The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
About this time the official Air Force UFO project had one last post-
death muscular spasm. The last bundle of reports had just landed on
top of the pile in the storage case when ATIC received a letter from
the Director of Intelligence of the Air Force. In official language
it said, "What gives?" There had been no order to end Project Grudge.
The answer went back that Project Grudge had not been disbanded; the
project functions had been transferred and it was no longer a
"special" project. From now on UFO reports would be processed through
normal intelligence channels along with other intelligence reports.
To show good faith ATIC requested permission to issue a new Air
Force-wide bulletin which was duly mimeographed and disseminated. In
essence it said that Air Force Headquarters had directed ATIC to
continue to collect and evaluate reports of unidentified flying
objects. It went on to explain that most UFO reports were trash. It
pointed out the findings of the Grudge Report in such strong language
that by the time the recipient of the bulletin had finished reading
it, he would be ashamed to send in a report. To cinch the deal the
bulletins must have been disseminated only to troops in Outer
Mongolia because I never found anyone in the field who had ever
received a copy.
As the Air Force UFO-investigating activity dropped to nil, the
press activity skyrocketed to a new peak. A dozen people took off to
dig up their own UFO stories and to draw their own conclusions.
After a quiet January, _True_ again clobbered the reading public.
This time it was a story in the March 1950 issue and it was entitled,
"How Scientists Tracked Flying Saucers." It was written by none other
than the man who was at that time in charge of a team of Navy
scientists at the super hush-hush guided missile test and development
area, White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. He was Commander R. B.
McLaughlin, an Annapolis graduate and a Regular Navy officer. His
story had been cleared by the military and was in absolute, 180-
degree, direct contradiction to every press release that had been
made by the military in the past two years. Not only did the
commander believe that he had proved that UFO's were real but that he
knew what they were. "I am convinced," he wrote in the _True_
article, "that it," referring to a UFO he had seen at White Sands,
"was a flying saucer, and further, that these disks are spaceships
from another planet, operated by animate, intelligent beings."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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