9 FERHUARY 19 5~<X K BR.ISFIHG STJ'.~ARD FWE o USAF Historical Archives ASI(ASHAF-A) Maxwell AFB, Ala 36112 they may be clusters of these weather balloons, or they may be large polyethylene balloons that are 100 ft. in diameter. With the present emphasis on cosmic ray study many different types of balloons are being launched in the United States. other category is the regularly launched weather balJoons. These are l aunched from kno\m locations in the United States at definite times. Project Blue Book gets data on the large research type balloons either through ADC or, if necessary, direct from the launching agency. Due to the nature of this problem, ATIC is familiar with moot of the agencies in the country who are launching research balloons and can go directly to these people to get information on their balloon tracks. On the regularly scheduled 'tveather balloon launches, Blue Book has data on all launch sites and knows the approximate time of launch each day. We have the authority to go directly to these stations to obtain data on their balloons or, if the time element is not critical , to go throuGh Ajr ~eather Service to get it from their central files. Fortunatl~ly, many of these balloons are tracked, either by radar or by radio DF and it is possible to get the extact tracks of the balloons. Slide of \veat her Balloon Launch Sites) Balloons do not give us any trouble when they look like balloons, it is v1hen they don' t look like balloons that they give us trouble and they can take on Many odd appearances. In the daytime a balloon will appear to be a very bright star in the sky. ~bat is happening is t hat the suns rays are diffusing into the balloon and causing it to glo11. Under i deal conditions a balloon can be seen as high as 90, 000 ft, but under more adverse conditions a balloon possibly cannot be seen over 4 , 000 to 6 , 000 ft. It depends a great deal on the haze. DurinG the daytime a balloon at very high altitude will appear to be s tationary or traveling very slo'tvly. At nirht balloons that are lighted t-rill a}-near to be a radically moving light. This light may even ap~ear to change color, due to the atmosrheric conditions. The balloon will change direction with vrl.nd and tdll appear to be on a jerlcy, zig- zaggy course. Since most people observing these balloons do not have any reference point in t he sky, the balloons appear to be moving very much faster than they really are. At dawn or dusk a balloon can aprear t o be a fiery red, circular shaped object in the sky. The reason for this is that the balloon is picking up the slanted rays of t he sun, exactly the same as a cloud will pick up the sun' s rays in a sunset. It may be that if the ba)1oon is high enough, it can be darl<: on the gr ound but it will be sunset at altitude. Some balloons carry radar reflector s or metallic loads capable of givinr a radar r eturn. The clue to this is that they will be travelinG ,n. th and at the same speed as t he wind at their altitude. Aircraft, as aircraft, do not give us a great deal of trouble, it i s when t hey are high and reflecting sunlight or leaving a vapor t rail tha t they are most often misrecognized . Similar to the situation with ba) loons, a vapor trail will appear to glm-1 at davm or dusk. Hany t imes the aircraf t leaving the vapor trail cannot ever.. be seen, llt: . ,ever, the vapor vrill appear to be a bright fiery red streak of flame i n the sky. Formations of aircraft reflecting the sunlight can very often appear as a formation of disc-shaped objects. At times t he reflection vrill suddenly diminish causing the objects to l ook like they wer e either movinE rapidly out of sight or jus t disappearing. ATIC does not have a satisfactory system for checkinf aircraft. This is because Flitht Service and CAA does not keep a permanent r ecor d of aircraft flights very long after the aircr af t has landed. Therefore, it is up to t he officer receiving the report from the observer to thoroughly check aircraft movements imnediately. He may check these through the control tower, throuch Flight Service, through CAA radio stations, or many various Hays, but he should check thoroughly to see \vhether or not there were any aircraft flights in the area of the sighting. Astrononical Bodies As far as astronomical bodies ar e concerned, ATIC has a professional astronomer contract to review sightings that they beli eve to be caused by astronomical bodies. By astronomical bodies we ;nean bright stars, planets, or meteors. The most valuable information in the analysis of an unidentified flying object that is sus- pected of being an astr onorrical body is the bearing, the azimuth, and the time. ~rom this we can check back through almanacs and determine the locations of certain bright stars. Stars that give us trouble are Venus, Jupiter, Capella and