Project Blue Book: Exposed

May 5, 1955: Project Blue Book Special Report #14

During a short part of its existence, the officers involved with Project Blue Book issued a series of reports. They were numbered one through twelve and began while Blue Book was still operating under the old code name of Grudge. Special Report #14 was issued some two years after the last of the regular reports. There is no credible evidence that a report numbered thirteen ever existed. It has been suggested that number thirteen was incorporated into Special Report #14.

The actual story of these reports begins on December 26 and 27, 1951 when Ed Ruppelt and Colonel S.H. Kirkland of the Air Technical Intelligence Center met with members of Battelle Memorial Institute, a think tank located in Columbus, Ohio. The idea was to analyze the UFO data "scientifically" and see if any sort of patterns could be found and to provide information so that better data could be gathered. Ruppelt had also complained that he needed experts to assist in the evaluation of UFO reports if any sort of meaningful conclusions were to be drawn.

Ruppelt, who used the fictional code name of Project Bear for Battelle later wrote, "The several hundred engineers and scientists who make up the team run from experts on soils to nuclear physicists… They would make these people available to me… they would do two studies for us; a study of how much a person can be expected to see and remember from a UFO sighting, and a statistical study of UFO reports."

According to a document dated January 8, 1952, the Battelle representatives agreed that there was enough material available to make the scientific study. The document said, "It is very reasonable to believe that some type of unusual object or phenomena is being observed as many of the sightings have been made by highly qualified sources."

There were five areas of study, or five requirements made of the Battelle Corporation, officially code named Project Stock, and supervised by William Reid. They were to "Provide a panel of consultants… Assist in improving the interrogation forms… Analyze existing sighting reports… Subscribe to a clipping service… Apprise the sponsor monthly of all work done."

The project began on March 31, 1952. They couldn't have picked a better time, or worse, depending on the point of view. The 1952 wave was just beginning, and by the end of 1952, the Air Force had collected an additional 1500 reports, of which, 303 remained as unidentified. In the Status Report #7, dated November 10, 1952, it was noted that sighting reports had improved in both numbers and quality.

In the second of the reports under the auspices of Stork, dated June 6, 1952, it was noted that the preliminary analysis of the existing reports had been completed. They had also developed a preliminary new questionnaire. They had developed a list of about thirty different characteristics of a report that could be keyed onto IBM punch cards for the statistical analysis. These included geographic location, duration of the sighting, color, speed, number, shape, and brightness of the craft and even the evaluation of both the sighting report and the observer.

Although the contracts called for the completion of the study by October 1, 1953, it is apparent that reports were gathered until the spring of 1955. The findings of Project Stork were then, apparently, incorporated into Blue Book Special Report #14.

They began with 4000 UFO sightings but eliminated nearly 800 for a variety of reasons including those too poorly documented to be useful for the study. This left 3201 UFO sightings, the majority of which were from the Project Blue Book files dating back to the original project Sign, with a few coming from other, outside sources.

First they wanted to gather the essential facts from the reports. They also worked to establish the credibility of the witnesses. They looked at the internal consistency of the report and the quality of it. Finally they attempted to make an identification of it. They tried to fit it into some category of natural or conventional identification.

The first run at identification was done by the individual who transcribed the report onto a worksheet they had developed. That would be passed to a member of the identification panel who would also evaluate the report without knowing what the first pass had revealed. If two of the evaluators arrived at the same conclusion, then that was accepted as a final identification. If there was a disagreement, then the report was passed on to the other panel members for more analysis.

If either or both suggested the case was unidentified, the whole panel studied it. The unidentified cases, or "unknowns" as they were labeled by the Stork scientists and researchers, were defined as "Those reports of sightings wherein the description of the objects and its maneuvers could not be fitted to the pattern of any known object or phenomenon."

Once all analysis of the data was completed, the cases were reduced to statistical fields so that some sort of conclusions could be drawn. When all those aspects of the report were completed, then the final draft was put together which included a summary of the data and conclusions drawn by the Battelle scientists.

