Podcast appearances and mentions of Edward J Ruppelt

Edward J. Ruppelt and the UFO Myth. Please support Charles Lear by picking up his books from Amazon or your local bookstore. Follow Our Other ShowsFollow UFO WitnessesFollow Crime Watch WeeklyFollow Paranormal FearsFollow Seven: Disturbing Chronicle StoriesJoin our Patreon for ad-free listening and more bonus content.Follow us on Instagram @mysteriousradioFollow us on TikTok mysteriousradioTikTok Follow us on Twitter @mysteriousradio Follow us on Pinterest pinterest.com/mysteriousradio Like us on Facebook Facebook.com/mysteriousradio]

On episode 350 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we dig deep into the early files of Project Grudge. Intended to alleviate public anxiety over UFOs and persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary, Project Grudge sought to explain away UFO sightings. Officials recommended that the project be reduced in scope because the very existence of Air Force interest encouraged people to believe in UFOs. Eventually, the Air Force announced the project's termination in December of 1949. However, it would come to light that it was actually still in operation, albeit covertly, until late 1951. And one of the cases investigated was that of the Fort Monmouth UFO in New Jersey. Buried deep in what many believe was a coverup, the most detailed version would come to light through the words of the man who ran Project Grudge, and eventually, Project Blue Book; Edward J. Ruppelt.This episode was co-written and researched by Marcus Lowth. To learn more, visit: UFOinsight.comSpecial thanks to our voiceover talents:Bryce Johnson: https://brycejohnson.actor/John Rearick: https://www.johnrearickactor.com/Jeff Bugonian: https://pacificvoiceover.com/Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskiesPayPal: Sprague51@hotmail.comWebsite: www.somewhereintheskies.comStore: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12UYouTube Channel: CLICK HEREOrder Ryan's new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4Order Ryan's older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYCTwitter: @SomewhereSkiesRead Ryan's Articles by CLICKING HEREOpening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per KiilstofteCopyright © 2024. Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In August 1988, Paul Bennewitz had a mental breakdown, convinced of an alien and government conspiracy against him. His supposed proof of UFOs over New Mexico drew the attention of an Air Force counterintelligence agent. This agent fed Bennewitz's belief in aliens for years, ultimately leading to his institutionalization.  The summer of 1952 saw a flurry of UFO activity over Washington, D.C. Edward J. Ruppelt of Project Blue Book seemed the only one taking it seriously amidst bureaucratic obstacles. After a scientific panel recommended downplaying UFO reports to avoid hysteria, Ruppelt retired. His subsequent book criticized the change in UFO policy. Both he and Bennewitz asked too many questions.

On the 64th episode of Legend, Samm and Amy discuss the history of Project Blue Book. In the 1940s, UFO sightings were being reported so frequently that the government set up not one, not two, but three projects as a way to investigate the claims of UFOs. Project Sign was too pro UFOs, so after it's short life, Project Grudge was formed. Project Grudge was more of a debunking campaign though and some higher government officials weren't pleased with it so was nixed. Then we end up with Project Blue Book, headed by the level headed- not too pro and not too con- Edward J. Ruppelt (who coined the term UFO) who hired on astronomer J. Allen Hynek (the man who created the list of different types of Close Encounters). Together, with their team, they investigated many UFO reports. Listen in as Samm and Amy discuss the many ups and downs, and the cause for conspiracies, around Project Blue Book. Also, don't forget to submit your stories at our email thisislegendpod@gmail.com or on our website, https://www.thisislegendpod.com/contact 

When the subject of UFO databases comes up, the National UFO Reporting Center is usually mentioned along with the name of its seemingly tireless director, Peter Davenport. What many may not know is who it was that got it started.Washington State MUFON Director Maurene Morgan wrote an article titled “The Early Years of NUFORC – Bob Gribble and Wendy Connor,” which was published in the November 2021 Washington MUFON Newsletter. According to Morgan, Bob Gribble, a Seattle Firefighter, became fascinated by UFOs in 1954 when he read an article in True magazine. This could have been the article in the May 1954 issue titled, “What Our Air Force Found Out About UFOs,” written by Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book. Read more →

There are cases throughout UFO history that continue to inspire debate, even though they've been declared hoaxes by most of the people who have looked into them. One such case came up early on near the beginning of the UFO mystery. It was investigated by Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, and 2nd Lt. Robert M. Olsson. In his 1956 book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt tells the reader that it was officially labeled a hoax, and calls it “the best hoax in UFO history.” Even so, there were a couple of unexplained details that have left some researchers, such as Karl Pflock, wondering.According to Ruppelt in his book, he got a call from Air Technical Intelligence Command (Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio, where Project Blue Book had its office) while he was in the shower getting ready for work. An “operational immediate” wire had just come in and Ruppelt was told that he should come in as soon as he could. When he got to ATIC, he learned that the wire was from an intelligence officer at a Florida airbase. It told of a report of a UFO encounter by a scoutmaster and three boy scouts. The scoutmaster was reportedly burned after getting too close and was described as a “solid citizen.” According to Ruppelt, transport on a B-25 was arranged, and he and Olsson headed to Florida. Read more →

A huge thank you to all our Patrons: Israel; Toby Fomes; Dee Nandwani; and Explorer of the Week: Jonathan Perna! You can view our Patreon and all the various tiers and rewards at http://www.patreon.com/AliensExplored   Edward J Ruppelt is perhaps most famously known for being the head of Project Blue Book. But what caused Ruppelt's sudden change of heart from being open minded about UFOs, to seeing them as what he called 'a space age myth'. Join Neil & Stu as they discuss the life and work of Edward J Ruppelt.   The Strange and Mysterious awaits!   Produced by http://www.feeglefilms.com in association with Juicy Falls. Theme tune - 'Searching For Monsters' by Darren Maffucci - http://searchingformonsters.bandcamp.com   Find us on: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/aliensexplored Twitter - https://twitter.com/AliensExplored Email us at - AliensExplored@gmail.com

A huge thank you to all our Patrons: Israel; Toby Fomes; Dee Nandwani; and Explorer of the Week: Jonathan Perna! You can view our Patreon and all the various tiers and rewards at http://www.patreon.com/AliensExplored Edward J Ruppelt is perhaps most famously known for being the head of Project Blue Book. But what caused Ruppelt's sudden change of heart from being open minded about UFOs, to seeing them as what he called 'a space age myth'. Join Neil & Stu as they discuss the life and work of Edward J Ruppelt. The Strange and Mysterious awaits! Produced by http://www.feeglefilms.com in association with Juicy Falls. Theme tune - 'Searching For Monsters' by Darren Maffucci - http://searchingformonsters.bandcamp.com Find us on: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/aliensexplored Twitter - https://twitter.com/AliensExplored Email us at - AliensExplored@gmail.com

(Bonus PDF) An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified or investigated as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft and was coined as an anacronym by Project Blue Book project head Edward J. Ruppelt. Another widely used term for the phenomenon is "flying saucer." Studies and investigations have been conducted by various governments worldwide, along with private individuals and organizations. In the United States, studies began in the late 1940s and have included Project Grudge, Project Sign, and Project Blue Book. The latter was ended in 1969-70 after the Condon Committee officially concluded that the subject failed to merit further study. However, an unpublicized study named the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was funded by the U.S. government from 2007-2012, and a successor program named the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force is currently operational. Unidentified lights and flying objects have been reported in the skies for much of human history. Skeptics including various scientists, and organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, state that the entire topic can be explained as conventional objects or phenomena, while Ufologists suggest various unproven theories. Public polling indicates a considerable portion of the U.S. population feels that their government is withholding information on the subject. The topic of UFOs has been, and is currently, popular in worldwide culture in fictional movies, television, and other media. UFO reports are also the subject of continuing debate and news reporting.

Hundreds of people, including several university scientists, witnessed the flying blue-green lights in August 1951. One person even took photos. August 25, 1951 was a quiet summer night in Lubbock, Texas. That evening, a handful of scientists from Texas Technical College were hanging out in the backyard of geology professor Dr. W.I. Robinson, drinking tea and chatting about micrometeorites. It was quite the brain trust: chemical engineering professor Dr. A. G. Oberg, physics professor Dr. George and Dr. W. L. Ducker, head of the petroleum-engineering department. Which made the story of what they witnessed that night all the more curious. “If a group had been hand-picked to observe a UFO, we couldn’t have picked a more technically qualified group of people,” wrote U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt later in his definitive 1956 casebook, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.In the early 1950s Ruppelt served as lead investigator for Project Blue Book, the official Air Force investigations into UFO sightings, after working on its precursor effort, Project Grudge. History.com

Edward J. RUPPELT (1923 - 1960) Dozens of specific sightings are recounted, although hundreds more had come pouring into the agency during the period covered (and hundreds, if not thousands more that were never officially reported). Here we go inside the workings of Project Blue Book, which had evolved from 2 earlier Air Force projects, and we are witness to interviews, press conferences, Pentagon briefings, and many reports from civilian and military pilots, Air Traffic Controllers, office workers, farmers, and the man on the street who reported their accounts with UFOs. And not all sightings that were reported were restricted to the U.S. Although Project Blue Book would continue until 1969, here we witness an in-depth account from it's inception and it's earliest stages, the political obstacles, the houndings from the press, the overall confusion encountered during and following many of the sightings, and the near hysteria caused during the heyday of UFO sightings, and all from the man who headed up the project in it's earliest years. The second edition of Ruppelt's work was supplemented with 3 additional chapters which were added in 1960, and we are fortunate that they are included here.'Straight from the horse's mouth', as they say. Edward Ruppelt was the first head of the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, the official project initiated to investigate UFO reports beginning in 1952. This report from 1956 takes us inside these initial investigations, separates fact from fiction, and gives insight into who, when, where, and how sightings were reported and researched in open-minded fashion (for which Ruppelt was renowned), rather than in the typical hushed and secretive (and censored) manner most often associated with government and military reports which are released to the public. https://youtu.be/CnXQiqV6edY --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/fringenews/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/fringenews/support

