Project Blue Book Document Release

A lot of people have gotten excited about the release of the Project Blue Book documents by the US Air Force. Project Blue Book was started in 1952, but it was not the first study of UFOs. I use the word study loosely. There had been Project Sign in 1947 and Project Grudge in 1949. When Blue Book was first organized Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was put in charge and later his name became famous in the UFO community. He was the one who coined the term “Unidentified Flying Object” or UFO. It was said that Ruppelt, who was given the authority to interview any service men who witnessed UFOs without having Β to go up the chain of command, was the last person to lead a genuine effort to analyze UFOs. This was claimed by the American scientist Michael D. Swords. Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant on the project. As sightings began to mount and the public got more interested in UFOs the CIA was getting disturbed. A panel was called for and was named the Robertson Panel and it concluded most UFO reports were from natural causes and with proper investigation all sightings could be explained this way. Thus the cover-up was set in motion. The Robertson Panel recommended a program of propaganda to control what we knew. Blue Book was given a command to reduce the unidentified objects to a bare minimum. Ruppelt couldn’t take this and requested reassignment in 1953. His staff had been reduced in an effort to hinder his investigations and when he left there was only him and two others. Funding was reduced and Blue Book became an organization of a few people who were there only to make excuses for what was witnessed. An interesting aside is one of the biggest critics of UFOs was Dr. Hynek who became convinced UFO were alien craft and formed the Center For UFO Studies. The excuse of people only seeing swamp gas became a running joke at the time. Project Blue Book was shut down in December of 1969 because a report called the Condon Report in 1968 concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs. It completely disregarded the fact the White House had been surrounded by UFOs on and off for a couple of days in 1952.

Now that we know some of the background about Project Blue Book let’s look at some of the cases which were reported, but first let me tell you even though there are over 100,000 pages, nothing says we officially came to the conclusion that UFOs are alien craft. It is hard to imagine with all the hysteria of the White House UFO flyovers and news reports that a panel could come out at the time and completely ignore the fact UFOs were over the White House. It just goes to show what short memories we all have when UFO cover-ups take place and how uninterested many of us are in anything but our own lives.

The date was January 7, 1948 and a man named Captain Thomas F. Mantell was in the Kentucky Air National Guard. He was a pilot. When the Kentucky police reported seeing a UFO in the sky, he was sent after it in his plane. The object had also been seen by the control tower at the Godman Army Airfield. Mantell chased the UFO up to an altitude of 20,000 feet before blacking out from lack of oxygen. The plane plunged to earth and unfortunately he was killed. A file on the case was created by Project Blue Book. The case had been investigated by Project Sign the predecessor of Blue Book and apparently it was felt to be so important that Blue Book revisited it. Project Sign claimed it was only a Skyhook balloon which was being chased which all the witnesses saw even though trained officers in the control tower who were familiar with all sorts of aircraft had reported seeing a UFO.

One of the most famous cases in the Project Blue Book archives has to be the case of Lonnie Zamora. Zamora was a New Mexico State Police Officer. On Friday, April 24th, 1964 officer Zamora was driving around the outskirts of Socorro, New Mexico. Zamora had been chasing a speeding car. He heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky. He ended the chase and went to investigate. After struggling to get his car up a steep hill he noticed a shiny object. It looked like aluminum but whiter. The object was shaped like the letter “O”. Zamora drove toward the object. Here is what he said, “Hardly turned around from car, when heard roar (was not exactly a blast), very loud roar β€” at that close was real loud. Not like a jet β€” knows what jets sound like. Started low frequency quickly, then roar rose in frequency (higher tone) and in loudness β€” from loud to very loud. At same time as roar saw flame. Flame was under the object. Object was starting to go straight up β€” slowly up. Object slowly rose straight up. Flame was light blue and at bottom was sort of orange color from this angle, saw the side of object (not end, as first noted). Difficult to describe flame. Thought, from roar, it might blow up. Flame might have come from underside of object, at middle, possibly a four feet area β€” very rough guess. Cannot describe flame further except blue and orange. No smoke, except dust in immediate area.”Β  The object had taken off before Zamora got up to it. He said the object was slow in rising. Zamora stated the object was on four legs. He also saw two persons. He had jumped out of his car when the object began to evidence flames and jumped over the hill. There were other witnesses, but Zamora was considered one of the most credible UFO witnesses to see a UFO.

Another famous Project Blue Book case was the Lubbock Lights in 1951. The sighting took place a year before Blue Book was formed. Captain Ruppelt felt it was a serious case and personally interviewed at least one of the witnesses. During a dark clear night three men saw lights racing quietly across the sky. They went from horizon to horizon in only a few seconds. They were reported as looking like luminous beads arranged in a crescent shape. It only took a few seconds before a second formation did the same thing. It didn’t stop there. Between August and November of that year 12 flights of these lights were observed. Some witnesses saw three flight of these lights in one night. Photos were taken and they showed 18 to 20 luminous objects which were brighter than the planet Venus. A larger luminous object appears in a few of the photos and some have called it a mother ship. One man said he thought the lights were ducks, but couldn’t account for the incredible speed. The Lubbock Lights were eventually classified as very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon by Blue Book after calling them birds.

Captain Ruppelt felt strongly enough about the Lubbock Lights to write about them in his 1956 book. He said he thought originally they were birds, but one scientist proved to him they were space ships. You can read about this in Chapter 8 of The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt. As I said once Ruppelt left Project Blue Book it became an agency of excuses. No one who witnessed anything and reported it was given any credible explanation and the age of the cover-up got into full swing.