Part 20 (1/2)

To get all this information on balloons, aircraft, astronomical bodies, and what have you, I had to co-ordinate Project Blue Book's operational plan with the Air Force's Air Weather Service, Flight Service, Research and Development Command, and Air Defense Comy branch of the Bureau of Aeronautics; and with the Civil Aeronautics Administration, Bureau of Standards, several astronomical observatories, and our own Project Bear Our entire operational plan was sih school--just about the ti, another part would break down

When a report ca process and still had the ”Unknown” tag on it, it went to the MO file, where we checked its characteristics against other reports For example, on May 25 we had a report fro process and came out ”Unknown”; it wasn't a balloon, airplane, or astronomical body So then it went to the MO file It was a flock of ducks reflecting the city lights We knew that the Texas UFO's were ducks because our MO file showed that we had an identical report from Moorhead, Minnesota, and the UFO's at Moorhead were ducks

Radar reports that came into Blue Book went to the radar specialists of ATIC's electronics branch

Sifting through reams of data in search of the answers to thein each week required many hours of overtime work, but when a report came out with the final conclusion, ”Unknoere sure that it was unknown

To operate Project Blue Book, I had four officers, two airmen, and two civilians on my permanent staff In addition, there were three scientists e with several others orked part tion, Major Fournet, who had taken on the Blue Book liaison job as an extra duty, was now spending full tience officers all over the world ereUFO observers, Project Blue Book was a sizable effort

Only the best reports we received could be personally investigated in the field by Project Blue Book personnel The vast majority of the reports had to be evaluated on the basis of what the intelligence officer who had written the report had been able to uncover, or what data we could get by telephone or byout a questionnaire Our instructions for ”what to do before the Blue Book man arrives,” which had been printed into pay off and the reports were continually gettingin June 1952 was the one that had recently been developed by Project Bear Project Bear, along with psychologists from a midwestern university, had worked on it for five months Many test models had been tried before it reached its final for today

It ran eight pages and had sixty-eight questions which were booby- trapped in a couple of places to give us a cross check on the reliability of the reporter as an observer We received quite a few questionnaires answered in such a way that it was obvious that the observer was drawing heavily on his iination

From this standard questionnaire the project worked up two s of UFO's, the other with sightings y a ”flap” is a condition, or situation, or state of being of a group of people characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not quite yet reached panic proportions

It can be brought on by any nu the unexpected visit of an inspecting general, a anization, the arrival of a hot piece of intelligence information, or the dramatic entrance of a well-stacked female into an officers' club bar

In early June 1952 the Air Force was unknowingly in the initial stages of a flap--a flying saucer flap--_the_ flying saucer flap of 1952 The situation had never been duplicated before, and it hasn't been duplicated since All records for the nurated In 1948, 167 UFO reports had co year In June 1952 we received 149 During the four years the Air Force had been in the UFO business, 615 reports had been collected During the ”Big Flap” our inco showed 717 reports

To anyone who had anything to do with flying saucers, the su swirl of UFO reports, hurried trips, on, press interviews, and very little sleep

If you can pin down a date that the Big Flap started, it would probably be about June 1

It was also on June 1 that we received a good report of a UFO that had been picked up on radar June 1 was a Sunday, but I'd been at the office all day getting ready to go to Los Ala and the operator told -distance call from California My caller was the chief of a radar test section for Hughes Aircraft Coeles, and he was very excited about a UFO he had to report

Thatout a new late- et it ready for so To see if their set was functioning properly, they had been tracking jets in the Los Angeles area About ineer told un to drop off, and they were about ready to close down their operation when one of the crew picked up a slow- across the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles He tracked the target for a few minutes and, from the speed and altitude, decided that it was a DC-3

It was at 11,000 feet and traveling about 180 miles an hour toward Santa Monica The operator was about ready to yell at the other crew hty odd-- there was a big gap between the last and the rest of the regularly spaced bright spots on the radarscope The man on the scope called the rest of the crew in because DC-3's just don't triple their speed

They watched the target as it eles They plotted one, two, three, and then four points during the target's clirabbed a slide rule

Whatever it was, it was cli about 550 miles an hour in the process Then as they watched the scope, the target leveled out for a few seconds, went into a high- speed dive, and again leveled out at 55,000 feet When they lost the target, it was heading southeast so my caller told me that when the UFO was only about ten one outside but they couldn't see anything But, he explained, even the high- flying jets that they had been tracking hadn't been leaving vapor trails

The first thing I asked when the Hughes test engineer finished his story was if the radar set had been working properly He said that as soon as the UFO had left the scope they had run every possible check on the radar and it was OK

I was just about to ask ht not have been souessedat each other for about a ested that they call Edwards They did, and Edwards' flight operations told the in the area

I asked hiet didn't look like a weather target was the answer, but just to be sure, the test crew had checked One of his men was an electronics-weather specialist whoe of the idiosyncrasies of radar under certain weather conditions This otten the latest weather data and checked it, but there wasn't the slightest indication of an inversion or any other weather that would cause a false target

Just before I hung up I asked the ain I got the same old answer: ”Yesterday at this ti saucers were a bunch of nonsense but now, regardless of what you'll say about , it was so and hung up We couldn't make any more of an analysis of this report than had already been made, it was another unknown

I went over to the MO file and pulled out the stack of cards behind the tab ”High-Speed Climb” Therea UFO report in which the reported object h-speed cli a cli the early part of June, Project Blue Book took another juanizational chart A year before the UFO project had consisted of one officer It had risen froroup, then to a group, and noas a section