Unexplained Cases From Blue Book Part 2

File: UFO143

And they are even more numerous in the files of Project Blue Book. The urgency with which Blue Book officials tagged answers onto cases without having done the proper investigation is obvious, though not proven. But if the Air Force was so eager to label cases "identified", despite the lack of supporting evidence, then those few cases which it labeled "unidentified" presumably withstood every attempt to apply every other kind of label. And so it may be that those cases are truly unidentifiable in familiar terms.

Indeed, the Air Force defines "unidentifiable" cases as those which "apparently contain all pertinent data necessary to suggest a valid hypothesis concerning the lack of explanation of the report, but the description of the object or its motion cannot be correlated with any known object or phenomenon."

To meet such criteria, a report must obviously come from a reputable source, and it must not bear any resemblance to airplanes, balloons, helicopters, spacecraft, birds, clouds, stars, planets, meteors, comets, electrical phenomena, or anything else known to frequent the air, the sky, or nearby space.

Unfortunately, the Air Force failed to stick to its own rules. Some of the "unidentifiable" cases most certainly can be correlated with known objects or phenomena. But most of them cannot. Moreover, many of the so-called "identified" cases cannot honestly be so correlated. But we are primarily concerned here with those cases which Project Blue Book openly admits it tried to explain and failed.

The amount of detail in these cases varies enormously. Some cases - frequently those which were well publicized at the time of the event - contain considerable information, while others are vague and seriously incomplete. Project Blue Book generally placed the blame for such incompleteness on the witnesses, but it should take its own share of the responsibility. 'In thousands of cases, there is no completed questionnaire in the Project files, nor even any indication that one was sent to the witness. And in most of the instances where a questionnaire was filled out, it was never followed up to get more complete answers to questions which the witnesses failed to deal with properly. For much of the life of Project Blue Book and its predecessors, there was no satisfactory.questionnaire at all. And one of those used for a lengthy period was so badly organized that a witness should not be held to blame for giving incomplete answers.

Yet, despite all the roadblocks, many reports are sufficiently complete to tell a pretty clear story of a puzzling experience. With this data now available, anyone can look at Project Blue Book's "unidentified" UFO reports and make up his own mind.

July 3, 1947; Harborside, Maine. 2:30 p.m. EDT. Witness: astronomer John Cole of South Brooksville, Me. Watched 10-15 seconds while ten very light objects, with two dark forms to their left, moved like a swarm of bees to the northwest. A loud roar was heard.

July 4, 1947; over Emmet, Idaho. 8:17 p.m. PDT. Witnesses: United Air Lines Capt. E.J. Smith, First Officer Ralph Stevens, Stewardess Marty Morrow. Watched for 12-15 minutes while four objects with flat bottoms and rough tops moved at varying speeds, with one high and to the right of the others.

July 6, 1947; Fairfield-Suisan Air Base, California. Daytime. Witnesses: Army Air Forces Capt. and Mrs. James Burniston. Watched for 1 minute while one object having no wings or tail rolled from side-to-side three times and then flew away very fast to the southeast.

July 8, 1947; Muroc Air Base, California. 9:30 a.m. PDT. Witnesses: lst Lt. Joseph McHenry, T/Sgt Ruvolo, S/Sgt Nauman, Miss Janette Scotte. Watched for an unstated length of time while two disc-shaped or spherical objects--silver and apparently metallic--flew a wide circular pattern, and then one of them later flew a tighter circle.

End of part 2