Distinguished Military Unit: Project Blue Book
"With its silvery round design standing nearly five feet tall
and eighteen feet wide, the Avro Canada VZ-9AV looked like
something out of a 1950s science-fiction film…
something a Martian would fly. The Avrocar was anything
but science fiction."
633rd Air Base Wing, October 23 2012, Joint Base Langley-Eustis
From 1947 to 1969, the US Air Force investigated Unidentified Flying Objects under Project Blue Book, a name selected to refer to the blue booklets used for written testing at many colleges and universities. The research, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, was terminated on December 17, 1969. Approximately 12,618 sightings were reported to Project Blue Book, and roughly 700 remained unidentified in the end. The Project was initially directed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and followed research similar to Project Sign, which was established in 1947, and Project Grudge, in 1949. Project Blue Book had two goals: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security and to analyze UFO-related data scientifically. UFO research and conspiracy theories have also been undertaken officially and unofficially by almost all world governments having departments of defense and science establishments. Air Force TWS lists no members assigned to any unit readily known to be doing this work. To this day, broadcast television still perennially presents UFO programming and witness statements almost monthly. Concepts gleaned from USAF Avrocar testing between 1958-61 are still being implemented today with the development of the U.S. Marine variant of the F-35B Lightning II with the capability to land vertically, making it the first aircraft in history to combine both stealth and vertical landing capabilities. An Avrocar prototype is on display in the National USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, and another resides at the US Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, VA, where plans are underway for restoration.
"On Halloween morning, 1938, Orson Welles awoke to find himself the most talked about man in America. The night before, Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria." For the War Department, it was "Game On." Only WWII delayed the serious research that was to come afterward. Astronomers had seen what they called "canals" on Mars in the 1870s, presumed to have been made by a species capable of invading earth and so Project Blue Book became inevitable by a confluence of related events.
Each US Air Force Base had its own Blue Book officer to collect UFO reports and forward them to this Project, the records of which include approximately two cubic feet of unarranged Project or administrative files, 37 cubic feet of case files in which individual sightings are arranged chronologically, and three cubic feet of records relating to the Office of Special Investigations. A cubic foot of records consists of about 2,000 pages. Access to Blue Book textual records uses 94 rolls of 35mm microfilm in the National Archives Microfilm Reading Room. Motion picture film, sound recordings, and some photographs are maintained by the Motion Picture & Sound & Video Branch and the Still Picture Branch. Nevertheless, the National Archives said, "Since Blue Book was closed, nothing has happened to indicate that the Air Force should resume investigating UFOS. Because of the considerable cost to the Air Force in the past, and the tight funding of Air Force needs today, there is no likelihood the Air Force will become involved with UFO investigation again." and "…The National Archives has received many requests for documentation and information about 'Project MJ-12.' Many inquiries concern a memorandum from Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining, dated July 14, 1954. This particular document posed problems… No records indicated or even hinted at the recovery of alien bodies or extraterrestrial materials."
All documentation related to this case is now declassified, and the information is in the public domain at the office of the Air Force Historian at Maxwell AFB. As a result of the Condon Report, which concluded that the study of UFOs was unlikely to yield significant scientific discoveries, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated. Leading figures overseeing the three official UFO projects included Kenneth Arnold, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, Gen. Charles Cabell, Gen. William Garland, Michael Swords, J. Allen Hynek, H.P. Robertson, Capt. Charles Hardin, Capt. George Gregory, LtCol. Robert Friend, Maj. Hector Quintanilla, James McDonald, Col. Raymond Sleeper, Gen. John Samford, and Jerome Clark among numerous others.
In 1953, the assigned staff was reduced from more than ten to two subordinates. It was directed that the 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron be charged with UFO investigations, which led to effectively bifurcating the Project between DOD and civilian entities (eventually, the 4602nd was inactivated, and the 1066th Air Intelligence Service Squadron took over). That same year, Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Regulation number 146 made it a crime for military personnel to discuss classified UFO reports with unauthorized persons. Violators faced up to two years in prison and fines of up to $10,000. Believe it or don't believe it, as a result of these investigations, studies, and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948, the conclusions of Project Blue Book were:
1. No UFO reported, investigated, or evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of a threat to our national security.
2. The Air Force has not submitted to or discovered evidence that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge.
3. no evidence indicates the sightings categorized as "unidentified" are extraterrestrial vehicles.
