The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
In about twenty minutes I got my call. It probably was their
balloon, the forecaster said. Above 50,000 feet there was a strong
flow of air southeast from Pittsburgh, and this fed into a stronger
southerly flow that was paralleling the Atlantic coast just east of
the Appalachian Mountains. The balloon would have floated along in
this flow of air like a log floating down a river. As close as he
could estimate, he said, the balloon would arrive in the Gordonsville-
Blackstone area in the late afternoon or early evening. This was just
about the time the UFO had arrived.
"Probably a balloon" was a good enough answer for me.
The next morning at 8:00A.M., Al Chop called from the Pentagon to
tell me that people were crawling all over his desk wanting to know
about a sighting in Virginia.
The reports continued to come in. At Walnut Lake, Michigan, a group
of people with binoculars watched a "soft white light" go back and
forth across the western sky for nearly an hour. A UFO "paced" an Air
Force B-25 for thirty minutes in California. Both of these happened
on June 18, and although we checked and rechecked them, they came out
as unknowns.
On June 19 radar at Goose AFB in Newfoundland picked up some odd
targets. The targets came across the scope, suddenly enlarged, and
then became smaller again. One unofficial comment was that the object
was flat or disk-shaped, and that the radar target had gotten bigger
because the disk had banked in flight to present a greater reflecting
surface. ATIC's official comment was weather.
Goose AFB was famous for unusual reports. In early UFO history
someone had taken a very unusual colored photo of a "split cloud."
The photographer had seen a huge ball of fire streak down through the
sky and pass through a high layer of stratus clouds. As the fireball
passed through the cloud it cut out a perfect swath. The conclusion
was that the fireball was a meteor, but the case is still one of the
most interesting in the file because of the photograph.
Then in early 1952 there was another good report from this area. It
was an unknown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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