Produced by The Blue Book Archive
BY EDWARD J. RUPPELT
Former Head of the Air Force Project Blue Book
Published by
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
Garden City, New York
Note: This work was originally Copyright ? 1956 by Edward J. Ruppelt.This book is now in the public domain because it was not renewed in atimely fashion at the US Copyright Office, as required by law at thetime.
Contents
Foreword
1 Project Blue Book and the UFO Story
2 The Era of Confusion Begins
3 The Classics
4 Green Fireballs, Project Twinkle, Little Lights, and Grudge
5 The Dark Ages
6 The Presses Roll—The Air Force Shrugs
7 The Pentagon Rumbles
8 The Lubbock Lights, Unabridged
9 The New Project Grudge
10 Project Blue Book and the Big Build-Up
11 The Big Flap
12 The Washington Merry-Go-Round
13 Hoax or Horror?
14 Digesting the Data
15 The Radiation Story
16 The Hierarchy Ponders
17 What Are UFO's?
18 And They're Still Flying
19 Off They Go into the Wild Blue Yonder
20 Do They or Don't They?
to ELIZABETH and KRIS
Foreword
This is a book about unidentified flying objects—UFO's—"flyingsaucers." It is actually more than a book; it is a report because itis the first time that anyone, either military or civilian, hasbrought together in one document all the facts about this fascinatingsubject. With the exception of the style, this report is writtenexactly the way I would have written it had I been officially askedto do so while I was chief of the Air Force's project forinvestigating UFO reports—Project Blue Book.
In many instances I have left out the names of the people whoreported seeing UFO's, or the names of certain people who wereassociated with the project, just as I would have done in an officialreport. For the same reason I have changed the locale in which someof the UFO sightings occurred. This is especially true in chapterfifteen, the story of how some of our atomic scientists detectedradiation whenever UFO's were reported near their "UFO-detectionstations." This policy of not identifying the "source," to borrow aterm from military intelligence, is insisted on by the Air Force sothat the people who have co-operated with them will not get anyunwanted publicity. Names are considered to be "classifiedinformation."
But the greatest care has been taken to make sure that the omissionof names and changes in locale has in no way altered the basic factsbecause this report is based on the facts—all of the facts—nothingof significance has been left out.
It was only after considerable deliberation that I put this reporttogether, because it had to be told accurately, with no holds barred.I finally decided to do it for two reasons. First, there is world-wide interest in flying saucers; people want to know the facts. Butmore often than not these facts have been obscured by secrecy andconfusion, a situation that has led to wild speculation on one end ofthe scale and an almost dangerously blas? attitude on the other. Itis only when all of the facts are laid out that a correct evaluationcan be made.
Second, after spending two years investigating and analyzing UFOreports, after talking to the people who have seen UFO's—industrialists, pilots, engineers, generals, and just the plain man-on-the-street, and afte