When Special Report #14 was finally released to the public and the news media, it was the summary that was examined first. It suggested that better reporting, undoubtedly because of the improved questionnaires, and better investigative techniques developed by the Battelle scientists had reduced the percentages of "unknowns." For the final two years of the study, that is 1953 and 1954, the number of unknowns was only nine percent, and for the first few months of 1955, that had been reduced even further to three percent. Those figures, of course, overlooked 1952 when the number of unknowns was about twenty percent.

It was being suggested by the Battelle scientists and the Air Force investigators that the improved techniques were demonstrating that with enough information and with proper investigation, all sightings could eventually be explained. Again, as usual, the media seized on this idea included in the summary, and reported that the Air Force study had proven that flying saucers were just another myth.

Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who studied Special Report #14, related in a document published by CUFOS, that "Despite the use of information contained in the summary as part of the press release, it is clear that it was not written as a press release. Rather, it was written to supplement the information given in the main text. In other words, it was assumed that whoever read the summary would also read the main text."

I disagree with Dr. Maccabee on one point. I believe that those writing the summary assumed that those outside of the relatively few members of the military who were interested would ever read the main text. All had been around Washington long enough to know that journalists, congressmen, and government officials never read the whole document. It was the reason that executive summaries had been created. Pack them with information and that would be all that would be examined. Those who only read the conclusions would not be aware that the information in the main body of the text did not support the conclusions drawn in the summary. I'm convinced that those who wrote the summary counted on it being all that was read.

Ruppelt, who had with Kirkland, originated the idea of the report, criticized it on its release for what he called "weasel wording." For example, there is nowhere in the report where it is stated, positively, that UFOs don't exist. Instead, as Maccabee points out, they suggest in "probability arguments" that UFOs don't exist. They can't prove it, so it is reduced to UFOs probably don't exist, which by 1955, was the conclusion the Air Force wanted drawn. The original rationale for the report had long been lost.

Again, for example, one of these probability arguments was their attempt to "create" a "flying saucer model." Maccabee wrote, "Here they imply that because none of the sightings matched each other identically, the probability that any sighting was valid 'is concluded to be extremely small.'" Of course, this overlooks the fact that only one UFO sighting has to be valid for the whole argument to be eliminated.

The Battelle researchers had selected twelve cases that were unknowns and used them as a basis for constructing their "flying saucer model." They looked at the overall descriptions, the flight dynamics, and other observed data, as well as the reliability of the witnesses and the duration of the sighting.

With all that in mind, they then attempted to bring it together into a single type of craft, or flying saucer. Maccabee wrote about this: "Thus we must assume that even the Battelle investigators believed that each of the other sightings was valid. This would explain why they did not attempt to explain each one, but rather to explain them away by 'conglomeration': in combination, the cases do not point to a single model 'flying saucer'; therefore, avoids the sticky problem of explaining how a Reserve Air Force captain and an airline captain could be fooled into thinking that they saw a circular craft with a flashing light on top and steady lights on the bottom pass in front of the airliner they were flying. [This is a reference to Case XI in the Battelle report from March 20, 1950 in which the pilots watched a circular object.] The object was in view for about half a minute."

Maccabee also notes, "Still another case they avoided explaining may be one of the most credible on record. The summary in SR 14 [Special Report #14] does not do the case justice… Case X [which took place on May 24, 1949] describes a sighting by two aeronautical engineers who worked at the Ames Research Laboratory and three other people. Each engineer had the opportunity to observe a 'flying saucer' through binoculars for a period exceeding 60 seconds. The drawings produced by these witnesses were extremely detailed. The intelligence information on this case is missing from the Project Blue Book section of the microfilm record at the National Archives. However, Maccabee has found the original interviews, etc. in the Office of Special Investigations section of the microfilm record and has published the information along with some supplementary weather data."

Air Force writers had suggested, "It can never be absolutely proven that 'flying saucers' do not exist. This would be true if the data obtained were to include complete scientific measurements of the attributes of each sighting, as well as complete and detailed descriptions of the objects sighted. It might be possible to demonstrate the existence of 'flying saucers' with data of this type, IF they were to exist."