EPISODE 23 | Signs, Grudges & Blue Books - Early UFOlogyHidden inside the new COVID relief bill is a mandate for US Congress to be fully briefed on UFOs, so it might be worth it to take a look at the early days of UFO sightings and American investigative efforts.And tomorrow is the anniversary of the Mantell UFO Incident, called by some the first UFO-related death on record. But is it? Depends on who you believe.SECTIONS03:06 - The Mantell UFO Incident - January 7, 194807:13 - Suspicions Are Raised08:51 - The Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter - July 24, 194810:47 - The Gorman UFO Dogfight - October 1, 194816:50 - Early Days - UFOs 1883-1947 - cows in space, racist aliens, dead aliens & Foo Fighters21:47 - Maury Is. & Mt. Rainier - June 1947 - origin of "flying saucers" & "Men in Black"25:17 - SAUCER to Sign; Great (Green) Balls of Fire - Investigations & green fireballs29:47 - Grudge Match32:23 - Sidebar: The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter - August 21, 1955: origin of "little green men"38:04 - The Golden Age of Blue Book - Origin of "UFO" plus the Hynek Scale39:56 - The Robertson Panel puts a lid on it42:14 - End of an Era - Blue Book dies, "UFO" into "UAP", AATIP dies, UAPTF ongoingMusic by Fanette RonjatReferenced in this episode:US government documents on Mantell IncidentThe UFO Phenomenon: The Phenomenon from the Beginning by Jerome Clark (out of print)The Bonilla ObservationThe 1897 Cow Abduction HoaxNed - The Aurora AlienAurora Texas 1897 UFO Crash: The Real Story? by Stan HaydonMysterious UFOs Seen by WWII Airman Still Unexplained on History.comÄngelholm UFO Memorial ‘Flying saucers’ became a thing 70 years ago Saturday with sighting near Mount Rainier - Seattle TimesUFOs Over Washington article on spokesman.comThe UFO Sightings That Launched 'Men in Black' Mythology on History.comReport on Project MogulMystery of Green Fireball 'UFOs' Solved on Live ScienceProject Twinkle SlideShare presentationThe Kelly-Hopkinsville UFO and Alien Shootout by George DuddingLittle ​Green Men Days Festival websiteProject Blue Book Part 1 (UFO Reports) by Dr. Deborah Kidwell, OSI Command HistorianThe Hynek-Scale Is A Six Item System For Classifying UFO Sightings And Alien Contact (Astronomy)Durant Report on the Robertson PanelThe Report On Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt, former head of Project Blue BookTo the Stars... AcademyArticle on creation of UAPTFFollow us on social for extra goodies:FacebookTwitterYouTube (extra videos on the topic, Old Time Radio shows, music playlists and more)Other Podcasts by Derek DeWittDIGITAL SIGNAGE DONE RIGHT - Winner of 2020 Communicator Award of Excellence for Podcasts Series-Corporate Communications and on numerous top 10 podcast lists. PRAGUE TIMES - A city is more than just a location - it’s a kaleidoscope of history, places, people and trends. This podcast looks at Prague, in the center of Europe, from a number of perspectives, including what it is now, what is has been and where it’s going. It’s Prague THEN, Prague NOW, Prague LATER.

Here we go! The final chapter of Ruppelt's excellent report on UFOs. This chapter is a stark contrast to the rest of the book: it is totally skeptical. There are rumors that he was made to put this chapter in by the military to debunk UFOs. There are also rumors that the last three chapters were ghost written, and not actually written by Ruppelt. Whatever the case, here it is, the final chapter of the book.

The penultimate chapter! This time Eddy focuses on obvious hoaxes where witnesses claim to have met beings from another world. Some of these stories were difficult to read with a straight face. However in the larger context of the book, and the rumors that the military forced Ruppelt to add skeptical chapters, I have to wonder if chapter 19 is an attempt to bring the reader to a skeptical position.  We had some technical difficulties, so the planned episode on the Washington DC event of 1952 is delayed a week. This sort chapter was a last minute replacement.  Next time we will discuss... BIGFOOT!

Happy Holidays! Just in time for turkey day, we have the first of three chapters added for the 1960 edition of Ruppelt's book. The first edition, published in 1956, had just 17 chapters.  Some speculate that the last 3 chapters were added at the request of the Air Force, or perhaps a shadowy government agency. However we may never find out, as Ruppelt died of a heart attack at the young age of 37 just after the publication of the second edition of his book in 1960. One thing is certain, however, that these last three chapters are firmly on the side of the anti-saucer crowd. Unlike the rest of the book, they seem to follow a debunking agenda. At any rate they are in the book and thus will be read. Enjoy!

Some really good cases presented in this chapter, "What are the ufos?". While he doesn't explicitly answer the question, Ruppelt does hint at the possibility of interplanetary spacecraft. But he does so while trying to remain objective.

This chapter discusses a couple of different studies on UFOs and the conclusion a group of scientists reached on the topic. A few bombshells in this one, well worth the listen.

The radiation problem! This chapter is mostly about tracking radiation along with UFO sightings. Its not as simple as it sounds, and investigations had interesting results.

AudioBlog: Edward J. Ruppelt and the UFO Myth Read by author, Charles Lear   For the text blog with links visit: Edward J. Ruppelt and the UFO Myth

Lots more great stuff this time around from the grandaddy of UFOs.  We get a good look behind the scenes of government UFO investigations. Perhaps the most interesting incident discussed in this chapter is the Operation Mainbrace sighting. Check it out!  

This chapter has a couple of highly interesting UFO sightings. One that was explained and one that was not. The explained case is useful to see how an unlikely coincidence can fool even trained radar men, and the unexplained case... well that one is pretty weird.

This chapter is mostly about one of my favorite sightings, the 1952 Washington D.C. flap. I'm sure we will do an episode on it soon. While we get a highly interesting inside look at the events, a few theories have emerged since this book was written. At any rate, one of my favorite chapters. A few topics in the chapter that may or may not be interesting as a reference to people who may want to reference them: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. 1952 Washington UFO Wave The 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington,[1] was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap" - "Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports." Langley AFB Langley Air Force Base (IATA: LFI, ICAO: KLFI, FAA LID: LFI) is a United States Air Force base located adjacent to Hampton and Newport News, Virginia. It was one of thirty-two Air Service training camps established after the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917.[2]On 1 October 2010, Langley Air Force Base was joined with Fort Eustis to become Joint Base Langley–Eustis. The base was established in accordance with congressional legislation implementing the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The legislation ordered the consolidation of the two facilities which were nearby, but separate military installations, into a single joint base, one of 12 formed in the United States as a result of the law. Andrews AFB Andrews Air Force Base (Andrews AFB, AAFB) is the airfield portion of Joint Base Andrews which is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force.[3] In 2009, Andrews Air Force Base merged with Naval Air Facility Washington to form Joint Base Andrews. Andrews, located near Morningside, Maryland in suburban Washington, DC, is the home base of two Boeing VC-25A aircraft with the call sign Air Force One when the president is on board, that serve the President of the United States.[4]The host unit at Andrews is the 316th Wing, assigned to the Air Force District of Washington. It is responsible for maintaining emergency reaction rotary-wing airlift and other National Capital Region contingency response capabilities critical to national security and for organizing, training, equipping and deploying combat-ready forces for Air and Space Expeditionary Forces (AEFs). The 316th Wing also provides installation security, services and airfield management to support the President, Vice President, other U.S. senior leaders and more than 50 tenant organizations and federal agencies.The 316th Wing provides security, personnel, contracting, finance and infrastructure support for 5 Wings, 3 Headquarters, more than 80 tenant organizations, 148 geographically separated units, 6,500 Airmen in the Pentagon, as well as 60,000 Airmen and families in the national capital region and around the world. The 316th Wing supports contingency operations in the capital of the United States with immediate response rotary-assets. It also provides security for the world's highest visibility flight line and is responsible for ceremonial support with the United States Air Force Band, Honor Guard and Air Force Arlington Chaplaincy.[5]The Wing commander is Colonel TYLER R. SCHAFF. Its Command Chief Master Sergeant is Chief Master Sergeant THOMAS C. DANIELS.For statistical purposes the base is delineated as a census-designated place by the U.S. Census Bureau. As of the 2010 census, the resident population was 2,973. Bolling AFB Bolling Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in Washington, D.C. In 2010 it was merged with Naval Support Facility Anacostia to form Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling. From its beginning, the installation has hosted elements of the Army Air Corps (predecessor to today's Air Force) and Navy aviation and support elements. B-26 The Martin B-26 Marauder was an American twin-engined medium bomber that saw extensive service during World War II. The B-26 was built at two locations: Baltimore, Maryland, and Omaha, Nebraska, by the Glenn L. Martin Company.First used in the Pacific Theater of World War II in early 1942, it was also used in the Mediterranean Theater and in Western Europe.After entering service with the United States Army aviation units, the aircraft quickly received the reputation of a "widowmaker" due to the early models' high accident rate during takeoffs and landings. This was due to the fact that the Marauder had to be flown at precise airspeeds, particularly on final runway approach or when one engine was out. The unusually high 150 mph (241 km/h) speed on short final runway approach was intimidating to many pilots who were used to much slower approach speeds, and whenever they slowed to speeds below those stipulated in the manual, the aircraft would often stall and crash.[3]The B-26 became a safer aircraft once crews were re-trained, and after aerodynamics modifications (an increase of wingspan and wing angle-of-incidence to give better takeoff performance, and a larger vertical stabilizer and rudder).[4] The Marauder ended World War II with the lowest loss rate of any USAAF bomber.[5]A total of 5,288 were produced between February 1941 and March 1945; 522 of these were flown by the Royal Air Force and the South African Air Force. By the time the United States Air Force was created as an independent military service separate from the United States Army in 1947, all Martin B-26s had been retired from U.S. service. After the Marauder was retired the unrelated Douglas A-26 Invader then assumed the "B-26" designation which led to confusion between the two aircraft. F-94 The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet aircraft of the United States Air Force. It was developed from the twin-seat Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star in the late 1940s as an all-weather, day/night interceptor. The aircraft reached operational service in May 1950 with Air Defense Command, replacing the piston-engined North American F-82 Twin Mustang in the all-weather interceptor role.The F-94 was the first operational USAF fighter equipped with an afterburner and was the first jet-powered all-weather fighter to enter combat during the Korean War in January 1953. It had a relatively brief operational life, being replaced in the mid-1950s by the Northrop F-89 Scorpion and North American F-86D Sabre. The last aircraft left active-duty service in 1958 and Air National Guard service in 1959. AWOL Absent Without Leave According to the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice, desertion is defined as:"(a) Any member of the armed forces who–(1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently;(2) quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service; or(3) without being regularly separated from one of the armed forces enlists or accepts an appointment in the same or another one of the armed forces without fully disclosing the fact that he has not been regularly separated, or enters any foreign armed service except when authorized by the United States; is guilty of desertion.(b) Any commissioned officer of the armed forces who, after tender of his resignation and before notice of its acceptance, quits his post or proper duties without leave and with intent to remain away therefrom permanently is guilty of desertion.(c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct." Air Force Letter 200-5 1. Purpose and Scope.  This Letter sets forth Air Force responsibility and reporting procedures for information and materiel pertaining to unidentified flying objects.  All incidents observed by Air Force personnel or received at any Air Force installation from a civilian source will be reported in accordance with this Letter, except that all airborne sightings by Air Force personnel, Civilian Air Patrol, and regularly scheduled United States airline pilots will also be reported as provided by JANAP 146 series (CIRVIS).

