The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
Besides giving us a rapid method of sorting data, this IBM file
would give us a modus operandi file. Our MO file would be similar to
the MO files used by police departments to file the methods of
operations of a criminal. Thus when we received a report we could put
the characteristics of the reported UFO on an IBM punch card, put it
into the IBM machine, and compare it with the characteristics of
other sightings that had known solutions. The answer might be that
out of the one hundred items on the card, ninety-five were identical
to previous UFO reports that ducks were flying over a city at night
reflecting the city's lights.
On the way home from the meeting Colonel Kirkland and I were both
well satisfied with the assistance we believed Project Bear could
give to Project Grudge.
In a few days I again left ATIC, this time for Air Defense Command
Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I wanted to find out how
willing ADC was to help us and what they could do. When I arrived I
got a thorough briefing on the operations of ADC and the promise that
they would do anything they could to help solve the UFO riddle.
All of this co-operation was something that I hadn't expected. I'd
been warned by the people who had worked on Project Sign and the old
Project Grudge that everybody hated the word UFO--I'd have to fight
for everything I asked for. But once again they were wrong. The
scientists who visited ATIC, General Samford, Project Bear, and now
Air Defense Command couldn't have been more co-operative. I was
becoming aware that there was much wider concern about UFO reports
than I'd ever realized before.
While I traveled around the United States getting the project set
up, UFO reports continued to come in and all of them were good. One
series of reports was especially good, and they came from a group of
people who had had a great deal of experience watching things in the
sky--the people who launch the big skyhook balloons for General
Mills, Inc. The reports of what the General Mills people had seen
while they were tracking their balloons covered a period of over a
year. They had just sent them in because they had heard that Project
Grudge was being reorganized and was taking a different view on UFO
reports. They, like so many other reliable observers, had been
disgusted with the previous Air Force attitude toward UFO reports,
and they had refused to send in any reports. I decided that these
people might be a good source of information, and I wanted to get
further details on their reports, so I got orders to go to
Minneapolis. A scientist from Project Bear went with me. We arrived
on January 14, 1952, in the middle of a cold wave and a blizzard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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