So now we see the problem they had. Explain the sightings with "incomplete" data or so they would have us believe. But, as Maccabee pointed out, Case X had the very attributes the Air Force suggested didn't exist. There were qualified witnesses, that is, two aeronautical engineers, who had ample opportunity to observe the craft through binoculars. This wasn't a case, such as the Chiles-Whitted sighting in which the object flashed by. This was a case where minutes passed as the observation continued enabling the witnesses to take notes.

In fact, what we see from this report is that there is TOO much information to allow investigators to find a plausible explanation. They have all the information they could desire from the location and exact time, to the descriptions of the craft including detailed drawings. No natural phenomenon is going to explain it. Nor will it be eliminated as a misidentification of military or civilian aircraft. It will remain unknown.

To eliminate it, then, it is combined with other cases in which there is no good, plausible explanation. All the information is correlated and an attempt is made to produce a single type of flying saucer. The assumption seems to be that if flying saucers were real, then we would be able to take the cases and combine them to produce a composite "model" of a flying saucer in much the same way that police artists can produce a composite of a single criminal.

The assumption being made here, and one that should be obvious to everyone, is that more than one type of craft could be involved. Take, for example, an aircraft carrier from our modern Navy. It's floating in the Mediterranean Sea and launching a variety of aircraft to survey the surrounding territory. We know that such ships carry two or three different types of jet fighters, as well as a variety of reconnaissance aircraft, tankers and even helicopters.

Now, let's say that we have a number of people who have seen those various aircraft over a period of a couple of months. We interview them, study the weather, length of sightings and locations of each of them. From that we attempt to build a model of the aircraft on the carrier, assuming there to be a single type.

Given that we have a craft with swept wings and a narrow fuselage, a huge craft with two engines, another with no wings but a rotor overhead, with different configurations for the lighting, we would be unable to manufacture a single model. Should we then conclude that no sightings were made? Should we conclude that, with better information, we would have been able to answer the questions? No. We have more than one type and by combining information that shouldn't be combined, we have destroyed our data base.

Of course, by combining that information we can suggest that there is no commonality among the sightings. We can deduce that each of the witnesses is mistaken in some critical observation. We can suggest that this proves there is nothing to the sightings of these very common, to us, aircraft. And each of these conclusions would be wrong, though, to a hurried and noncritical reader of our work, we have demonstrated a "flaw" in the sighting reports. We can now reject them.

There were many other critics of Special Report #14. Leon Davidson, who had been a scientist at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, and who had been a member of the group who had studied the Green Fireballs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, printed and sold copies of the report along with his analysis. He believed that flying saucers did exist and saw the report as a clever attempt to hide the fact. Davidson pointed out the discrepancy between the information contained in the report's summary and the contents of the press release that "announced" it.

He noted that in the report, "Unknown sightings constitute 33.3 % of all the object sightings for which the reliability of the sighting is considered 'Excellent.'" In other words, contrary to what the report's authors had suggested, the better the report, the more likely it was going to be an unknown. It wasn't the reports from unqualified observers who saw an object for seconds that caused the most trouble. It was reports from trained and qualified witnesses that were more likely to be inexplicable.

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a civilian organization based in Washington, D.C., also disputed the idea that a model couldn't be created. They cited a 1949 Project Grudge analysis, which reported, "The most numerous reports indicate daytime observations of metallic disc-like objects roughly in diameter ten times their thickness… From this official description a working model of a UFO or flying saucer can be built without the slightest trouble."

In other words, there was one "official" report that refuted another official report. The argument about creating the model was actually an argument over the cosmetics of the situation. Looked at in that way, then a model can be created, and one of the major conclusions of the Battelle report has been eliminated.

Hynek, as Blue Book's chief scientific consultant, was in a unique position. He had been on the inside as many of the cases were investigated. He had participated in many of those investigations, and knew the people involved. Even with his close working relationship with Blue Book, he was surprised at the allegation in Special Report #14 that there was no difference between the knowns and the unknowns. What the report suggested was that the characteristics of the known cases matched those of the unknowns. Scientists had assumed that there would be a difference between the knowns and unknowns. A lack of difference suggested that the UFO phenomenon was little more than misidentifications of natural phenomena and conventional aircraft. That was a point, this lack of difference, that had been seized upon to suggest that UFO sightings were simple misidentifications.