The second half of Chapter 11. Its bananas! Some stuff, from the web: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. Weather BalloonA weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. Skyhook Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons. DC-3The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp (890 kW) Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines. It has a cruise speed of 207 mph (333 km/h), capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, and a range of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), and can operate from short runways.The DC-3 had many exceptional qualities compared to previous aircraft. It was fast, had a good range, was more reliable, and carried passengers in greater comfort. Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes. It was able to cross the continental US from New York to Los Angeles in 18 hours and with only 3 stops. It is one of the first airliners that could profitably carry only passengers without relying on mail subsidies.[4]Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus transport aircraft and the DC-3 was no longer competitive due to its size and speed. It was made obsolete on main routes by more advanced types such as the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation, but the design proved adaptable and useful on less glamorous routes.Civil DC-3 production ended in 1942 at 607 aircraft. Military versions, including the C-47 Skytrain (the Dakota in British RAF service), and Soviet- and Japanese-built versions, brought total production to over 16,000. Many continue to see service in a variety of niche roles: 2,000 DC-3s and military derivatives were estimated to be still flying in 2013. T-33The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service. B-25The North American B-25 Mitchell is a medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.[2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built.[1] These included a few limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. C-54The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military research, and missile tracking and recovery. During the Berlin Airlift it hauled coal and food supplies to West Berlin. After the Korean War it continued to be used for military and civilian uses by more than 30 countries. It was one of the first aircraft to carry the President of the United States.

Sorry everyone, short on time this week so I had to do this as a two parter. Chapter 11 has lots of interesting stuff. Ruppelt hints at quite a lot, and I wonder how much he is holding back. Was he muzzled by the military, or is this all part of a larger con? Whatever the case, the 1952 flap was one of the strangest in UFO history. A few topics from this part of the chapter that may or may not be interesting, from the old wiki: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. Weather BalloonA weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. Skyhook Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons. DC-3The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp (890 kW) Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines. It has a cruise speed of 207 mph (333 km/h), capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, and a range of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), and can operate from short runways.The DC-3 had many exceptional qualities compared to previous aircraft. It was fast, had a good range, was more reliable, and carried passengers in greater comfort. Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes. It was able to cross the continental US from New York to Los Angeles in 18 hours and with only 3 stops. It is one of the first airliners that could profitably carry only passengers without relying on mail subsidies.[4]Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus transport aircraft and the DC-3 was no longer competitive due to its size and speed. It was made obsolete on main routes by more advanced types such as the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation, but the design proved adaptable and useful on less glamorous routes.Civil DC-3 production ended in 1942 at 607 aircraft. Military versions, including the C-47 Skytrain (the Dakota in British RAF service), and Soviet- and Japanese-built versions, brought total production to over 16,000. Many continue to see service in a variety of niche roles: 2,000 DC-3s and military derivatives were estimated to be still flying in 2013. T-33The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service. B-25The North American B-25 Mitchell is a medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.[2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built.[1] These included a few limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. C-54The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military research, and missile tracking and recovery. During the Berlin Airlift it hauled coal and food supplies to West Berlin. After the Korean War it continued to be used for military and civilian uses by more than 30 countries. It was one of the first aircraft to carry the President of the United States.

