Project Blue Book

“In 1952, the U.S. Air Force Director of Intelligence initiated PROJECT BLUE BOOK to investigate unidentified flying objects.”

“USAF Director of Intelligence, Major General Charles P. Cabell, established Project BLUE BOOK to study UFO phenomena.”

“Based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, Project BLUE BOOK was the longest running UFO/UAP investigation.”

“Project BLUE BOOK (March 1952-December 1969)”

“In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially ended in 1969.”

“Project BLUE BOOK organized its cases into one of three categories: identified, insufficient data, and unidentified.”

“Of the 12,618 sightings in Project BLUE BOOK's holdings, 701 were categorized as unidentified and never solved.”

“J. Allen Hynek served as its lead scientific investigator.”

“It was led successively by Capt Edward J. Ruppelt (the former Director of the reorganized Project GRUDGE), Capt Charles Hardin, Capt George T. Gregory, Lieutenant Colonel (Lt Col) Roger J. Friend, and Lt Col Hector Quintanilla, Jr.”

“Capt Ruppelt, the first director of Project BLUE BOOK, noted that the inability to collect the UFO's altitude, size, and speed was a recurring and significant obstacle to resolving cases.”

“in 1953, the US Air Command had created the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS) that confidentially vetted all UAP reports before they were sent to Blue Book, culling sightings that raised national security concerns.”

“No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the USAF demonstrated any indication of a threat to national security.”

“There was no evidence submitted to, or discovered by, the USAF that sightings represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of then-present day scientific knowledge.”

“J. Allen Hynek of Project BLUE BOOK, said that the USAF expected him to perform the role of debunker”

“Capt Ruppelt, the first chief of BLUE BOOK, later wrote that he was expected to explain away every report and that the USAF sought to produce press stories in alignment with the USAF's position.”

“It became clear to Project Blue Book consultant Dr J. Allen Hynek that the Robertson Panel's primary role was to debunk all UAP sightings and to put control of investigations into the phenomenon back with the air force.”

“He asserted that in 1953 the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations persuaded the US Air Force to use the Project Blue Book investigation into UAPs as a 'means of publicly "debunking" UFOs' while at the same time the US was secretly launching a crash program into anti-gravity power.”

“March 1966: Neighborhoods in Michigan were terrorized over several days by strange craft … At the insistence of a leading Michigan congressman named Gerald Ford, Dr. Hynek's Project Blue Book reviewed the matter thoroughly, and unfortunately announced that the witnesses had seen… swamp gas.”

“The Ford Presidential Library has since released at least fifteen documents related to the notorious Blue Book 'swamp gas' finding, of which Ford remained forever skeptical.”

“Dr. Brian O'Brien, a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, chaired the USAF Ad Hoc Review of Project BLUE BOOK. The committee included Carl Sagan, a prominent astronomer from Cornell University.”

“Dr. Condon's report provided the Air Force the excuse it sought to close Project Blue Book, its controversial UFO investigation.”

“Secretary of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Jr. announced Project BLUE BOOK's termination on December 17, 1969.”

“Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it 'no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.'”

“Blue Book consultant Dr J. Allen Hynek lamented, 'this was indeed the coup de grace to the UFO era. Science had spoken. UFOs didn't exist, and the thousands of people who had reported strange sightings . . . could all be discounted as deluded, hoaxers, or mentally unbalanced'.”

“AARO partnered with the U.S. National Archives to examine the records from the USAF's Project BLUE BOOK, which spanned from 1947 to 1969. This research presented a significant challenge because of the volume of the documentation amounted to 7,252 files holding a total of 65,778 digital records.”

“Prior to AAWSAP/AATIP there was about a 40 year gap in UAP investigation programs since the termination of Project BLUE BOOK in 1969.”

“on a Saturday morning in Washington DC in the late spring of 1977, an eager Daniel Sheehan arrived at the still-uncompleted Madison wing of the Library of Congress for a cloak-and-dagger rendezvous with the classified Project Blue Book documents.”

“what he saw in the multiple images was a full-scale classic saucer with a dome. The craft he saw had crashed in a field and was covered with snow. He describes how the saucer had ploughed a huge trench across the field and it was stuck at a 45-degree angle in what looked like a snowbank. There were soldiers dressed in US Air Force parkas and weather gear”

“One of the photographs showed symbols, not any language he recognised, etched into the side of the craft just below the dome. At that point Sheehan remembered the yellow legal notepad he had snuck into the room, and he traced the odd symbols onto the inside cardboard backing of his notepad.”

“A report prepared by Australia's Department of Defense in the 1970s summed up the Blue Book strategy as follows: 'By erecting a façade of ridicule, the US hoped to allay public alarm, reduce the possibility of the Soviet[s] taking advantage of UAP mass sightings for either psychological or actual warfare purposes, and act as a cover for the real US program of developing vehicles that emulate UAP performances.'”

“when asked about any research into other UAP programs, the head of the Pentagon's intelligence efforts, Ronald Moultrue, said, 'Other than AATIP and Blue Book, no.'”