several t1eteors are not too difficult to evaluate because they seem to have a standard description. If someone reports an object similar to a rocket going across the sky at high speed and leaving a trail behind it, chances are it is a meteor. Hoi-rever, in certain instances we have had ,rery unusual meteors rerorted. \~e have found that there are certain classes of !Tleteors that astronomers call fireballs. These are so rare that there is a good chance that you may see only one in ~rour life, if any. This has probably accounted for many reports by pilots iho state that they met a huge ball of fire coming directly at their aircraft and at times have even racl-;:ed up the aircraft to get out of its path. Hany times these are re1orted as missjles. Ne have had pilots ivho have complained to the Air :?orce about shootinc rockets, or experimental missiles, through the airays and endangering their aircraft. {This is a rather foolish statement, ho\1ever, when you get to thinkinc about it. -ene, if a missile appeared anywhere outside the proving gr ounds chances are it would be enemy. However, if you have studied missiles you will note that the burning time, or the time before fuel cPt-off, is only a relatively short period during the missile' s flight. If we would say, hypothetically, a rocket was shot from some foreien country into the United States, chances are very good that the fuel shut- off point ~ould have come long before the rocket ever reached the Uni ted St ates and it would not be emitting a fla.me. Other Causes of Reports Naturall y balloon s , aircraft and astronomical bodies do not account for all the sightings. 1-;e have a smaller percentage of other t hinP"s, such as ducks flying over drive-in theaters at nir;ht, searchlights on clouds, blimps, pieces of paper caueht in an updraft, a nd many other thines that cause reports. These are very difficult to check and to check them v1e normally e o back to old s ightings. For exrunple, somet~ne back, approximately a year ago, the city of Fa rgo, North Dakota, t~as someuhat disturbed by glowing objects tha t fle~r over the city on various nights. inally, some of the more enterprising souls in the city took enough interest i n the subject to attempt to determine what they were. All it was \-tere flocks of ducks or eese refl ectinf,; the city' s lights. 'He \dll take a case like this and Mentally file i t . \-.ben we come across a simil a r report, we'll go back and compare the t,IO reports. If they are simil a r enough , we will write the new report off as being the same tlung. This is about the only method i>Te have of checking such thinr;s. Rad~._r Sigh~ings v:e receive quite a few radar sightings and ~-te a r e very a,.,rare of the fact that "Weather effects and interference bett~een the two radars can g:i ve nany odd returns. I n some cases 1r1e are definitely able to s how how these radar signal s occurred , other times "tTe are not able to definitely shoH hot-T it happened. vle hope that as more study is put on the subject of radar anomalies Uat more and more of our report s \dll b e explainable. There are no reports of radar sightings in our f ile tha t cannot be questioned. to some degree. I n none of the cases of erratic or high speed (above Nach 1) that we have on file can it be shown that the track l.JaS actually t hat of a material object. One rare exception to this is when radars have happened to track meteors. ~1ore of our unknovm high speed tracks might be meteors but unless we get reports of a meteor t rack to correlate with t he radar track it is difficult to separate out these reports. Lightning is another possibility but a very vague one. Scope Photos large number of Air Defense CoMllland radar stations are equipped ldth radar scope cameras. ADC Regulation 200- 5 authorizes t he use of these cameras for photo- graphing abnorrnal returns. These scope cameras should be ready to operate at all times since scope photos are an absolute necessity for the accurate evaluation of reports involving radar. I n addition, they give valuable data for the study of weather and interference effects. Simultaneous Radar Visual Siehting~ Reports of simultaneous visual reports that supposedly correlate 1dth unusual, high speed or erratic radar tracks, with the rare exceptions of meteors and light- ning, are a different story. No presently knovm phenomena or condition will give this situation. If it can be shO\m that the object sighted visually and the radar track are the same, the report warrants a detailed investigation. So far, this has not happened in any of our unkno-vm cases. 