This chapter covers a wide range of sightings and topics, but focuses on the transition from Grudge to Bluebook. Some topics covered this time around, in no particular order: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. Mitchel AFBMitchel Air Force Base also known as Mitchel Field, was a United States Air Force base located on the Hempstead Plains of Long Island, New York, United States. Established in 1918 as Hazelhurst Aviation Field #2, the facility was renamed later that year as Mitchel Field in honor of former New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, who was killed while training for the Air Service in Louisiana.Decommissioned in 1961, Mitchel Field became a multi-use complex that is home to the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Nassau Coliseum, Mitchel Athletic Complex, Nassau Community College, Hofstra University, and Lockheed. In 2018 the surviving buildings and facilities were recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[ ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. B-50The Boeing B-50 Superfortress is an American strategic bomber. A post–World War II revision of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, it was fitted with more powerful Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radial engines, stronger structure, a taller tail fin, and other improvements. It was the last piston-engined bomber built by Boeing for the United States Air Force, and was further refined into Boeing's final such design, the B-54. Not as well known as its direct predecessor, the B-50 was in USAF service for nearly 20 years.After its primary service with Strategic Air Command (SAC) ended, B-50 airframes were modified into aerial tankers for Tactical Air Command (TAC) (KB-50) and as weather reconnaissance aircraft (WB-50) for the Air Weather Service. Both the tanker and hurricane hunter versions were retired in March 1965 due to metal fatigue and corrosion found in the wreckage of KB-50J, 48-065, which crashed on 14 October 1964. F-94The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet aircraft of the United States Air Force. It was developed from the twin-seat Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star in the late 1940s as an all-weather, day/night interceptor. The aircraft reached operational service in May 1950 with Air Defense Command, replacing the piston-engined North American F-82 Twin Mustang in the all-weather interceptor role.The F-94 was the first operational USAF fighter equipped with an afterburner and was the first jet-powered all-weather fighter to enter combat during the Korean War in January 1953. It had a relatively brief operational life, being replaced in the mid-1950s by the Northrop F-89 Scorpion and North American F-86D Sabre. The last aircraft left active-duty service in 1958 and Air National Guard service in 1959. F-82The North American F-82 Twin Mustang is the last American piston-engine fighter ordered into production by the United States Air Force. Based on the P-51 Mustang, the F-82 was originally designed as a long-range escort fighter in World War II. The war ended well before the first production units were operational.In the postwar era, Strategic Air Command used the planes as a long-range escort fighter. Radar-equipped F-82s were used extensively by the Air Defense Command as replacements for the Northrop P-61 Black Widow as all-weather day/night interceptors. During the Korean War, Japan-based F-82s were among the first USAF aircraft to operate over Korea. The first three North Korean aircraft destroyed by U.S. forces were shot down by F-82s, the first being a North-Korean Yak-11 downed over Gimpo Airfield by the USAF 68th Fighter Squadron. ADCAerospace Defense Command was a major command of the United States Air Force, responsible for continental air defense. It was activated in 1968 and disbanded in 1980. Its predecessor, Air Defense Command, was established in 1946, briefly inactivated in 1950, reactivated in 1951, and then redesignated Aerospace rather than Air in 1968. Its mission was to provide air defense of the Continental United States (CONUS). It directly controlled all active measures, and was tasked to coordinate all passive means of air defense. Air Materiel CommandAir Force Materiel Command (AFMC) is a major command (MAJCOM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). AFMC was created on July 1, 1992, through the amalgamation of the former Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) and the former Air Force Systems Command (AFSC).AFMC is headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. AFMC is one of nine Air Force Major Commands and has a workforce of approximately 80,000 military and civilian personnel. It is the Air Force's largest command in terms of funding and second in terms of personnel. AFMC's operating budget represents 31 percent of the total Air Force budget and AFMC employs more than 40 percent of the Air Force's total civilian workforce.The command conducts research, development, testing and evaluation, and provides the acquisition and life cycle management services and logistics support. The command develops, acquires and sustains the air power needed to defend the United States and its interests. This is accomplished through research, development, testing, evaluation, acquisition, maintenance and program management of existing and future USAF weapon systems and their components. Wright-Patterson AFBWright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) (IATA: FFO, ICAO: KFFO, FAA LID: FFO) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is approximately 16 kilometres (10 mi) northeast of Dayton; Wright Field is approximately 8.0 kilometres (5 mi) northeast of Dayton.The host unit at Wright-Patterson AFB is the 88th Air Base Wing (88 ABW), assigned to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Materiel Command. The 88 ABW operates the airfield, maintains all infrastructure and provides security, communications, medical, legal, personnel, contracting, finance, transportation, air traffic control, weather forecasting, public affairs, recreation and chaplain services for more than 60 associate units.The base's origins begin with the establishment of Wilbur Wright Field on 22 May and McCook Field in November 1917, both established by the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps as World War I installations. McCook was used as a testing field and for aviation experiments. Wright was used as a flying field (renamed Patterson Field in 1931); Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot; armorers' school, and a temporary storage depot. McCook's functions were transferred to Wright Field when it was closed in October 1927.[2] Wright-Patterson AFB was established in 1948 as a merger of Patterson and Wright Fields.In 1995, negotiations to end the Bosnian War were held at the base, resulting in the Dayton Agreement that ended the war.The 88th Air Base Wing is commanded by Col. Thomas Sherman.[3] Its Command Chief Master Sergeant is Chief Master Sergeant Steve Arbona.[4] The base had a total of 27,406 military, civilian and contract employees in 2010.[5] The Greene County portion of the base is a census-designated place (CDP), with a resident population of 1,821 at the 2010 census. DC-6The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and cargo aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market. More than 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military, and wildfire control roles.The DC-6 was known as the C-118 Liftmaster in United States Air Force service and as the R6D in United States Navy service prior to 1962, after which all U.S. Navy variants were also designated as the C-118. B-29The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress, the Superfortress was designed for high-altitude strategic bombing but also excelled in low-altitude night incendiary bombing, and in dropping naval mines to blockade Japan. B-29s also dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, becoming the only aircraft to ever use nuclear weaponry in combat.One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $43 billion today[5])—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.[6][7]The B-29's advanced design allowed it to remain in service in various roles throughout the 1950s. The type was retired in the early 1960s, after 3,970 had been built.A few were used as flying television transmitters by the Stratovision company. The Royal Air Force flew the B-29 as the Washington until 1954.The B-29 was the progenitor of a series of Boeing-built bombers, transports, tankers, reconnaissance aircraft and trainers. The re-engined B-50 Superfortress became the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop, during a 94-hour flight in 1949. The Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter airlifter, first flown in 1944, was followed in 1947 by its commercial airliner variant, the Boeing Model 377 Stratocruiser. This bomber-to-airliner derivation was similar to the B-17/Model 307 evolution. In 1948, Boeing introduced the KB-29 tanker, followed in 1950 by the Model 377-derivative KC-97. A line of outsized-cargo variants of the Stratocruiser is the Guppy / Mini Guppy / Super Guppy, which remain in service with NASA and other operators.The Soviet Union produced 847 Tupolev Tu-4s, an unlicensed reverse-engineered copy of the aircraft.More than twenty B-29s remain as static displays but only two, Fifi and Doc, still fly. Benjamin W. ChidlawGeneral Benjamin Wiley Chidlaw (December 18, 1900 – February 21, 1977) was an officer in the United States Air Force. He directed the development of the United States' original jet engine and jet aircraft. He joined the United States Army Air Service, at the time a precursor to the United States Air Force (USAF), in 1922 and for several years served in training and engineering positions. By 1940 he was chief of the Experimental Engineering Branch and involved with the development of jet engines. During World War II he was deputy commander of 12th Tactical Air Command and later organised the establishment of the 22nd Tactical Air Command in the European Theater of Operations. After the war he remained in senior command positions and finished his career with the USAF in 1955 as commander in chief of the Continental Air Defense Command with the rank of general. He died in 1977 at the age of 76. Weather BalloonA weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. MeteorA meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star or falling star, is the visible passage of a glowing meteoroid, micrometeoroid, comet or asteroid through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere,[10][23][24] creating a streak of light via its rapid motion and sometimes also by shedding glowing material in its wake. Although a meteor may seem to be a few thousand feet from the Earth,[25] meteors typically occur in the mesosphere at altitudes from 76 to 100 km (250,000 to 330,000 ft).[26] The root word meteor comes from the Greek meteōros, meaning "high in the air".[23]Millions of meteors occur in Earth's atmosphere daily. Most meteoroids that cause meteors are about the size of a grain of sand, i.e. they are usually millimeter-sized or smaller. Meteoroid sizes can be calculated from their mass and density which, in turn, can be estimated from the observed meteor trajectory in the upper atmosphere. [27] Meteors may occur in showers, which arise when Earth passes through a stream of debris left by a comet, or as "random" or "sporadic" meteors, not associated with a specific stream of space debris. A number of specific meteors have been observed, largely by members of the public and largely by accident, but with enough detail that orbits of the meteoroids producing the meteors have been calculated. The atmospheric velocities of meteors result from the movement of Earth around the Sun at about 30 km/s (67,000 mph),[28] the orbital speeds of meteoroids, and the gravity well of Earth.Meteors become visible between about 75 to 120 km (250,000 to 390,000 ft) above Earth. They usually disintegrate at altitudes of 50 to 95 km (160,000 to 310,000 ft).[29] Meteors have roughly a fifty percent chance of a daylight (or near daylight) collision with Earth. Most meteors are, however, observed at night, when darkness allows fainter objects to be recognized. For bodies with a size scale larger than 10 cm (3.9 in) to several meters meteor visibility is due to the atmospheric ram pressure (not friction) that heats the meteoroid so that it glows and creates a shining trail of gases and melted meteoroid particles. The gases include vaporised meteoroid material and atmospheric gases that heat up when the meteoroid passes through the atmosphere. Most meteors glow for about a second. FireballA fireball is a brighter-than-usual meteor. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines a fireball as "a meteor brighter than any of the planets" (apparent magnitude −4 or greater).[34] The International Meteor Organization (an amateur organization that studies meteors) has a more rigid definition. It defines a fireball as a meteor that would have a magnitude of −3 or brighter if seen at zenith. This definition corrects for the greater distance between an observer and a meteor near the horizon. For example, a meteor of magnitude −1 at 5 degrees above the horizon would be classified as a fireball because, if the observer had been directly below the meteor, it would have appeared as magnitude −6.[35]Fireballs reaching apparent magnitude −14 or brighter are called bolides.[36] The IAU has no official definition of "bolide", and generally considers the term synonymous with "fireball". Astronomers often use "bolide" to identify an exceptionally bright fireball, particularly one that explodes.[37] They are sometimes called detonating fireballs (also see List of meteor air bursts). It may also be used to mean a fireball which creates audible sounds. In the late twentieth century, bolide has also come to mean any object that hits Earth and explodes, with no regard to its composition (asteroid or comet).[38] The word bolide comes from the Greek βολίς (bolis) [39] which can mean a missile or to flash. If the magnitude of a bolide reaches −17 or brighter it is known as a superbolide.[36][40] A relatively small percentage of fireballs hit Earth's atmosphere and then pass out again: these are termed Earth-grazing fireballs. Such an event happened in broad daylight over North America in 1972. Another rare phenomenon is a meteor procession, where the meteor breaks up into several fireballs traveling nearly parallel to the surface of Earth.A steadily growing number of fireballs are recorded at the American Meteor Society every year.