Book · 1956
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Edward J. Ruppelt · expanded edition with three new chapters, 1960 · Doubleday
Glimpses
This report is written exactly the way I would have written it had I been officially asked to do so while I was chief of the Air Force's project for investigating UFO reports--Project Blue Book.
First, there is world-wide interest in flying saucers; people want to know the facts. But more often than not these facts have been obscured by secrecy and confusion.
UFO is the official term that I created to replace the words "flying saucers."
The situation was the UFO's; the estimate was that they were interplanetary!
The general wouldn't buy interplanetary vehicles. The report lacked proof.
In no time they found that this was easier to prove and it got recognition.
Maybe the earth is being visited by interplanetary spaceships. Only time will tell.
But it hasn't happened yet and until that day comes we're stuck with our Space Age Myth--the UFO.
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Doubleday, 1956) is the first account of the U.S. Air Force's UFO investigations by someone who ran them. Edward Ruppelt, head of Project Blue Book from 1951 to 1953, tells the story from Project Sign's first cases through Grudge, the 1952 wave, the Washington radar sightings, the Tremonton and Montana films and the 1953 Robertson Panel. He describes the Top Secret 1948 "Estimate of the Situation", which concluded the objects were interplanetary and was rejected by the Chief of Staff, and the project's later swing to explaining reports away. He is candid about the Air Force's confusion and about a residue of unexplained cases from credible witnesses, and he coined the term "UFO".
The 1960 edition added three chapters that take a much more sceptical view of the reports since 1953 and end by calling the UFO a "Space Age Myth". Whether that reflected a change of mind, the record he saw or pressure is debated; Ruppelt died of a heart attack months later. The book's copyright was not renewed and it is in the public domain in the United States; the full text is in this archive's search, chapter by chapter.
Sources: Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Project Gutenberg) · Wikipedia — Edward J. Ruppelt
Facts and claims
- claimed Ruppelt writes that in 1948 ATIC's Top Secret Estimate of the Situation concluded that the UFOs were interplanetary, and that Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force Chief of Staff, sent it back because it lacked proof; the estimate was later declassified and burned, though he saw one of the surviving copies (chapter 3). — Edward J. Ruppelt Source: ruppelt-report-on-ufos.html
- claimed He writes that the 1953 panel of scientists convened for the CIA (the Robertson Panel) was told that one of three verdicts would be acceptable: that all reports were explainable, that the data were insufficient, or that the UFOs were interplanetary spacecraft (chapter 16). — Edward J. Ruppelt Source: ruppelt-report-on-ufos.html
- claimed In the chapters added in 1960 he takes a sceptical line, quoting a former Blue Book investigator that not one case could not be logically explained, and closing on “our Space Age Myth--the UFO” (chapter 20). — Edward J. Ruppelt Source: ruppelt-report-on-ufos.html
Connected files
People
- Edward J. Ruppelt (authored by)
Programs
- Project Blue Book (about)
- Project Sign (about)
- Project Grudge (about)
Incidents
- Washington, D.C. UFO incident (about)
- Tremonton film (Utah, 1952) (about)
Documents
Mentioned in documents and records
More books
- UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-up, 1941–1973
- The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
- The Hynek UFO Report
- Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol
- Project Blue Book Exposed
- Forbidden Science: Journals 1957–1969