'He have good reports of simultaneous visual-radar siehtings but again there are always factors that shed varying degrees of doubt as to uhether or not the observations involved the same object. The first factor in establishing a correlation is to check the flight path or location of the visually observed object with that shovm on radar. If this correlates closely the next step is to establish that the time was the same, sor.1etimes a difficult task. Other c hecks can also be made but tr..ese two are basic. Otl!_er:_ Si ll!_ultaneous Sightings Any report of an object seen from two separated loca tions is relatively important. These include two locations on the ground, from the ground and air, etc. Of these the best way to gather very accurate data is to utilize tvm theo- dolites or a theodolite combined with a plain visual sighting. The use of a theodolite is considered an instrumented observation. For those lvho are not familiar vdth the term a theodolite is a device for acc ately measuring the azimuth and elevation angles during weather balloon fliehts. Nearly eve~r air base and large civilian airport has one. It can be put into use by merely calling the weather station and requesting that they try to observe t he reported object. The data needed are the time, elevation, and azimuth at one minute intervals for as long as the object is i n view or for at least 20 minutes if it appears to be hovering. If an adjacent air base can be contacted and requested to do the same, preferably at the same time, you've hit the jackpot as far as good data are concerned. (Sholv Triangulation Slide) Re~Oting Solutions If, duri ng an investigation of a sighting , after a TW"X has been se!'lt report- ing the incident, the investigating officer should identify the r eported object, ATIC should be immediately notified as to the solution. Popul~. Theor i es l1any theories have been advanced that all of the rei-oorts ar e due to mirages, sun dogs, ice clouds and '~hat-have-you. Some of ou= reports are caused by such things. We have received excellent photos of sun dogs and descriptions of mirages. These a r e definitely in the minority, however, and cause only a s1~ll percentage of the sighti ngs. nother popular solution is that all "flying saucers" are "skyhook" balloons. To check this a study of about 25 cross-country balloon tracks were Jlla.de. To remove any doubt, the tracks were taken of flights made during July and August 19.52 when reports were coming in at the rate of SO per day. These balloons \vere seen and reported as "flying saucers" at only points. (Slide -sho~v typical balloon tracks) Questionnaires To increase the efficiency of the collection of data, ATIC has devised several different types of questionnaires. One of these questionnaires is for use by gr ound observers, or people who sight something from the ground, one is for people who sight t~1ings f rom the air, one for radar sightings, and one for general background information. These questionnaires have been made up after a great deal of study. Approximately a year ago, ATIC arranged to have a gr oup of scientists and profes- sional peopl e to design a questionnaire. These people studied all questionnaires that had been previously used in this project, they studied our file of sightings, and arrived at a tentative version of our present questionnaire. This tentative questionnaire was used for a period of approximately three months, the results analyzed, revisions made, and a final questionnaire was made up. It is believed that these questionnaires dll accomplish two things: (1) if the officer in t he field receiving the report will use it, i t idll give him a better idea as to l-That data is ranted and will make his collection 1nuch more efficient and faster. These auestionnaires can be attached to an AF Form 112 as an inclosur e or attached to a letter report. Although AF Letter 200- S states what information will be sent, it does not mean that this will be the only infor- mation sent.. If you are familiar with this letter, you will note that it says that all information pertaining to the sighting will be sent . The questionnaires contain all of the required data plus other , so it is legal to use them. Copies of these questionnaires can be reproduced in your o-vm unit, obtained from your headquarters, or from ATIC. Statistics You might be interested in a breakdown of our reports for 1952. I n breaking down these reports , we use several degrees of certainty under each categor y . \<Je'll take balloons, for example. We 1-rill classify them as a known balloon, a probable balloon, or a possible balloon. A knovm balloon means that we were definitely able to correlate the facts of the sighting l-rith the data on a balloon track and there is no doubt t hat the object was a balloon. Probably a balloon means that we 1r1ere not able to correlate all the dat a , but there is no doubt in our minds but what the reported object was a balloon. A possible balloon is where we check the rerort with balloon data and cannot find a correlation yet we still believe the object was a balloon . This factor accounts for "lost" balloons, tha t is, balloons that may have developed slm-r leaks and floated great distances. In all our catego.cies of balloons, aircraft, and astronomical bodies, He use these three breakdo\ms. lide showing Breakdovm of Conclusions) In analyzing 1021 r eports, and those are reports that have been received through military cl~nnels and do not include sev eral hundred r eports f rom civilians direct to ATIC, as of 22 December 1952 a total of 18.51% of all our reports were balloons. A further breakdown of tl1is : 1. 