[41] There are probably more than 500,000 fireballs a year,[42] but most will go unnoticed because most will occur over the ocean and half will occur during daytime. True MagazineTrue, also known as True, The Man's Magazine, was published by Fawcett Publications from 1937 until 1974. Known as True, A Man's Magazine in the 1930s, it was labeled True, #1 Man's Magazine in the 1960s. Petersen Publishing took over with the January 1975, issue. It was sold to Magazine Associates in August 1975, and ceased publication shortly afterward.High adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts were highlighted in articles such as "Living and Working at Nine Fathoms" by Ed Batutis, "Search for the Perfect Beer" by Bob McCabe and the uncredited "How to Start Your Own Hunting-Fishing Lodge." In addition to pictorials ("Iceland, Unexpected Eden" by Lawrence Fried) and humor pieces ("The Most Unforgettable Sonofabitch I Ever Knew" by Robert Ruark), there were columns, miscellaneous features and regular concluding pages: "This Funny Life," "Man to Man Answers," "Strange But True" and "True Goes Shopping." Life MagazineLife was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography.Life was independently published for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the greatest writers, editors, illustrators, and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in The New Yorker) of plays and movies currently running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.In 1936, Time publisher Henry Luce bought Life. Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades. The magazine sold more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point. Possibly the best-known photograph published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a nurse in a sailor's arms, taken on August 14, 1945, as they celebrated Victory over Japan Day in New York City. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life's profile was such that the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Sir Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur were all serialized in its pages.After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007.[1] The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC.[2] On January 30, 2012, the LIFE.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com The PentagonThe Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on 11 September 1941, and the building was dedicated on 15 January 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project;[5] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2) of space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices.[6][7] Some 23,000 military and civilian employees,[7] and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in The Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km)[7] of corridors. The central five-acre (20,000 m2) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed "ground zero" on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.[8]On 11 September 2001, exactly 60 years after the building's construction began, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people (59 victims and the five terrorists on board the airliner, as well as 125 victims in the building), according to the 9/11 Commission Report.[9] It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812.The Pentagon is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark Ground Observer CorpsThe first Ground Observer Corps was a World War II Civil Defense program of the United States Army Air Forces to protect United States territory against air attack. The 1.5 million civilian observers at 14,000 coastal observation posts performed naked eye and binocular searches to detect German or Japanese aircraft. Observations were telephoned to filter centers, which in turn forwarded authenticated reports to the Aircraft Warning Service, which also received reports from Army radar stations. The program ended in 1944.[2] A few Aircraft Warning Service Observation Towers survive as relics. Royal Canadian Air ForceThe Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; French: Aviation royale canadienne, ARC) is the air force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower".[3] The RCAF is one of three environmental commands within the unified Canadian Armed Forces. As of 2013, the Royal Canadian Air Force consists of 14,500 Regular Force and 2,600 Primary Reserve personnel, supported by 2,500 civilians, and operates 258 manned aircraft and 9 unmanned aerial vehicles.[1][4] Lieutenant-General Al Meinzinger is the current Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force and Chief of the Air Force Staff.[5]The Royal Canadian Air Force is responsible for all aircraft operations of the Canadian Forces, enforcing the security of Canada's airspace and providing aircraft to support the missions of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army. The RCAF is a partner with the United States Air Force in protecting continental airspace under the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The RCAF also provides all primary air resources to and is responsible for the National Search and Rescue Program.The RCAF traces its history to the Canadian Air Force, which was formed in 1920. The Canadian Air Force was granted royal sanction in 1924 by King George V to form the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1968, the RCAF was amalgamated with the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army, as part of the unification of the Canadian Forces. Air units were split between several different commands: Air Defence Command (interceptors), Air Transport Command (airlift, search and rescue), Mobile Command (tactical fighters, helicopters), Maritime Command (anti-submarine warfare, maritime patrol), as well as Training Command.In 1975, some commands were dissolved (ADC, ATC, TC), and all air units were placed under a new environmental command called simply Air Command (AIRCOM). Air Command reverted to its historic name of "Royal Canadian Air Force" in August 2011.[6] The Royal Canadian Air Force has served in the Second World War, the Korean War, the Persian Gulf War, as well as several United Nations peacekeeping missions and NATO operations. As a NATO member, the force maintained a presence in Europe during the second half of the 20th century. V-2 RocketThe V-2 (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2, "Retribution Weapon 2"), technical name Aggregat 4 (A4), was the world's first long-range[4] guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Germany as a "vengeance weapon", assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.[5]Research into military use of long-range rockets began when the studies of graduate student Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army. A series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the V-2. Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary,[6] the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, and a further 12,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.[7]As Germany collapsed, teams from the Allied forces—the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—raced to capture key German manufacturing sites and technology. Von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans and many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal. The US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2 manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, and moved it to the Soviet Union. Dr. Walter RiedelWalter J H "Papa" Riedel ("Riedel I") was a German engineer who was the head of the Design Office of the Army Research Centre Peenemünde and the chief designer of the A4 (V-2) ballistic rocket.[1][2] The crater Riedel on the Moon was co-named for him and the German rocket pioneer Klaus Riedel.Employed by the Heylandt Company from 27 February 1928, in December 1929, Riedel was assigned responsibility for the development of rocket motors using liquid propellants, initially in collaboration with Max Valier who had joined the company at that date.[1][3][4][5] Riedel took over full responsibility for the rocket motor development in 1930, after Valier’s untimely death following a rocket motor explosion during a test using paraffin oil (kerosene) as fuel instead of ethyl alcohol.[3]In 1934, research and development of the Heylandt Company was taken over by the Army and amalgamated with the Wernher von Braun Group at the Army Proving Grounds at Kummersdorf, near Berlin, in order to carry out research and development of long-range rocket missiles. In March 1936, von Braun and Walter Riedel began consideration of much larger rockets than the A3 (under development at that time), which was merely a test vehicle and could not carry any payload.[6] Along with Walter Dornberger, plans were drawn up for a more suitable and better equipped test site for large rockets at Peememünde, to take the place of the rather confined Kummersdorf.[6][7] From 17 May 1937, following the transfer of the rocket activities from Kummersdorf to the Army’s new rocket establishment at Peenemünde, Riedel headed the Technical Design Office as chief designer of the A4 (V2) ballistic rocket [1][7]After the air raid by the British Royal Air Force (Operation Hydra) on Peenemünde in August 1943, the transfer of the development facility was ordered to a location giving better protection from air attack. The air raid had killed Dr Walter Thiel (propulsion chief) and Erich Walther (chief of maintenance for the workshops), two leading men at the Peenemünde Army facilities.[7] In mid-September 1943, Riedel and two others surveyed the Austrian Alps for a new site for rocket development to replace that at Peenemünde. The chosen location was at Ebensee, on the southern end of the Traunsee, 100 km east of Salzburg.[8] The site consisted of a system of galleries driven into the mountains, and received the code name Zement (Cement). Work on the site started at the beginning of 1944 and was intended to be completed in October 1945.[9] From 1 October 1943, Riedel was responsible for supervising the transfer, to Ebensee, of the Peenemünde development facility.From 29 May 1945 to 20 September 1945, following the end of World War II, Riedel was held in protective custody (Sicherheitshaft) at the US Third Army’s internment camp at Deggendorf, situated between Regensburg and Passau.[1] From 1 November 1945 to 10 March 1946, he was employed by the Ministry of Supply (MoS) Establishment at Altenwalde (near Cuxhaven), and from 11 March to 31 July 1946, at the MoS Establishment at Trauen (near Braunschweig).[1] After the Trauen Establishment was disbanded, Riedel emigrated to England, to work initially (from 1947) at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, and later, from 1948 until his death in 1968, at the MoS Rocket Propulsion Establishment in Westcott (near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire). In 1957, Riedel became a British citizen.[10]Riedel died while visiting East Berlin in East Germany. Weasel WordsA weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "most people think”, and "researchers believe". Using weasel words may allow one to later deny any specific meaning if the statement is challenged, because the statement was never specific in the first place. Weasel words can be a form of tergiversation, and may be used in advertising and political statements to mislead or disguise a biased view.Weasel words can soften or under-state a biased or otherwise controversial statement. An example of this is using terms like "somewhat" or "in most respects", which make a sentence more ambiguous than it would be without them. Air Force Letter 200-5 1. Purpose and Scope.  This Letter sets forth Air Force responsibility and reporting procedures for information and materiel pertaining to unidentified flying objects.  All incidents observed by Air Force personnel or received at any Air Force installation from a civilian source will be reported in accordance with this Letter, except that all airborne sightings by Air Force personnel, Civilian Air Patrol, and regularly scheduled United States airline pilots will also be reported as provided by JANAP 146 series (CIRVIS). TeletypeA teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initially they were used in telegraphy, which developed in the late 1830s and 1840s as the first use of electrical engineering[1], though teleprinters were not used for telegraphy until 1887 at the earliest.[2] The machines were adapted to provide a user interface to early mainframe computers and minicomputers, sending typed data to the computer and printing the response. Some models could also be used to create punched tape for data storage (either from typed input or from data received from a remote source) and to read back such tape for local printing or transmission.Teleprinters could use a variety of different communication media. These included a simple pair of wires; dedicated non-switched telephone circuits (leased lines); switched networks that operated similarly to the public telephone network (telex); and radio and microwave links (telex-on-radio, or TOR). A teleprinter attached to a modem could also communicate through standard switched public telephone lines. This latter configuration was often used to connect teleprinters to remote computers, particularly in time-sharing environments.Teleprinters have largely been replaced by fully electronic computer terminals which typically have a computer monitor instead of a printer (though the term "TTY" is still occasionally used to refer to them, such as in Unix systems). Teleprinters are still widely used in the aviation industry (see AFTN and airline teletype system), and variations called Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDDs) are used by the hearing impaired for typed communications over ordinary telephone lines. DC-4The Douglas DC-4 is a four-engine (piston) propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s. From 1945, many civil airlines operated the DC-4 worldwide.  George AFB John SamfordJohn Alexander Samford (August 29, 1905 – December 1, 1968)[1] was a lieutenant general in the United States Air Force who served as Director of the National Security Agency.    General Sory Smith Thomas K. FinletterThomas Knight Finletter (November 11, 1893 – April 24, 1980), was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman. 