The Battelle researchers had applied the chi-square test to the two groups of data, that is, the known and unknown categories. The chi-square test for independence is used for comparing two or more groups to determine if different patterns of frequencies exist in the groups. The theory behind the use of the chi-square test by Battelle was that the known cases should differ from the unknown cases if there were UFOs. Textbooks argue that chi-square is an often misused statistical procedure. It often looks good, but the analysis can be of little real value when misapplied as it was here.

To make the point in an even more dramatic fashion, Yale Scientific Magazine in April 1963 reported, "Based upon unreliable and unscientific surmises as data, the Air Force develops elaborate statistical findings which seem impressive to the uninitiated public unschooled in the fallacies of the statistical method. One must conclude that the highly publicized Air Force pronouncements based upon unsound statistics serve merely to misrepresent the true character of the UFO phenomena."

According to the analysis by Leon Davidson, the chi-square test has shown, as even the Battelle researchers had to admit, that "There was very little probability that the Unknowns were the same as the Knowns. But they refused to admit that this meant that 'saucers' could be a real type of novel object." What Davidson had discovered was that the Battelle scientists had misrepresented their data to reach the conclusion the Air Force desired them to reach.

Following that same notion, Hynek wrote about the conclusions in Special Report #14, "[The report] completely disregards the results of these [chi-square] tests most brazenly, as if they did not exist."

And Maccabee reported that the data indicated that the "best qualified observers make the best reports and are most likely to be reporting true UNKNOWNS, while the poorest observers make the poorest reports (most INSUF. INFO. [insufficient data]) and are the least likely to be reporting true UNKNOWNS."

This finding alone suggested there was something to the UFO phenomena, but it was unacceptable to the Project Stork scientists. Instead they "could only guess" that the "psychological make-up" of witnesses in the unknown cases, plus a single unrecognized source, such as a balloon, airplane or whatever, was responsible for many of the sightings, had skewed the results "so as to create an artificial distinction between knowns and unknowns."

Of course, it is necessary to point out that in the summary, the Battelle analysts suggested there was no significant difference between the witnesses who reported objects that were later identified and those who reported objects that remained unidentified. Then, later, when it suited their purposes, they suggested there was a difference. In other words, they were contradicting their own findings when it suited their purpose. This is not good science.

What we see as we read Special Report #14 is the history of the belief structures of those writing the reports. In the very beginning, as Ruppelt proposed the idea, Project Grudge, and later Blue Book, was conducting unbiased investigations into the phenomenon. They wanted answers, but they wanted answers that were accurate. Solving a case just to put a label on it had no appeal to Ruppelt and his staff.

In the first of the status reports, the information supplied discusses what is going to happen in the near future. These reports were about what was happening with the UFO investigations. The third report, for example, dated July 7, 1952, mentioned that Hynek had been hired as an astronomical consultant and that he would interview other astronomers regarding their opinions about UFOs and UFO reports.

The sixth report, dated October 10, 1952, again reports on the status of the Battelle investigation. But, there is a comment that should be singled out. It mentions the analysis of a 35 mm spectroscopic film and a section of gun-camera spectrographic film. Maccabee in his report noted, "Apparently these films were supplied to Battelle without enough data on how the films were obtained for the analysts to be able to make any positive conclusions."

Or maybe, these films were too explosive for the results to be reviewed in documents that were classified, at their highest, as secret. Hynek wrote that he believed the involvement of Battelle was a "top secret" but the reports don't reflect this.

But that is a digression. The point is that someone had provided the technical equipment to fighter units to allow for gun-camera spectroscopic filming of UFOs, but in all cases files I have examined, and in all the work done by so many others, I know of no one who has ever located those films. Spectroscopic analysis of the UFOs could provide some interesting clues about the propulsion systems used by them, to the sources of the light that seem to surround them and other technical aspects of those sightings.

It would also seem that the use of spectroscopic film implies planning by someone. It would suggest a controlled experiment which, if successful, would go a long way to answering the questions about the nature of the UFOs. We can assume, that since the data have not been released, that they provided evidence of the extraterrestrial nature of the flying saucers. Otherwise, as we have seen, we would have possession of that data.

