Part 34 (2/2)

So a public statement that was made in 1952 still holds true: ”The _possibility_ of the existence of interplanetary craft has never been denied by the Air Force, _but_ UFO reports offer absolutely no authentic evidence that such interplanetary spacecraft do exist”

But with the UFO, what is lacking in proof is always et a qualified opinion, I wrote to a friend, Frederick C Durant Mr Durant, who is presently the director of a large Army Ordnance test station, is also a past president of the American Rocket Society and president of the International Astronautical Federation For those who are not faanizations, the Aanization established to proht and lists as its ineer in the professional fields allied to aeronautics The International Astronautical Federation is a world-wide federation of such societies

Mr Durant has spentUFO reports in the Project Blue Book files andthe research and forht I asked hi the past several years and what he thought about them This was his reply:

This past suress of the IAF at Innsbruck, as well as previous Congresses (Zurich, 1953, Stuttgart, 1952, and London, 1951), none of the delegates representing the rocket and space flight societies of all the countries involved had strong feelings on the subject of saucers Their attitude was essentially the same as professional members of the American Rocket Society in this country In other words, there appear to be no confirmed saucer fans in the hierarchy of the professional societies

I continue to follow the subject of UFO's pri requested for coht aspects My personal feelings have not changed in the past four years, although I continue to keep an objective outlook

There are many other prominent scientists in the world whom I met while I was chief of Project Blue Book who, I'ive the same answer--they've not been able to find any proof, but they continue to keep an objective outlook There are just enough big question h the reports to keep their outlook objective

I know that there are h they haven't studied the Air Force's UFO files, would lih followed by an ”It can't be” But ”It can't be's” are dangerous, if for no other reason than history has proved theo two members of the French Academy of Sciences were unseated because they supported the idea that ”stones had fallen frouished members of the French Academy examined the stones, ”It can't be--stones don't fall from the sky,” or words to that effect ”These are co”

Today we know that the ”stones froo Dr Simon Newcomb, a world-famous astronomer and the first American since Benjamin Franklin to be made an associate of the Institute of France, the hierarchy of the world science, said, ”It can't be” Then he went on to explain that flight without gas bags would require the discovery of some new material or a new force in nature

And at the saineer for the US Navy, said that attempts to fly heavier-than- air vehicles was absurd

Just a little over ten years ago there was another ”it can't be” Ex- President Harry S Truman recalls in the first volume of the Truman _Memoirs_ what Admiral William D Leahy, then Chief of Staff to the President, had to say about the ato we have ever done,” he is quoted as saying ”The boo off, and I speak as an expert in explosives”

Personally, I don't believe that ”it can't be” I wouldn't class myself as a ”believer,” exactly, because I've seen too many UFO reports that first appeared to be unexplainable fall to pieces when they were thoroughly investigated But every tiet skeptical I think of the other reports, the many reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who knohat they're looking at These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still unknowns Of these reports, the radar- visual sightings are the et and a ground observer sees a light where the radar target is located, then a jet interceptor is scraht and gets a radar lock-on only to have the UFO almost impudently outdistance him, there is no simple answer We have no aircraft on this earth that can at will so handily outdistance our latest jets

The Air Force is still actively engaged in investigating UFO reports, although during the past six months there have been definite indications that there is aback to the old Project Grudge philosophy of analyzing UFO reports--write theood UFO reports cannot be written off with such answers as fatigued pilots seeing a balloon or star; ”green” radar operators with _only_ fifteen years'

experience watching temperature inversion caused blips on their radarscopes; or ”aanswers like these, or similar ones, to explain the UFO reports is an expedient e of unknowns down to zero, but it is nothe hands of a clock ahead to make time pass faster Twice before the riddle of the UFO has been ”solved,” only to have the reports increase in both quantity and quality

I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to what the final outcoation will be, but I am sure that within a few years there will be a proven answer The earth satellite prograress in the fields of electronics, nuclear physics, astronomy, and a dozen other branches of the sciences will furnish data that will be useful to the UFO investigators Methods of investigating and analyzing UFO reports have i to be ient work of Captain Charles Hardin, the present chief of Project Blue Book, his staff, and the 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron Slowly but surely these people are working closer to the answer--closer to the proof

Maybe the final proven ansill be that all of the UFO's that have been reported are merely misidentified known objects Or enerals, industrialists, scientists, and the man on the street who have told me, ”I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen itabout Maybe the earth is being visited by interplanetary spaceshi+ps

Only time will tell

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

And They're Still Flying

[Transcriber's Note: The following three chapters were added to the second edition text in 1960]

Four years have passed since the first seventeen chapters of this book ritten During this period hundreds of unidentified flying objects have been seen and reported to the Air Force Pilots, with thousands of hours of flying ti the the them

UFO's are not just a fad

The Air Force's Project Blue Book is still very active Not a week passes that one of the ation net is not in the field investigating a new UFO report