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Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It was the second revival of such study, started in 1952, and was active up to January 1970, as it had been ordered for termination in December 1969.

The goal of the project BLUE BOOK was to determine if UFOs were a potential threat to national security. Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analysed and filed. As the result of the Condon Report, Project Blue Book was shut down in 1969. This project was the last publicly known UFO research project lead by the USAF.

Previous Projects

The UFO study was initiated under Project Sign in 1947, following many widely-publicised UFO reports. Project Sign was headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as were all subsequent official USAF public investigations. Sign was officially inconclusive regarding the cause of the sightings. However, according to Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, Sign's initial intelligence estimate, written at the end of the summer of 1948, concluded that the flying saucers were real craft, were not made by either the Russians or U.S., and were likely extraterrestrial in origin. This estimate was forwarded to the Pentagon, but subsequently ordered destroyed by Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, USAF Chief of Staff, citing a lack of physical proof. Vandenberg subsequently dismantled Project Sign.

Project Sign was succeeded at the end of 1948 by Project Grudge, which had a debunking mandate. Ruppelt referred to the era of Project Grudge as the "dark ages" of USAF UFO investigation. As might be expected, Grudge concluded that all UFOs were natural phenomena or other misinterpretations, although it also stated that 23 percent of the reports were inexplicable.

Project Blue Book

According to Ruppelt, by the end of 1951, several high-ranking, very influential USAF generals were so dissatisfied with the state of Air Force UFO investigations that they dismantled Project Grudge and replaced it with Project Blue Book in early 1952. By the time Project Blue Book ended in 1969, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, et cetera) or conventional aircraft. A few were considered hoaxes. 701 of the reports—about six percent—were classified as unknown. The reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been blacked out.

The first head of the project was captain Edward J. Ruppelt. By his order, a standard reporting form for UFOs was developed. He was also the one who officially coined the term UFO, to replace the inaccurate and suggestive flying saucer, which had been used to that point. He resigned from the air force some years later, and wrote the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, which described the study of UFOs by United States Air Force from 1947 to 1955.

Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant of the project. He worked for the project up to its termination and initially created the categorization which has been extended and is known today as Close encounters. He was a pronounced skeptic when he started, but said that his feelings changed to a more waverly skeptism during the research, after encountering a few UFO reports he thought were inexplicable.

Robertson Panel

Project Blue Book's Official Conclusions Project Blue Book stated that UFOs sightings were generated as a result of:

A mild form of mass hysteria. Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity. Psychopathological persons. Misidentification of various conventional objects. As of April 2003, the USAF has publicly indicated that there are no immediate plans to re-establish any official government UFO study programs. (http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=188)

Robertson Panel

In July 1952, after a build-up of hundreds of sightings over the previous few months, a series of radar detections coincident with visual sightings were observed near the National Airport in Washington, D.C. These sightings led the Central Intelligence Agency to establish a panel of scientists headed by Dr. H. P. Robertson, a physicist of the California Institute of Technology, which including various physicists, meteorologists, engineers, and one astronomer (Hynek). The Panel first met on January 14, 1953.

Ruppelt, Hynek, and others presented the best evidence, including movie footage, that had been collected by Blue Book. After spending only 12 hours reviewing 6 years of data, the Robertson Panel concluded that most UFO reports had prosaic explanations, and that all could be explained with further investigation, which they deemed not worth the effort.

In their final report, they stressed that low-grade reports were overloading intelligence channels, with the risk of missing a genuine conventional threat to the U.S. Therefore, they recommended the Air Force deemphasize the subject of UFOs and embark on a debunking campaign to lessen public interest. They suggested debunkery through the mass media, including Walt Disney corporation, and using psychologists, astronomers, and celebrities to ridicule the phenomenon and put forward prosaic explanations. Furthermore, civilian UFO groups "should be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking. . . The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind."

In brief, the Robertson Panel was recommending controlling public opinion through a program of official propaganda and spying. It is the belief of many ufologists that these recommendations helped shape Air Force policy regarding UFO study not only immediately afterwards, but also into the present day.

Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14

In late December 1951, Ruppelt met with members of the Battelle Memorial Institute, a think tank based in Columbus, Ohio, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Ruppelt wanted their experts to assist them in making the Air Force UFO study more scientific. It was the Battelle Institute that standardized the reporting form. Starting in late March 1952, the Institute started analyzing existing sighting reports and encoding about 30 report characteristics onto IBM cards for computer analysis.

Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 was their massive statistical analysis of Blue Book cases to date, some 3200 by the time the report was completed in October 1953. Even today, it represents the largest such study ever undertaken. Battelle employed four scientific analysts, who sought to divide cases into "knowns," "unknowns," and a third category of "insufficient information." They also broke down knowns and unknowns into four categories of quality, from excellent to poor. E.g., cases deemed excellent might typically involve experienced witnesses such as airline pilots or trained military personnel, multiple witnesses, corroborating evidence such as radar contact or photographs, etc. In order for a case to be deemed a "known," only two analysts had to independently agree on a solution. However, for a case to be called an "unknown," all four analysts had to agree. Thus the criterion for an "unknown" was quite stringent.

In addition, sightings were broken down into six different characteristics--color, number, duration of observation, brightness, shape, and speed--and then these characteristics were compared between knowns and unknowns to see if there was a statistically signficant difference.

The main results of the statistical analysis were:

• About 69% of the cases were judged known or identified; about 9% fell into insufficient information. About 22% were deemed "unknown," down from the earlier 28% value of the Air Force studies, but still a very large fraction of the cases.
• In the known category, 86% were aircraft, balloons, or had astronomical explanations.

Only 1.5% were judged to be psychological or "crackpot" cases. 8% or fewer were judged hoaxes, falling into the "miscellaneous" category.

• The higher the quality of the case, the more likely it was to be classified unknown. 35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknowns, whereas only 18% of the poorest cases. This was the exact opposite result predicted by skeptics, who typically argued unknowns were poorer quality cases involving unreliable witnesses that could be solved if only better information were available.
• In all six studied sighting characteristics, the unknowns were different from the knowns at a highly statistically signficant level: in five of the six measures the odds of knowns differing from unknowns by chance was only 1% or less. When all six characteristics were considered together, the probability of a match between knowns and unknowns was less than 1 in a billion.

However, when the Air Force finally made Special Report #14 public in May 1955, they stated that the study disproved the existence of UFOs. They lied and claimed that only 3% of the cases were unknowns, instead of the actual 22%. Further they claimed the residual 3% would disappear if more complete data were available, ignoring the fact that the analysts had thrown such cases into the category of "insufficient information," whereas both "knowns" and "unknowns" were deemed to have sufficient information to make a determination.

Thus the deliberate misrepresentation of the actual results of the Battelle study represents one example of the fallout from the earlier Robinson Panel recommendation of using propaganda to manipulate public opinion on the subject of UFOs.

Project Blue Book's Official Conclusions

Project Blue Book stated that UFOs sightings were generated as a result of:

• A mild form of mass hysteria.
• Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity.
• Psychopathological persons.
• Misidentification of various conventional objects.

It should be noted that these official conclusions are directly contradicted by the Air Force's own commissioned Blue Book Special Report #14. Psychological factors and hoaxes constituted less than 10% of all cases and 22% of all sightings remained unsolved.

As of April 2003, the USAF has publicly indicated that there are no immediate plans to re-establish any official government UFO study programs.

USAF current official statement on UFOs

From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated Unidentified Flying Objects under Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated Dec. 17, 1969. Of a total of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remained "unidentified."

The decision to discontinue UFO investigations was based on an evaluation of a report prepared by the University of Colorado entitled, "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects;" a review of the University of Colorado's report by the National Academy of Sciences; previous UFO studies and Air Force experience investigating UFO reports during 1940 to 1969.

As a result of these investigations, studies and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948, the conclusions of Project Blue Book were:

• 1) No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.
• 2) There has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge.
• 3) There has been no evidence indicating the sightings categorized as "unidentified" are extraterrestrial vehicles.