Another highly interesting chapter of Ruppelt's excellent book. There is so much UFO goodness packed in that I don't even know where to start. Some of the topics discussed in this chapter, in no particular order: Edward J. Ruppelt: Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases." Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States as a UFO sighting. The Lubbock Lights were investigated by the U.S. Air Force in 1951. The Air Force initially believed the lights were caused by a type of bird called a plover, but eventually concluded that the lights "weren't birds... but they weren't spaceships...the [Lubbock Lights] have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon." However, to maintain the anonymity of the scientist who had provided the explanation, the Air Force refrained from providing any details regarding their explanation for the lights. Fort Monmouth is a former installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, and is located about five miles (8.0 km) from the Atlantic Ocean. The post covers nearly 1,126 acres (4.56 km2) of land, from the Shrewsbury River on the east, to Route 35 on the west; this area is referred to as 'Main Post'. A separate area (Camp Charles Wood) to the west includes post housing, a golf course, and additional office and laboratory facilities. A rail line, owned by Conrail, runs through Camp Charles Wood and out to Naval Weapons Station Earle. The post is like a small town, including a Post Exchange (PX), health clinic, gas station and other amenities. Until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks the post was open to the public to drive through; after that time, the post was closed to all but authorized personnel. The main road through the fort was reopened to the public in 2017.The post was home to several units of the U.S. Army Materiel Command and offices of the Army Acquisition Executive (AAE) that research and manage Command and Control, Communications, Computing, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities and related technology, as well as an interservice organization designed to coordinate C4ISR, an academic preparatory school, an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit, a garrison services unit, an Army health clinic, and a Veterans Administration health clinic. Other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Security Agency, have presences on the post.The post was selected for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005. Most Army functions and personnel were required to be moved to Army facilities in Maryland—such as Aberdeen Proving Ground—and Ohio by 2011. The post officially closed on September 15, 2011. However, it was temporarily reopened on December 2, 2012, for the evacuation of the borough of Paulsboro's residents to be temporarily resettled to the former Fort Monmouth until it is deemed safe for them to move back to Paulsboro, following a freight train derailment on November 30, 2012. The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service. A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. Long Beach is a city in the US state of California located within the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It is the 39th most populous city in the United States with a population of 462,257 in 2010.[15] A charter city,[3] Long Beach is the 7th most populous city in California.Incorporated in 1897, Long Beach lies in Southern California in southern Los Angeles County.[16] Long Beach is approximately 20 miles (32 km) south of downtown Los Angeles, and is part of the Gateway Cities region. The Port of Long Beach is the second busiest container port in the United States and is among the world's largest shipping ports.[17] The city is over an oilfield with minor wells both directly beneath the city as well as offshore.The city is known for its waterfront attractions, including the permanently docked RMS Queen Mary and the Aquarium of the Pacific. Long Beach also hosts the Grand Prix of Long Beach, currently an IndyCar race. The California State University, Long Beach, one of the largest universities in California by enrollment, is located in the city. The North American F-86 Sabre, sometimes called the Sabrejet, is a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States' first swept-wing fighter that could counter the swept-wing Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights in the skies of the Korean War (1950–1953), fighting some of the earliest jet-to-jet battles in history. Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras.[3] Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the 1950s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.[citation needed]Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the United States, Japan, and Italy. In addition, 738 carrier-modified versions were purchased by the US Navy as FJ-2s and -3s. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Canadair Sabre added another 1,815 airframes, and the significantly redesigned CAC Sabre (sometimes known as the Avon Sabre or CAC CA-27), had a production run of 112. The Sabre is by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units. Terre Haute (/ˌtɛrə ˈhoʊt/ TERR-ə HOHT[7]) is a city in and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States,[8] near the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a population of 170,943.Located along the Wabash River, Terre Haute is the capital of the Wabash Valley. The city is home to several higher education institutions, including Indiana State University, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana. Terre Haute Regional Airport (IATA: HUF, ICAO: KHUF, FAA LID: HUF) is a civil-military public airport six miles (9.7 km) east of Terre Haute, in Vigo County, Indiana.[1] The FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015 categorized it as a general aviation facility.[2] It is also the location of Hulman Field Air National Guard Base of the Indiana Air National Guard. A flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting star or falling star; astronomers call the brightest examples "bolides". Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater.[2]Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they transit the atmosphere and impact the Earth are called meteorite falls. All others are known as meteorite finds. As of August 2018, there were about 1,412 witnessed falls that have specimens in the world's collections.[3] As of 2018, there are more than 59,200 well-documented meteorite finds.[4] The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on September 11, 1941, and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project;[5] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2) of space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices.[6][7] Some 23,000 military and civilian employees,[7] and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in The Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km)[7] of corridors. The central five-acre (20,000 m2) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed "ground zero" on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.[8]On September 11, 2001, exactly 60 years after the building's construction began, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people (59 victims and the five perpetrators on board the airliner, as well as 125 victims in the building), according to the 9/11 Commission Report.[9] It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812.The Pentagon is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark.Meteorites have traditionally been divided into three broad categories: stony meteorites that are rocks, mainly composed of silicate minerals; iron meteorites that are largely composed of metallic iron-nickel; and stony-iron meteorites that contain large amounts of both metallic and rocky material. Modern classification schemes divide meteorites into groups according to their structure, chemical and isotopic composition and mineralogy. Meteorites smaller than 2 mm are classified as micrometeorites. Extraterrestrial meteorites are such objects that have impacted other celestial bodies, whether or not they have passed through an atmosphere. They have been found on the Moon.[5][6] and Mars.[7] White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a military testing area operated by the United States Army. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on July 9, 1945. In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to it from known points.Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle measurements, rather than measuring distances to the point directly as in trilateration; the use of both angles and distance measurements is referred to as triangulateration. Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging.[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. The following derivation was also suggested during RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5: at Yatesbury Training Camp: Radio Azimuth Direction And Ranging. The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels. Radar is a key technology that the self-driving systems are mainly designed to use, along with sonar and other sensors.[3]Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents.[4] An IBM card sorter is a machine for sorting decks of punched cards in the format popularized by the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), which dominated the punched card data processing industry for much of the twentieth century. Sorting was a major activity in most facilities that processed data on punched cards using unit record equipment. The work flow of many processes required decks of cards to be put into some specific order as determined by the data punched in the cards. The same deck might be sorted differently for different processing steps. The IBM 80 series sorters sorted input cards into one of 13 pockets depending on the holes punched in a selected column and the sorter's settings. A modus operandi (often shortened to M.O.) is someone's habits of working, particularly in the context of business or criminal investigations, but also more generally. It is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as mode of operating.[1] Aerospace Defense Command was a major command of the United States Air Force, responsible for continental air defense. It was activated in 1968 and disbanded in 1980. Its predecessor, Air Defense Command, was established in 1946, briefly inactivated in 1950, reactivated in 1951, and then redesignated Aerospace rather than Air in 1968. Its mission was to provide air defense of the Continental United States (CONUS). It directly controlled all active measures, and was tasked to coordinate all passive means of air defense. Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons. General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods sold through retail stores. It is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The company markets many well-known North American brands, including Gold Medal flour, Annie's Homegrown, Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totino's, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, Cheerios, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and Lucky Charms. Its brand portfolio includes more than 89 other leading U.S. brands and numerous category leaders around the world.[2]Mitchel Air Force Base also known as Mitchel Field, was a United States Air Force base located on the Hempstead Plains of Long Island, New York, United States. Established in 1918 as Hazelhurst Aviation Field #2, the facility was renamed later that year as Mitchel Field in honor of former New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, who was killed while training for the Air Service in Louisiana.Decommissioned in 1961, Mitchel Field became a multi-use complex that is home to the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Nassau Coliseum, Mitchel Athletic Complex, Nassau Community College, Hofstra University, and Lockheed. In 2018 the surviving buildings and facilities were recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[2] 

