The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
I called Lieutenant Andy Flues, who was in charge of Project Blue
Book while I was gone, to tell him that I was staying over and I
found out that they were in a de luxe flap back in Dayton. Reports
were pouring out of the teletype machines at the rate of thirty a day
and many were as good, if not better, than the Washington incident. I
talked this over with Colonel Bower and we decided that even though
things were popping back at ATIC the Washington sighting, from the
standpoint of national interest, was more important.
Feeling like a national martyr because I planned to work all night
if necessary, I laid the course of my investigation. I would go to
Washington National Airport, Andrews AFB, airlines offices, the
weather bureau, and a half dozen other places scattered all over the
capital city. I called the transportation section at the Pentagon to
get a staff car but it took me only seconds to find out that the
regulations said no staff cars except for senior colonels or
generals. Colonel Bower tried--same thing. General Samford and
General Garland were gone, so I couldn't get them to try to pressure
a staff car out of the hillbilly who was dispatching vehicles. I went
down to the finance office--could I rent a car and charge it as
travel expense? No--city buses are available. But I didn't know the
bus system and it would take me hours to get to all the places I had
to visit, I pleaded. You can take a cab if you want to pay for it out
of your per diem was the answer. Nine dollars a day per diem and I
should pay for a hotel room, meals, and taxi fares all over the
District of Columbia. Besides, the lady in finance told me, my travel
orders to Washington covered only a visit to the Pentagon. In
addition, she said, I was supposed to be on my way back to Dayton
right now, and if I didn't go through all the red tape of getting the
orders amended I couldn't collect any per diem and technically I'd be
AWOL. I couldn't talk to the finance officer, the lady informed me,
because he always left at 4:30 to avoid the traffic and it was now
exactly five o'clock and she was quitting.
At five-one I decided that if saucers were buzzing Pennsylvania
Avenue in formation I couldn't care less. I called Colonel Bower,
explained my troubles, and said that I was through. He concurred, and
I caught the next airliner to Dayton.
When I returned I dropped in to see Captain Roy James in the radar
branch and told him about the sighting. He said that he thought it
sounded as if the radar targets had been caused by weather but since
he didn't have the finer details he naturally couldn't make any
definite evaluation.
The good UFO reports that Lieutenant Flues had told me about when I
called him from Washington had tripled in number before I got around
to looking at them. Our daily take had risen to forty a day, and
about a third of them were classified as unknowns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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