With the termination of Project Blue Book, the Air Force regulation establishing and controlling the program for investigating and analyzing UFOs was rescinded. Documentation regarding the former Blue Book investigation was permanently transferred to the Modern Military Branch, National Archives and Records Service, and is available for public review and analysis.

Since the termination of Project Blue Book, nothing has occurred that would support a resumption of UFO investigations by the Air Force. Given the current environment of steadily decreasing defence budgets, it is unlikely the Air Force would become involved in such a costly project in the foreseeable future.

There are a number of universities and professional scientific organizations that have considered UFO phenomena during periodic meetings and seminars. A list of private organizations interested in aerial phenomena may be found in "Encyclopaedia of Associations", published by Gale Research. Interest in and timely review of UFO reports by private groups ensures that sound evidence is not overlooked by the scientific community. Persons wishing to report UFO sightings should be advised to contact local law enforcement agencies.

(USAF USAF Fact Sheet 95-03)

Criticism

Blue Book’s explanations were not universally accepted, however, and critics--including some scientists--suggested that Project Blue Book was engaged in questionable research or, worse, pepetrating cover up.

Take for example, the many mostly nighttime UFO reports from the midwestern and southeastern United States in the summer of 1965: Witnesses in Texas reported “multicolored lights” and large aerial objects shaped like eggs or diamonds. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that Tinker Air Force Base (near Oklahoma City) had tracked up to four UFO’s simultaneously, and that several of them had descended very rapidly: from about 22.000 feet to about 4.000 feet in just a few seconds; an action well beyond the capabilities of conventional aircraft. John Shockley—a meteorologist from Wichita, Kansas reported that, using the state Weather Bureau radar, he tracked a number of odd aerial objects flying at altitudes between about 6.000 and 9.000 feet. These and other reports received wide publicity.

Project Blue Book officially determined the witnesses had mistaken Jupiter or bright stars (such as Rigel or Betelgeuse) for something else.

Blue Book’s explanation was widely criticized as inaccurate. Robert Riser, director of the Oklahoma Science and Art Foundation Planetarium offered a strongly-worded rebuke of Project Blue Book that was widely circulated: “That is as far from the truth as you can get. These stars and planets are on the opposite side of the earth from Oklahoma City at this time of year. The Air Force must have had its star finder upside-down during August.”

A newspaper editorial from the Richmond News Leader opined that “Attempts to dismiss the reported sightings under the rationale as exhibited by Project Bluebook (sic) won’t solve the mystery ... and serve only to heighten the suspicion that there’s something out there that the air force doesn't want us to know about,” while a Witchita-based UPI reporter wrote (in a brief editorial aside) that “Ordinary radar does not pick up planets and stars.”

Hynek's Criticism

After what he described as a promising beginning, Hynek grew increasingly disenchanted with Blue Book during his tenure with the project, levelling accusations of indifference, incompetence, and of shoddy research on the part of Air Force personnel.

Hynek wrote that during Air Force Major Hector Quintanilla's tenure as Blue Book’s director, “the flag of the utter nonsense school was flying at its highest on the mast.” Sergeant David Moody--one of Quintanilla’s subordinates--Hynek says, “epitomized the conviction-before-trial method. Anything that he didn’t understand or didn’t like was immediately put into the psychological category, which meant ‘crackpot’.” Hynek reported bitter exchanges with Moody when the latter refused to research UFO sightings thouroughly, describing Moody as “the master of the possible: possible balloon, possible aircraft, possible birds, which then became, by his own hand (and I argued with him violently at times) the probable.”

Sources

• Jerome Clark, ‘’The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial’’, ISBN 1578590299

• == External links ==
• Blue Book Archive Searchable online database containing the National Archive's Project Blue Book microfilm collection
• The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects - Edward J. Ruppelt The book on-line
• Project Blue Book in FBI's FOIA reading room A summary of the project
• Project Blue Book unexplained cases with witness names An unofficial website with individual summaries of the 700 unexplained cases

• CIA operations
• United States Air Force
• UFOs