Another fabulous chapter of Ruppelt's highly interesting book. This time we have a detailed look at the Lubbock lights. We get to see how a flap was investigated back in the golden age of UFOs. Some miscellaneous stuff from things that might have been mentioned in this episode: Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases." The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States as a UFO sighting. The Lubbock Lights were investigated by the U.S. Air Force in 1951. The Air Force initially believed the lights were caused by a type of bird called a plover, but eventually concluded that the lights "weren't birds... but they weren't spaceships...the [Lubbock Lights] have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon." However, to maintain the anonymity of the scientist who had provided the explanation, the Air Force refrained from providing any details regarding their explanation for the lights. An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Air Technical Intelligence CenterOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976. After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12. A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Albuquerque abbreviated as ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the 32nd-most populous city in the United States. The city's nicknames are The Duke City and Burque, both of which reference its 1706 founding by Nuevo México governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdés as La Villa de Alburquerque, named in honor of then Viceroy the 10th Duke of Alburquerque, the Villa was an outpost on El Camino Real for the Tiquex and Hispano towns in the area (such as Barelas, Corrales, Isleta Pueblo, Los Ranchos, and Sandia Pueblo). Since the city's founding it has continued to be included on travel and trade routes including Santa Fe Railway (ATSF), Route 66, Interstate 25, Interstate 40, and the Albuquerque International Sunport. The population census-estimated population of the city as 560,218 in 2018, it is the principal city of the Albuquerque metropolitan area, which has 915,927 residents as of July 2018. The metropolitan population includes Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Placitas, Zia Pueblo, Los Lunas, Belen, South Valley, Bosque Farms, Jemez Pueblo, Cuba, and part of Laguna Pueblo. This metro is included in the larger Albuquerque–Santa Fe–Las Vegas combined statistical area (CSA), with a population of 1,171,991 as of 2016. The CSA constitutes the southernmost point of the Southern Rocky Mountain Front megalopolis, including other major Rocky Mountain region cities such as Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Denver, Colorado, with a population of 5,467,633 according to the 2010 United States Census.Albuquerque serves as the county seat of Bernalillo County, and is in north-central New Mexico. The Sandia Mountains run along the eastern side of Albuquerque, and the Rio Grande flows north to south through its center, while the West Mesa and Petroglyph National Monument make up the western part of the city. Albuquerque has one of the highest elevations of any major city in the U.S., ranging from 4,900 feet (1,490 m) above sea level near the Rio Grande to over 6,700 feet (1,950 m) in the foothill areas of Sandia Heights and Glenwood Hills. The civic apex is found in an undeveloped area within the Albuquerque Open Space; there, the terrain rises to an elevation of approximately 6880+ feet (2,097 m).The economy of Albuquerque centers on science, medicine, technology, commerce, education, entertainment, and culture outlets. The city is home to Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia National Laboratories, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Presbyterian Health Services, and both the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College have their main campuses in the city. Albuquerque is the center of the New Mexico Technology Corridor, a concentration of high-tech institutions, including the metropolitan area being the location of Intel's Fab 11X In Rio Rancho and a Facebook Data Center in Los Lunas, Albuquerque was also the founding location of MITS and Microsoft. Film studios have a major presence in the state of New Mexico, for example Netflix has a main production hub at Albuquerque Studios. There are numerous shopping centers and malls within the city, including ABQ Uptown, Coronado, Cottonwood, Nob Hill, and Winrock. The city is the location of a horse racing track and casino called The Downs Casino and Racetrack, and the Pueblos surrounding the city feature resort casinos, including Sandia Resort, Santa Ana Star, Isleta Resort, and Laguna Pueblo's Route 66 Resort.The city hosts the International Balloon Fiesta, the world's largest gathering of hot-air balloons, taking place every October at a venue referred to as Balloon Fiesta Park, with its 47-acre launch field. Another large venue is Expo New Mexico where other annual events are held, such as North America's largest pow wow at the Gathering of Nations, as well as the New Mexico State Fair. While other major venues throughout the metropolitan area include the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the University of New Mexico's Popejoy Hall, Santa Ana Star Center, and Isleta Amphitheater. Old Town Albuquerque's Plaza, Hotel, and San Felipe de Neri Church hosts traditional fiestas and events such as weddings, also near Old Town are the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Explora, and Albuquerque Biological Park. Located in Downtown Albuquerque are historic theaters such as the KiMo Theater, and near the Civic Plaza is the Al Hurricane Pavilion and Albuquerque Convention Center with its Kiva Auditorium. Due to its population size, the metropolitan area regularly receives most national and international music concerts, Broadway shows, and other large traveling events, as well as New Mexico music, and other local music performances.Likewise, due to the metropolitan size, it is home to a diverse restaurant scene from various global cuisines, and the state's distinct New Mexican cuisine. Being the focus of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District gives an agricultural contrast, along acequias, to the otherwise heavily urban setting of the city. Crops such as New Mexico chile are grown along the entire Rio Grande, the red or green chile pepper is a staple of the aforementioned New Mexican cuisine. The Albuquerque metro is a major contributor of the Middle Rio Grande Valley AVA with New Mexico wine produced at several vineyards, it is also home to several New Mexican breweries. The river also provides trade access with the Mesilla Valley (containing Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas) region to the south, with its Mesilla Valley AVA and the adjacent Hatch Valley which is well known for its New Mexico chile peppers. Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Department of Defense, tasked with air defense for the Continental United States. It comprised Army, Air Force, and Navy components. It included Army Project Nike missiles (Ajax and Hercules) anti-aircraft defenses and USAF interceptors (manned aircraft and BOMARC missiles). The primary purpose of continental air defense during the CONAD period was to provide sufficient attack warning of a Soviet bomber air raid to ensure Strategic Air Command could launch a counterattack without being destroyed. CONAD controlled nuclear air defense weapons such as the 10 kiloton W-40 nuclear warhead on the CIM-10B BOMARC. The command was disestablished in 1975, and Aerospace Defense Command became the major U.S. component of North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Reese Air Force Base was a base of the United States Air Force located 6 mi west of Lubbock, Texas, about 225 mi WNW of Fort Worth. The base's primary mission throughout its existence was pilot training.The base was closed 30 September 1997 after being selected for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1995 and is now a research and business park called Reese Technology Center. Kirtland Air Force Base (IATA: ABQ, ICAO: KABQ) is a United States Air Force base located in the southeast quadrant of the Albuquerque, New Mexico urban area, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. The base was named for the early Army aviator Col. Roy C. Kirtland. The military and the international airport share the same runways, making ABQ a joint civil-military airport.Kirtland AFB is the largest installation in Air Force Global Strike Command and sixth largest in the Air Force. The base occupies 51,558 acres and employs over 23,000 people, including more than 4,200 active duty and 1,000 Guard, plus 3,200 part-time Reserve personnel. In 2000, Kirtland AFB's economic impact on the City of Albuquerque was over $2.7 billion.Kirtland is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command's Nuclear Weapons Center (NWC). The NWC's responsibilities include acquisition, modernization and sustainment of nuclear system programs for both the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. The NWC is composed of two wings–the 377th Air Base Wing and 498th Nuclear Systems Wing–along with ten groups and 7 squadrons.Kirtland is home to the 58th Special Operations Wing (58 SOW), an Air Education and Training Command (AETC) unit that provides formal aircraft type/model/series training. The 58 SOW operates the HC-130J, MC-130J, UH-1N Huey, HH-60G Pave Hawk and CV-22 Osprey aircraft. Headquarters, Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center is also located at Kirtland AFB. The 150th Special Operations Wing of the New Mexico Air National Guard, an Air Combat Command (ACC)-gained unit, is also home-based at Kirtland. The United States Atomic Energy Commission, commonly known as the AEC, was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology.[4] President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947.[5] This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.[6]During its initial establishment and subsequent operationalization, the AEC played a key role in the institutional development of Ecosystem ecology. Specifically, it provided crucial financial resources, allowing for ecological research to take place.[7] Perhaps even more importantly, it enabled ecologists with a wide range of groundbreaking techniques for the completion of their research. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the AEC also approved funding for numerous bioenvironmental projects in the arctic and subarctic regions. These projects were designed to examine the effects of nuclear energy upon the environment and were a part of the AEC's attempt at creating peaceful applications of atomic energy.[8]:22–25An increasing number of critics during the 1960s charged that the AEC's regulations were insufficiently rigorous in several important areas, including radiation protection standards, nuclear reactor safety, plant siting, and environmental protection. By 1974, the AEC's regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that the U.S. Congress decided to abolish the AEC. The AEC was abolished by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which assigned its functions to two new agencies: the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.[9] On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, which created the Department of Energy. The new agency assumed the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration (FEA), the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), the Federal Power Commission (FPC), and various other Federal agencies. The Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), managed and operated by the National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International), is one of three National Nuclear Security Administration research and development laboratories in the United States. In December 2016, it was announced that National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, under the direction of Honeywell International, would take over the management of Sandia National Laboratories starting on May 1, 2017.[5][6][7][3]Their primary mission is to develop, engineer, and test the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons. The primary campus is located on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the other is in Livermore, California, next to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. There is also a test facility in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii.[8]It is Sandia's mission to maintain the reliability and surety of nuclear weapon systems, conduct research and development in arms control and nonproliferation technologies, and investigate methods for the disposal of the United States' nuclear weapons program's hazardous waste. Other missions include research and development in energy and environmental programs, as well as the surety of critical national infrastructures. In addition, Sandia is home to a wide variety of research including computational biology, mathematics (through its Computer Science Research Institute), materials science, alternative energy, psychology, MEMS, and cognitive science initiatives. Sandia formerly hosted ASCI Red, one of the world's fastest supercomputers until its recent decommission, and now hosts ASCI Red Storm, originally known as Thor's Hammer. Sandia is also home to the Z Machine. The Z Machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. It is operated by Sandia National Laboratories to gather data to aid in computer modeling of nuclear guns. The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker"[N 1] is a strategic bomber built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built. It had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built, at 230 ft (70.1 m). The B-36 was the first bomber capable of delivering any of the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal from inside its four bomb bays without aircraft modifications. With a range of 10,000 mi (16,000 km) and a maximum payload of 87,200 lb (39,600 kg), the B-36 was capable of intercontinental flight without refuelling.Entering service in 1948, the B-36 was the primary nuclear weapons delivery vehicle of Strategic Air Command (SAC) until it was replaced by the jet-powered Boeing B-52 Stratofortress beginning in 1955. All but five aircraft were scrapped. The North American B-25 Mitchell is a medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.[2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built.[1] These included a few limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress, the Superfortress was designed for high-altitude strategic bombing but also excelled in low-altitude night incendiary bombing, and in dropping naval mines to blockade Japan. B-29s also dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, becoming the only aircraft to ever use nuclear weaponry in combat.One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $43 billion today[5])—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.[6][7]The B-29's advanced design allowed it to remain in service in various roles throughout the 1950s. The type was retired in the early 1960s, after 3,970 had been built.A few were used as flying television transmitters by the Stratovision company. The Royal Air Force flew the B-29 as the Washington until 1954.The B-29 was the progenitor of a series of Boeing-built bombers, transports, tankers, reconnaissance aircraft and trainers. The re-engined B-50 Superfortress became the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop, during a 94-hour flight in 1949. The Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter airlifter, first flown in 1944, was followed in 1947 by its commercial airliner variant, the Boeing Model 377 Stratocruiser. This bomber-to-airliner derivation was similar to the B-17/Model 307 evolution. In 1948, Boeing introduced the KB-29 tanker, followed in 1950 by the Model 377-derivative KC-97. A line of outsized-cargo variants of the Stratocruiser is the Guppy / Mini Guppy / Super Guppy, which remain in service with NASA and other operators.The Soviet Union produced an unlicensed reverse-engineered copy, the Tupolev Tu-4.More than twenty B-29s remain as static displays but only two, Fifi and Doc, still fly.[8] A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage. The crew, payload, fuel, and equipment are typically housed inside the main wing structure, although a flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blisters, booms, or vertical stabilizers.[1]Similar aircraft designs that are not, strictly speaking, flying wings, are sometimes referred to as such. These types include blended wing body aircraft, Lifting body aircraft which have a fuselage and no definite wings, and ultralights (such as the Aériane Swift) which typically carry the pilot (and engine when fitted) below the wing. Q clearance or Q access authorization is the Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance required to access Top Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information, as well as Secret Restricted Data. Restricted Data (RD) is defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and covers nuclear weapons and related materials. The lower-level L clearance is sufficient for access to Secret Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) and National Security Information, as well as Confidential Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information.[1][2] Access to Restricted Data is only granted on a need-to-know basis to personnel with appropriate clearances."For access to some classified information, such as Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) or Special Access Programs (SAPS), additional requirements or special conditions may be imposed by the information owner even if the person is otherwise eligible to be granted a security clearance or access authorization based on reciprocity."[2]Anyone possessing an active Q clearance is always categorized as holding a National Security Critical-Sensitive position (sensitivity Level 3).[3] Additionally, most Q-cleared incumbents will have collateral responsibilities designating them as Level 4: National Security Special-Sensitive personnel.[4] With these two designations standing as the highest-risk sensitivity levels, occupants of these positions hold extraordinary accountability, harnessing the potential to cause exceptionally grave or inestimable damage to the national security of the United States. Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on February 10, 1923, and called until 1969 Texas Technological College, it is the main institution of the four-institution Texas Tech University System. The university's student enrollment is the seventh-largest in Texas as of the Fall 2017 semester.The university offers degrees in more than 150 courses of study through 13 colleges and hosts 60 research centers and institutes. Texas Tech University has awarded over 200,000 degrees since 1927, including over 40,000 graduate and professional degrees. The Carnegie Foundation classifies Texas Tech as having "highest research activity". Research projects in the areas of epidemiology, pulsed power, grid computing, nanophotonics, atmospheric sciences, and wind energy are among the most prominent at the university. The Spanish Renaissance-themed campus, described by author James Michener as "the most beautiful west of the Mississippi until you get to Stanford", has been awarded the Grand Award for excellence in grounds-keeping, and has been noted for possessing a public art collection among the ten best in the United States.The Texas Tech Red Raiders are charter members of the Big 12 Conference and compete in Division I for all varsity sports. The Red Raiders football team has made 36 bowl appearances, which is 17th most of any university. The Red Raiders basketball team has made 14 appearances in the NCAA Division I Tournament. Bob Knight has coached the second most wins in men's NCAA Division I basketball history and served as the team's head coach from 2001 to 2008. The Lady Raiders basketball team won the 1993 NCAA Division I Tournament. In 1999, Texas Tech's Goin' Band from Raiderland received the Sudler Trophy, which is awarded to "recognize collegiate marching bands of particular excellence".Although the majority of the university's students are from the southwestern United States, the school has served students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. Texas Tech University alumni and former students have gone on to prominent careers in government, business, science, medicine, education, sports, and entertainment. The North American F-86 Sabre, sometimes called the Sabrejet, is a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States' first swept-wing fighter that could counter the swept-wing Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights in the skies of the Korean War (1950–1953), fighting some of the earliest jet-to-jet battles in history. Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras.[3] Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the 1950s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.[citation needed]Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the United States, Japan, and Italy. In addition, 738 carrier-modified versions were purchased by the US Navy as FJ-2s and -3s. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Canadair Sabre added another 1,815 airframes, and the significantly redesigned CAC Sabre (sometimes known as the Avon Sabre or CAC CA-27), had a production run of 112. The Sabre is by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.[1] A micrometeorite is a micrometeoroid that has survived entry through the Earth's atmosphere. The size of such a particle ranges from 50 µm to 2 mm. Usually found on Earth's surface, micrometeorites differ from meteorites in that they are smaller in size, more abundant, and different in composition. They are a subset of cosmic dust, which also includes the smaller interplanetary dust particles (IDPs).[1]Micrometeorites enter Earth's atmosphere at high velocities (at least 11 km/s) and undergo heating through atmospheric friction and compression. Micrometeorites individually weigh between 10−9 and 10−4 g and collectively comprise most of the extraterrestrial material that has come to the present-day Earth.[2]Fred Lawrence Whipple first coined the term "micro-meteorite" to describe dust-sized objects that fall to the Earth.[3] Sometimes meteoroids and micrometeoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere are visible as meteors or "shooting stars", whether or not they reach the ground and survive as meteorites and micrometeorites. The Kodak 35 was introduced in 1938 as the first US manufactured 35mm camera from Eastman Kodak Company. It was developed in Rochester, New York when it became likely that imports from the Kodak AG factory in Germany could be disrupted by war.While Kodak had invented the Kodak 135 daylight-loading film cassette in 1934, prior to 1938 they only offered the German made Kodak Retina' to work with this cartridge. US built 35mm cameras used the 828 paper backed 35mm roll-film (Bantam Series).[1][2] Plovers (/ˈplʌvər/ or /ˈploʊvər/) are a widely distributed group of wading birds belonging to the subfamily Charadriinae.There are about 66 species[1] in the subfamily, most of them called "plover" or "dotterel". The closely related lapwing subfamily, Vanellinae, comprises another 20-odd species.[2]Plovers are found throughout the world, with the exception of the Sahara and the polar regions, and are characterised by relatively short bills. They hunt by sight, rather than by feel as longer-billed waders like snipes do. They feed mainly on insects, worms or other invertebrates, depending on the habitat, which are obtained by a run-and-pause technique, rather than the steady probing of some other wader groups.[3]Plovers engage in false brooding, a type of distraction display. Examples include: pretending to change position or to sit on an imaginary nest site.A group of plovers may be referred to as a stand, wing, or congregation. A group of dotterels may be referred to as a trip.[4] A mercury-vapor lamp is a gas discharge lamp that uses an electric arc through vaporized mercury to produce light. The arc discharge is generally confined to a small fused quartz arc tube mounted within a larger borosilicate glass bulb. The outer bulb may be clear or coated with a phosphor; in either case, the outer bulb provides thermal insulation, protection from the ultraviolet radiation the light produces, and a convenient mounting for the fused quartz arc tube.Mercury vapor lamps are more energy efficient than incandescent and most fluorescent lights, with luminous efficacies of 35 to 65 lumens/watt.[1] Their other advantages are a long bulb lifetime in the range of 24,000 hours and a high intensity, clear white light output.[1] For these reasons, they are used for large area overhead lighting, such as in factories, warehouses, and sports arenas as well as for streetlights. Clear mercury lamps produce white light with a bluish-green tint due to mercury's combination of spectral lines.[1] This is not flattering to human skin color, so such lamps are typically not used in retail stores.[1] "Color corrected" mercury bulbs overcome this problem with a phosphor on the inside of the outer bulb that emits white light, offering better color rendition.They operate at an internal pressure of around one atmosphere and require special fixtures, as well as an electrical ballast. They also require a warm-up period of 4 – 7 minutes to reach full light output. Mercury vapor lamps are becoming obsolete due to the higher efficiency and better color balance of metal halide lamps.[2] Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving Grounds) is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. Part of the facility is a census-designated place (CDP), which had a population of 3,116 at the 2000 census, and 2,093 as of the 2010 census. The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Canada as part of a secret U.S. military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War.[2] The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single "turborotor" blowing exhaust out the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer.Originally designed as a fighter-like aircraft capable of very high speeds and altitudes, the project was repeatedly scaled back over time and the U.S. Air Force eventually abandoned it. Development was then taken up by the U.S. Army for a tactical combat aircraft requirement, a sort of high-performance helicopter.[3] In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project was cancelled in September 1961.Through the history of the program, the project was referred to by a number of different names. Avro referred to the efforts as Project Y, with individual vehicles known as Spade and Omega. Project Y-2 was later funded by the U.S. Air Force, who referred to it as WS-606A, Project 1794 and Project Silver Bug. When the U.S. Army joined the efforts it took on its final name "Avrocar", and the designation "VZ-9", part of the U.S. Army's VTOL projects in the VZ series. ...And lots of other exiting stuff!!!