In arguing about the evidence held by the military, or the government, concerning UFOs, researchers have often claimed secret documents and studies that have not seen the light of day. This seems to be corroboration of that claim because gun-camera footage that can provide for a spectroscopic analysis has not been released.

Returning to the other aspects of the Battelle study, we learn that the reports from them ended with number seven. In December 1952, and in January and February 1953, there were single page letters that updated the ongoing analysis. These were composed by Reid, the project supervisor.

But what is interesting is the timing. If we go back to the history of the UFO project, we see that the pendulum has swung the other way, that is, away from an extraterrestrial hypothesis. UFO sightings were again in the realm of science fiction. It was at this time, January 1953, that Blue Book was beginning to lose its special status. The staff, which had been so busy in the summer and fall of 1952, was reduced, and by the spring of 1953 it was a single officer and a single enlisted man. At one point that spring, there were no officers, and an airman first class, a low-ranking man, had control of Project Blue Book.

And, it was at this time that the investigative responsibility was taken away from Blue Book and passed to the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron. Although there would still be some investigations carried out by Blue Book personnel, the real investigation rested with the 4602d. That is evidenced by the implementation of Air Force Regulation 200-2, which placed the investigative responsibility directly on the shoulders of the 4602d.

An examination of the documentation available about the 4602d's involvement suggests that they saw the UFO investigations as an opportunity to practice their interrogation techniques. They were also hostile to the addition of the mission to investigate UFOs. In Volume II of the Unit History, there is a "UFOB Summary" in which the author wrote, "First recorded instances of genuine UFOs occurred in 1948 [sic] with the appearance of the 'Flying Saucers' in difference parts of the United States. Rapid diffusion to all parts of the world, including the Soviet Union and its satellites… Birth of a new literary genre 'Science Fiction' which in most cases is entirely fictitious and unscientific [This whole point is irrelevant and wrong. Science fiction had existed for decades and had been introduced to Americans in the 1920s]… Emotional stimulus of speculation on the fantastic… General Public not qualified to evaluate material propounded in science fiction. Absurd and fantastic theories given credence solely on the basis of ignorance… UFOB reports even though patently ridiculous receive undue attention through latent fear, etc."

This then, was the attitude of the people doing the investigations of UFOs after the various regulations, both those written by the Air Defense Command and by the Air Force including AFR 200-2 went into effect. By the time Blue Book Special Report #14 was publicly available, those inside the military establishment had the attitude of those at the 4602d. Is it little wonder that the conclusions drawn in the report are that UFOs don't exist, there is no evidence they exist, and that it is impossible to prove they don't exist? In other words, the conclusions were not based on the data presented, but on the beliefs and attitudes being expressed by those who were now controlling the purse, and the course, of the investigation.

There is one other factor that must be addressed. In the original contract, it called for a timely conclusion of Project Stork. The sudden surge of cases during the summer of 1952 certainly would have caused some delays because no one had anticipated what would happen. But even after that, with the final status reports becoming single page letters, it took two years for the final report to be written. A legitimate question about the delay can be asked.

For my part, I think the delay was caused by the change in official policy and attitudes reflected in the Project Blue Book files. The CIA's Robertson Panel had looked at the data and decided there was nothing to it. They recommended that the investigations continue, but that the emphasis be on "education." Teach people that UFOs didn't exist. It wouldn't be wise for a private company under contract to the federal government to issue a report that suggested that UFOs did exist that was in conflict with what the CIA had just done.

The delay, then, made it possible to rewrite and reevaluate some of the report and draw conclusions that were not supported by evidence in the body of the text. The thinking had to be that no one would wade through the pages and pages of statistics, and those who did probably wouldn't understand them anyway. The few people who did examine the report, including Ruppelt, acknowledged the weaknesses, but their voices were not heard.

Instead, there was the two or three page summary that gave the conclusion that UFOs don't exist. Rather than presenting scientific evidence for their conclusions, they were now spouting the party line. An idea that had merit originally was reduced to just one more example of how the information was manipulated so that we could be told there was nothing to the UFO phenomenon.

The only problem is that the investigations continued.