The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
One officer summed it up neatly when he told me, "It isn't the UFO's
that give us the trouble, it's the people."
As a double check I called several newspaper editors the other day
and asked, "Why don't you print more UFO stories?" The answers were
simple, it's the old "dog bites man" bit--ninety-nine per cent have
no news value any more.
On May 10, 1956, the man bit the dog.
A string of UFO sightings in Pueblo, Colorado, hit the front pages
of newspapers across the United States. Starting on the night of May
5th, for six nights, the citizens of Pueblo, including the Ground
Observer Corps, saw UFO's zip over their community. As usual there
were various descriptions but everyone agreed "they'd never seen
anything like it before."
On the sixth night, the Air Force sent in an investigator and he saw
them. Between the hours of 9:00P.M. and midnight he saw six groups of
triangular shaped objects that glowed "with a dull fluorescence,
faint but bright enough to see." They passed from horizon to horizon
in six seconds.
The next day this investigator was called back to Colorado Springs,
his base, and a fresh team was sent to Pueblo.
The man _really_ chomped down on the dog in July and the UFO
_really_ made headlines.
Maybe it was because a fellow newspaper editor was involved, along
with the Kansas Highway Patrol, the Navy and the Air Force. Or, maybe
it was simply because it was a good UFO sighting.
About the time Miss Iowa was being judged Miss USA in the 1956 Miss
Universe Pageant at Long Beach, the city editor of _Arkansas_ _City_
_Daily_ _Traveler_, and a trooper of the Kansas State Highway Patrol
were sitting in a patrol cruiser in Arkansas City. It was a hot and
muggy night. Occasionally the radio in the cruiser would come to
life. An accident near Salina. A drunk driving south from Topeka.
Another accident near Wichita. But generally South Central Kansas was
dead. The newspaper editor was about ready to go home--it was 10
o'clock--when the small talk he and the trooper had been making was
brought to an abrupt finale by three high pitched beeps from the
cruiser's radio. An important "all cars bulletin" was coming. Twenty-
five years as a newspaperman had trained the editor to always be on
the alert for a story so he reached down and turned up the volume.
Within seconds he had his story.
"The Hutchinson Naval Air Station is picking up an unidentified
target on their radar," the voice of the dispatcher said, with as
much of an excited tone as a police dispatcher can have. "Take a look."
Then the dispatcher went on to say that the target was moving in a
semi-circular area that reached out from 50 to 75 miles east of
Hutchinson. A B-47 from McConnell AFB at Wichita was in the area,
searching. The last fix on the object showed it to be near Emporia,
in Marion County.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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