57 of the total were knom balloons; ~. 99~ of tl:e tot a l were probably balloons; and 11.95% 1r1ere possib1 e balloons. As far as air- craft i s concerned, 11.76% of all the reports ~-Jere aircraft. Of these 961 were known to be aircraft; 7.74% wer e probably aircraft; and 3.04~ 1r1ere possibly aircraft. Of the reports, 14.2~ were analyzed as being astronomical bodies. Of these 2.~5% Here known; 7. 4% were probable and 4. 01% i<~ere possibl e astronomical. In the category,vThich includes ducks over drive-in' s , paper j_n an updrcft, etc., accounted for 4. 21% of the total reports , hoaxes 1,1er e 1 . 67% -noH by hoaxes ,.,re mean those reports where t he persons purposely set out to perpetrate a hoax, 6.e41 Here radar cameras, however, and consequently have not put them out in the field. The grating is a rather touchy piece of equipment and -v1e are having trouble getting it to stand up under certain conditions. We realize that this is not a fool-proof meastrre. These cameras are not a piece of highly developed scientific equipment, but we do hope that we may be able to obtain some information. Slides of Videon Camer a and hol-T it operates) Ot her Instrumentation The possibilities of more extensive instrwnentation has been discussed in detail. l4any suggestions for more complete cameras, special aircraft instrumenta- tion, and other detection devices have been studied. It is possible that a s t udy contract for such instrumentation may be let, but no actual pr ogram 1dll be started now. The cost of such a program ilOUld out-11eieh the results. Conclusion I n concluding this briefing i t can again be stated that i n none of the reports so far received are there any indications that t he reported objects are a direct threat t o the United States, nor is there any proof that any of the reforts received have been report s of any radically new unknown material object. \\Te admit we cannot explain every report but 1-re believe vTe know enough about the unknovms t o say they are not anything to invoke undue speculation. The project 1-rill be continued. Even i f a systeM for the fool proof explana- tion of ever;)r sighting is developed it vrill continue because you never knovr what may happen in t he future. threa t that could come out of this pr oblem of flyine saucers" is 1-rolf, wolf" situation. Some people take an exceedingly "dim view" of such reports and use no logic in tr ng to explain them. \ ;e do not v~nt to clutter reports that we could not definitely establish the cause, and 22.72% of our re- ports were classified as having insufficient data and ruere not analyzed. 'Ihis leaves a balance of 20. 1% of t he reports which are classified as unknown. his point a definition of the term is in or der . Usnally there is more than one source or observer. Again, this does not mean that just because a person is alone, sees something he cannot explain to himself and reports it, his account of wha t he sav1 is laughed off. Normally one person just cannot supply the necessary data. For this reas0n, He dwell 1110re on rerorts T:There the data can be substantiated by others. To go a ster farther, there can be no doubt as to the reliability of the persons makine the observation. If the report contains a re- latively good amount of data, it is then checked against the location of known objects, phenomena, etc. If none of these explain the siGhtinf,, it is classed as unknown. It might well be that if we had more data on the sighting, it could easily be ex~lained. (Slide of Locations of Unknmms) Videon Cameras You may have heard about a camera that has been modifjed for use on this project. At the present time, vre have 100 of these cameras. They are a commercial model stereo camera with one lens fitted with a diffraction gratinb. The Grating serves as a prism to separat e the light source into its various components. Any light source that is made up of an element or combination of elements has a dis- tinctive spectrum. Thi.s spectrum is siw.ilar to a fine;er print. A file of the spectra of knovm objects, stars, meteors, etc., is being assembled and this file spectr a can be compared t o the spectra obtained from photos from the canera$ . These cameras will be placed in control to1-1ers an