The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
Few people I ever talked to, once they had decided they were looking
at a UFO, stopped to calmly say to themselves, "Now couldn't this be
a balloon, star, planet, or something else explainable?"
In one instance I traveled halfway across the United States to
investigate a report made by a high ranking man in the State
Department. An experienced observer. It was evening by the time I got
to talk to him and after he'd excitedly told me all the pertinent
facts, how this bright fight had "jumped across the sky," he said,
"Want to see it? It's still there but it's not jumping now."
We went outside and there was Jupiter.
Then, there was the UFO over Dayton, Ohio, in the summer of 1952.
I first heard about it at home. It was about six in the evening when
the phone rang and it was one of the tower operators at Patterson
Field.
The tower operators at Lockbourne AFB in Columbus, Ohio, 60 miles
east of Dayton, had spotted "three fiery spheres flying in a V-
formation" over their base. Two F-84's had been scrambled to
intercept and they were in the air right now. So far, the tower
operator told me, the intercept had been unsuccessful because the
objects were traveling "two to three thousand miles an hour" and were
too high for the old F-84's.
He was monitoring the two jets' radio conversation and he put his
telephone near the speaker.
I heard:
"At 28,000 and still above us."
"High speed."
"Headed toward Wright-Patterson."
"Low on fuel, going home."
I made it to my car in record time and took off toward Wright-
Patterson, about twelve miles from where I was living.
It was still light, although the sun was low, and as I drove I kept
looking toward the east. Nothing. I reached the gate, showed my pass
to the guard, and had just written the whole thing off as another UFO
report when I saw them.
They convinced me.
Off to the east of the airbase were three objects that can best be
described as three half-sized suns.
By the time I arrived at base operations there were three or four
dozen people on the ramp, all looking up.
The standard comment was: "Look at them go."
About this time a C-54 transport taxied up and stopped. It was the
"Kittyhawk Flight" from Washington and I knew several people who got
off.
One passenger, an officer from ATIC, ran up to me and handed me a
roll of film.
"Here's some pictures of them," he said breathlessly. "I never
thought I'd see one."
The next passengers I recognized were two other officers, Ph.D.
psychologists from the Aero Medical Laboratory. I knew them because
they had visited Blue Book many times collecting data for a paper
they were writing on UFO's.
The title of the paper was to be: _The_ _Psychological_ _Aspects_
_of_ _UFO_ _Sightings_.
Almost climbing over each other in their effort to tell their story
they told me how they had watched the UFO's from the C-54. Both had
seen them "dogfighting" between themselves.
"How fast were they going?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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