Part 17 (1/2)

Every one of the nine scientists and engineers who had reviewed the UFO ive top priority to getting reasonably accurate measurements of the speed, altitude, and size of reported UFO's This would serve two purposes

First, it would s, such as balloons, airplanes, etc Second, and et even one fairly accurate h the ath speed, and that it wasn't a meteor, the UFO riddle would be et soroup for their coet wind of the Air Force's renewed effort to identify UFO's When this happened, instead of being , ould freely admit the existence of the new project, explain the situation thoroughly and exactly as it was, and say that all UFO reports iven careful consideration In this ould encourage et soood data

To further explain my point, I drew a sketch on a blackboard

Suppose that a UFO is reported over a fair-sized city Noe et one or two reports, and these reports ood--all we can conclude is that so that he couldn't identify But suppose fifty people from all over the city report the UFO Then it would be profitable for us to go out and talk to these people, find out the time they saw the UFO, and where they saw it (the direction and height above the horizon) Then we ulation probleet a fairly accurate measurement of speed, altitude, and size

Radar, of course, will give an accurate measurement of speed and altitude, I pointed out, but radar is not infallible There is always the probleet accurate radar data on a UFO, it is always necessary to prove that it wasn't weather that was causing the target Radar is valuable, and anted radar reports, I said, but they should be considered only as a parallel effort and shouldn't take the place of visual sightings

In winding up ain stressed the point that, as of the end of 1951--the date of this briefing--there was no positive proof that any craft foreign to our knowledge existed All recoe were based solely upon the fact that there were many incredible reports of UFO's fro saucer reports and couldn't be considered scientific proof

Everyone present at the reed--each had read or had been briefed on these incredible reports In fact, two of the people present had seen UFO's

Before theadjourned, Colonel Dunn had one last question He knew the answer, but he wanted it confirmed ”Does the United States have a secret weapon that is being reported as a UFO?”

The ansas a flat ”No”

In a few days I was notified that ht I already had the plan written up in the forh channels for forht froe that there would be questions that no one on my staff was technically competent to answer To have a fully staffed project, I'd need an astronoist, and probably a dozen other specialists It was, of course, impossible to have all of these people onI would set up a contract with soanization who already had such people on their staff; then I would call on them whenever their services were needed

I soon found a place that was interested in such a contract, and the day after Christmas, Colonel S H Kirkland, of Colonel Dunn's staff, and I left Dayton for a two-day conference with these people to outline anted Their organization cannot be identified by naovernment I'll call thee, well-known research organization in the Midwest The several hundred engineers and scientists who make up their staff run from experts on soils to nuclear physicists They would e on any probleht arise from a UFO report They did not have a staff astronoet the experts in every field of science, they would make two studies for us; a study of how much a person can be expected to see and re, and a statistical study of UFO reports The end product of the study of the powers of observation of a UFO observer would be an interrogation form

Ever since the Air Force had been in the UFO business, attempts had been made to construct a form that a person who had seen a UFO could fill out Many types had been tried but all of the with the psychology department of a university, would study all of the previous questionnaires, along with actual UFO reports, and try to coation form as possible The idea was to make the form simple and yet extract as much and as accurate data as possible from the observer

The second study that Project Bear would undertake would be a statistical study of all UFO reports Since 1947 the Air Force had collected about 650 reports, but if our plan to encourage UFO reports worked out the e expected this number could increase tenfold To handle this volume of reports, Project Bear said that they would set up a complete UFO file on IBM punch cards Then if anted any bit of infor a few buttons on an IBM card-sorting machine, and the files would be sorted electronically in a few seconds Approxi to a UFO report would be put on each card These ite from the time the UFO was seen to its position in the sky and the observer's personality The items punched on the cards would correspond to the ite to develop

Besides giving us a rapid ive us a modus operandi file Our MO file would be similar to the MO files used by police departments to file the methods of operations of a criminal Thus e received a report we could put the characteristics of the reported UFO on an IBM punch card, put it into the IBM htings that had known solutions The answer ht be that out of the one hundred items on the card, ninety-five were identical to previous UFO reports that ducks were flying over a city at night reflecting the city's lights

On the way ho Colonel Kirkland and I were both well satisfied with the assistance we believed Project Bear could give to Project Grudge

In a few days I again left ATIC, this tis, Colorado I wanted to find out hoilling ADC was to help us and what they could do When I arrived I got a thorough briefing on the operations of ADC and the pro they could to help solve the UFO riddle

All of this co-operation was so that I hadn't expected I'd been warned by the people who had worked on Project Sign and the old Project Grudge that everybody hated the word UFO--I'd have to fight for everything I asked for But once again they rong The scientists who visited ATIC, General Samford, Project Bear, and now Air Defense Co aware that there was much wider concern about UFO reports than I'd ever realized before

While I traveled around the United States getting the project set up, UFO reports continued to coood One series of reports was especially good, and they careat deal of experience watching things in the sky--the people who launch the big skyhook balloons for General Mills, Inc The reports of what the General Mills people had seen while they were tracking their balloons covered a period of over a year They had just sent the reorganized and was taking a different view on UFO reports They, like so usted with the previous Air Force attitude toward UFO reports, and they had refused to send in any reports I decided that these people et further details on their reports, so I got orders to go to Minneapolis A scientist from Project Bear ith me We arrived on January 14, 1952, in the middle of a cold wave and a blizzard

The Aeronautical Division of General Mills, Inc, of Wheaties and Betty Crocker fame, had launched and tracked every skyhook balloon that had been launched prior to mid-1952 They knehat their balloons looked like under all lighting conditions and they also knew y, aerodynamics, astronomy, and they knew UFO's I talked to these people for the better part of a full day, and every tiht be some natural explanation for the UFO's I just about found myself in a fresh snowdrift

What made these people so sure that UFO's existed? In the first place, they had seencrew had seen so er even especially interested thes that they saw couldn't be explained

For example: On January 16, 1951, two people from General Mills and four people fro a skyhook balloon fro the balloon off and on for about an hour when one of the group sao tiny specks on the horizon, off to the northwest He pointed them out to the others because two airplanes were expected into the airport, and he thought that these ht be the airplanes But as they watched, the two specks began to move in fast, and within a few seconds the observers could see that ”the airplanes” were actually two round, dull white objects flying in close forht toward the balloon When they reached the balloon they circled it once and flew off to the northwest, where they disappeared over the horizon As the two UFO's circled the balloon, they tipped on edge and the observers saw that they were disk-shaped

When the two UFO's were near the balloon, the observers also had a chance to compare the size of the UFO's with the size of the balloon

If the UFO's were as close to the balloon as they appeared to be they would have been 60 feet in diameter