The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
More amber-red fights like those seen on July 18 had been observed
over the Guided Missile Long-Range Proving Ground at Patrick AFB,
Florida. In Uvalde, Texas, a UFO described as "a large, round, silver
object that spun on its vertical axis" was seen to cross 100 degrees
of afternoon sky in forty-eight seconds. During part of its flight it
passed between two towering cumulus clouds. At Los Alamos and
Holyoke, Massachusetts, jets had chased UFO's. In both cases the
UFO's had been lost as they turned into the sun.
In two night encounters, one in New Jersey and one in Massachusetts,
F-94's tried unsuccessfully to intercept unidentified lights reported
by the Ground Observer Corps. In both cases the pilots of the radar-
nosed jet interceptors saw a light; they closed in and their radar
operators got a lock-on. But the lock-ons were broken in a few
seconds, in both cases, as the light apparently took violent evasive
maneuvers.
Copies of these and other reports were going to the Pentagon, and I
was constantly on the phone or having teleconferences with Major
Fournet.
When the second Washington National Sighting came along, almost a
week to the hour from the first one, by a stroke of luck things
weren't too fouled up. The method of reporting the sighting didn't
exactly follow the official reporting procedures that are set forth
in Air Force Letter 200-5, dated 5 April 1952, Subject: Reporting of
Unidentified Flying Objects--but it worked.
I first heard about the sighting about ten o'clock in the evening
when I received a telephone call from Bob Ginna, _Life_ magazine's
UFO expert. He had gotten the word from _Life's_ Washington News
Bureau and wanted a statement about what the Air Force planned to do.
I decided that instead of giving a mysterious "no comment" I would
tell the truth: "I have no idea what the Air Force is doing; in all
probability it's doing nothing." When he hung up, I called the
intelligence duty officer in the Pentagon and I was correct,
intelligence hadn't heard about the sighting. I asked the duty
officer to call Major Fournet and ask him if he would go out to the
airport, which was only two or three miles from his home. When he got
the call from the duty officer Major Fournet called Lieutenant
Holcomb; they drove to the ARTC radar room at National Airport and
found Al Chop already there. So at this performance the UFO's had an
official audience; Al Chop, Major Dewey Fournet, and Lieutenant
Holcomb, a Navy electronics specialist assigned to the Air Force
Directorate of Intelligence, all saw the radar targets and heard the
radio conversations as jets tried to intercept the UFO's.
Being in Dayton, 380 miles away, there wasn't much that I could do,
but I did call Captain Roy James thinking possibly he might want to
talk on the phone to the people who were watching the UFO's on the
radarscopes. But Captain James has a powerful dislike for UFO's--
especially on Saturday night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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