As often happens with many government acronyms, the UFO has been transformed to become a UAP, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon. In January 2024, the House Oversight Committee conducted proceedings to reinvestigate. "David Grusch said he was informed of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program'. He accused the military of misappropriating funds to shield these operations from congressional oversight. He claimed he had interviewed officials who had direct knowledge of aircraft with 'nonhuman' origins and that so-called 'biologics' were recovered from some craft. The Pentagon denied his claims. The hearings resulted in "… a new bipartisan bill that would enable civilian pilots and personnel to report UAP encounters to the FAA, which would then be required to send those reports to the Pentagon office investigating the phenomena. The bill, known as the Safe Airspace for Americans Act, would also offer protections for those who come forward… Unidentified anomalous phenomena encompass a broad range of strange objects or data points detected in the air, on land, or at sea. The most well-known UAPs have been reported by military pilots, who typically describe round or cylindrical objects traveling at impossibly high speeds with no apparent means of propulsion. Some of the objects have been caught on video. The military has improved avenues for pilots to report UAP in recent years and worked to reduce the stigma associated with doing so. The Pentagon office dedicated to examining the encounters has received hundreds of reports in recent years."
Military pilots, not known for a habitual sense of humor or exaggeration when in flight, are unlikely to describe things they do not see or cannot record and measure. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), established in 2022, is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates UFOs and other phenomena in the air, at sea, in space, and on land. It is also sometimes referred to as an unidentified aerial phenomenon. On April 12, 2021, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of pictures and videos gathered by a Task Force, purportedly showing "what appears to be pyramid-shaped objects" hovering above USS Russell in 2019, off the coast of California, with spokeswoman Susan Gough saying, "I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations." AARO will focus on Surveillance, Collection and Recording, System Capabilities and Design, Intelligence Operations and Analysis, Mitigation and Defeat, Governance, and Science and Technology. It is to continue the collection and reporting of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) incidents across the DoD's special use airspace (SUA), as well as the collection and reporting of anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedia objects. AARO is to identify and reduce gaps in operational, intelligence, and counterintelligence capability and to recommend policy changes, whether regulatory or statutory, to reduce those gaps." In addition, the Director of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Research at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) oversees the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Withstanding it all, public interest in UFO/UAP remains steadfast in some quarters, notably almost the entire town of Roswell, NM. Hollywood has produced dozens of entertaining films, including "It Came From Outer Space"; "Mork and Mindy"; "ET"; "Men in Black"; "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"; "Superman"; "Marvin the Martian" (an animated cartoon character); "Earth Girls are Easy"; "Independence Day"; "My Favorite Martian"; and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" which fictionalize or sensationalize UFO/UAP and beings from outer space. Desolate Nevada state road 375 is named "Extraterrestrial Highway" between Crystal Springs and Warm Springs. Some imagine Top Secret Area 51 to be the site of UFO/UAP investigations. An online search for UFO books yields just short of seven million hits in less than one second. Presumably, the newly inaugurated Space Force service branch will play a role in future investigations akin to Project Blue Book. Jack Webb produced and narrated Project UFO, a 1978-79 TV series based on Project Blue Book (though shifting the investigation to the present day instead of the 1950s-60s era).
The series followed two Air Force investigators (William Jordan as Maj. Jake Gatlin, replaced in the second season by Edward Winter as Maj. Ben Ryan) and Caskey Swaim as SSgt (later TSgt) Harry Fitz, covering a wide variety of UFO incidents. Project Blue Book played a significant role in the second season of the 1990–91 TV series Twin Peaks. Maj. Garland Briggs, an Air Force officer who worked on the program, approaches protagonist Dale Cooper and reveals that Cooper's name turned up in an otherwise nonsensical radio transmission intercepted by the Air Force. Every episode of the original Battlestar Galactica spin-off series, Galactica 1980, ended with a short statement about Project Blue Book's findings that UFOs are not proven to exist and "are not a threat to national security." The Project is also the inspiration for a drama series, Project Blue Book, which began airing on the History Channel in January 2019. As of April 2024, the Pentagon still asserts that there is no evidence of UFOs or Space Aliens. Nevertheless, Project Blue Book may be said to have formalized a thirty-plus year and continuing Air Force study of unorthodox earthly aerial activity touching upon medicine, physics, chemistry, folklore, history, aerodynamics, prophesy, geology, perception, fantasy, astronomy, psychology, weaponry, fiction, security, art, geography, legislation, flight, design, anthropology, sexuality, academics, propulsion, cinematography, metaphysics, fashion, animation, warfare and even biblical human understanding which shows no hint of abating. "Nanu Nanu" – and tandem highly skilled Air Force test pilots could not persuade the VZ-9AV to produce sustained, stable flight more than 35 mph three feet off the ground in three years' time.