ey Commission's supersecret Sandia Corporation and his wife had seen a UFO About dusk they were sitting in the back yard of their ho at the night sky, co on how beautiful it hen both of the swiftly and silently over their hoht only a few seconds but they had gotten a good look at it because it was so low They esti” and one and a half ti was sharply swept back, almost like a V Both the husband and wife had seen B-36's over their home many times They couldn't see the color of the UFO but they did notice that there were dark bands running across the wing fros there were six to eight pairs of soft, glowing, bluish lights The aircraft had passed over their house from north to south

The report went on to say that an investigation had been ht have been a conventional airplane, air traffic was checked A commercial airlines Constellation was 50 miles west of Albuquerque and an Air Force B-25 was south of the city, but there had been nothing over Albuquerque that evening The round was checked He had a ”Q” security clearance This suet ”Q”

clearances No one else had reported the UFO, but this could be explained by the fact the AEC e passing over their home from north to south wouldn't pass over or near very many other houses A sketch of the UFO was enclosed in the report

I picked up the letter froraphs that were attached, it looked interesting I thu that struck me was the similarity between these photos and the report I'd just read They showed a series of lights in a V shape, very sie of the ”flying wing” that was reported fro unique, so I read the report in detail

On the night of August 25, 1951, about 9:20PM, just twenty e professors froe at Lubbock had observed a forhts pass over their hohts and in the next teeks they saw at least ten rapher had taken five photos of the lights Also on the thirty-first two ladies had seen a large ”alu near a road north of Lubbock The report went into the details of these sightings and enclosed a set of the photos that had been taken

This report, in itself, was a good UFO report, but the si, both in the description of the object and the ti