Another fantastic entry from the historic UFO legend, Edward J. Ruppelt. This time we learn about the transition of military command from disbelievers to worriers. Ruppelt also tells the story of how he got put in charge of the UFO project. Packed full of interesting topics, such as projects Sign Grudge and Bluebook, ATIC, flying saucers, Behind the Flying Saucers by Frank Scully, Silas Newton, Donald Keyhoe, The United Nations, Sioux City, DC-3, DC-6, B-29, MIG-15, T-33, F-86, the Mantell Incident, Godman AFB, cigar shaped ufos, Life Magazine, the Pentagon, the Office of Public Information, Bob Ginna, White Sands Proving Grounds, cinetheodolites, triangulation, radar, inversion layers, Air Defense Command, anomalous propagation, Wright-Patterson AFB, the Fort Monmouth incident, the Grudge Report, Cal Tech, Long Beach Radio Range, George AFB, Edwards AFB, and so much more! This chapter is not one to be missed!Some topic notes from wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.A flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1930[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased in January 19th project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force and active for most of 1948.Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin.[1] Project Sign was followed by another project, Project Grudge.Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.[2] The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.Air Technical Intelligence CenterOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized.Frank Scully (born Francis Joseph Xavier Scully; 28 April 1892 – 23 June 1964)[1][4] was an American journalist, author, humorist, and a regular columnist for the entertainment trade magazine Variety.Donald Edward Keyhoe (June 20, 1897 – November 29, 1988) was an American Marine Corps naval aviator,[2] writer of many aviation articles and stories in a variety of leading publications, and manager of the promotional tours of aviation pioneers, especially of Charles Lindbergh.In the 1950s he became well known as a UFO researcher, arguing that the U.S. government should conduct research in UFO matters, and should release all its UFO files. Jerome Clark writes that "Keyhoe was widely regarded as the leader in the field" of ufology in the 1950s and early to mid-1960s.The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations.[2] It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City; other main offices are in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague.Sioux City (/suː/) is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 82,684 in the 2010 census, which makes it the fourth largest city in Iowa.[5][6] The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County, of which it is the county seat, though a small portion is in Plymouth County. Sioux City is located at the navigational head of the Missouri River. The city is home to several cultural points of interest including the Sioux City Public Museum, Sioux City Art Center and Sergeant Floyd Monument, which is a National Historic Landmark. The city is also home to Chris Larsen Park, commonly referred to as "the Riverfront", which includes the Anderson Dance Pavilion, Sergeant Floyd Riverboat Museum and Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. Sioux City is the primary city of the five-county Sioux City, IA–NE–SD Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), with a population of 168,825 in 2010 and a slight increase to an estimated 169,405 in 2018.[7] The Sioux City–Vermillion, IA–NE–SD Combined Statistical Area had a population of 182,675 as of 2010 but has decreased to an estimated population of 178,448 as of 2018.The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp (890 kW) Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines. It has a cruise speed of 207 mph (333 km/h), capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, a range of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), and could operate from short runways.Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes as it could cross the continental US and made worldwide flights possible, carried passengers in greater comfort, and was reliable and easy to maintain. It is considered the first airliner that could profitably carry only passengers.[4] Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus military transport aircraft, and the DC-3 could not be upgraded by Douglas due to cost. It was made obsolete on main routes by more advanced types such as the Douglas DC-6 and Lockheed Constellation, but the design proved adaptable and useful.Civil DC-3 production ended in 1942 at 607 aircraft. Military versions, including the C-47 Skytrain (the Dakota in British RAF service), and Soviet- and Japanese-built versions, brought total production to over 16,000. Many continue to see service in a variety of niche roles: 2,000 DC-3s and military derivatives were estimated to be still flying in 2013.The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and cargo aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market. More than 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military, and wildfire control roles.The DC-6 was known as the C-118 Liftmaster in United States Air Force service and as the R6D in United States Navy service prior to 1962, after which all U.S. Navy variants were also designated as the C-118.The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress, the Superfortress was designed for high-altitude strategic bombing but also excelled in low-altitude night incendiary bombing, and in dropping naval mines to blockade Japan. B-29s also dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which contributed to the end of World War II.One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $43 billion today[5])—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (Russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-15; USAF/DoD designation: Type 14; NATO reporting name: Fagot) is a jet fighter aircraft developed by Mikoyan-Gurevich for the Soviet Union. The MiG-15 was one of the first successful jet fighters to incorporate swept wings to achieve high transonic speeds. In combat over Korea, it outclassed straight-winged jet day fighters, which were largely relegated to ground-attack roles, and was quickly countered by the similar American swept-wing North American F-86 Sabre.When refined into the more advanced MiG-17, the basic design would again surprise the West when it proved effective against supersonic fighters such as the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in the Vietnam War of the 1960s.The MiG-15 is believed to have been one of the most produced jet aircraft; in excess of 13,000 were manufactured.[1] Licensed foreign production may have raised the production total to almost 18,000.[citation needed] The MiG-15 remains in service with the Korean People's Army Air Force as an advanced trainer.The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service.The North American F-86 Sabre, sometimes called the Sabrejet, is a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States' first swept-wing fighter that could counter the swept-wing Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights in the skies of the Korean War (1950–1953), fighting some of the earliest jet-to-jet battles in history. Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras.[3] Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the 1950s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.[citation needed]Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the United States, Japan, and Italy. In addition, 738 carrier-modified versions were purchased by the US Navy as FJ-2s and -3s. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Canadair Sabre added another 1,815 airframes, and the significantly redesigned CAC Sabre (sometimes known as the Avon Sabre or CAC CA-27), had a production run of 112. The Sabre is by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). The event was among the most publicized early UFO incidents.Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell may have died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which in 1948 was a top-secret project that Mantell would not have known about.[1] Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb, and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen, his plane went into a downward spiral, and crashed.In 1956, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (the first head of Project Blue Book) wrote that the Mantell crash was one of three "classic" UFO cases in 1948 that would help to define the UFO phenomenon in the public mind, and would help convince some Air Force intelligence specialists that UFOs were a "real", physical phenomenon.[2] The other two "classic" sightings in 1948 were the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Gorman dogfight.[3]Historian David M. Jacobs argues the Mantell case marked a sharp shift in both public and governmental perceptions of UFOs. Previously, the news media often treated UFO reports with a whimsical or glib attitude reserved for “silly season news”. Following Mantell's death, however, Jacobs notes "the fact that a person had died in an encounter with an alleged flying saucer dramatically increased public concern about the phenomenon. Now a dramatic new prospect entered thought about UFOs: they might be not only extraterrestrial but potentially hostile as well."Godman Army Airfield (IATA: FTK, ICAO: KFTK, FAA LID: FTK) is a military airport located on the Fort Knox United States Army post in Hardin County, Kentucky, United States. It has four runways and is used entirely by the United States Army Aviation Branch.Life was an American magazine published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography.Originally, Life was a humor magazine with limited circulation. Founded in 1883, it was developed as being in a similar vein to British magazine Punch. This form of the magazine lasted until November 1936. Henry Luce, the owner of Time, bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name, and launched a major weekly news magazine with a strong emphasis on photojournalism. Luce purchased the rights to the name from the publishers of the first Life, but sold its subscription list and features to another magazine with no editorial continuity between the two publications.Life was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the greatest writers, editors, illustrators, and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in The New Yorker) of plays and movies currently running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades. The magazine sold more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point. Possibly the best-known photograph published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a nurse in a sailor's arms, taken on August 14, 1945, as they celebrated Victory over Japan Day in New York City. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life's profile was such that the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Sir Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur were all serialized in its pages.After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007.[1] The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC.[2] On January 30, 2012, the LIFE.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com.The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on September 11, 1941, and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project;[5] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2) of space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices.[6][7] Some 23,000 military and civilian employees,[7] and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km)[7] of corridors. The central five-acre (20,000 m2) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed "ground zero" on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.[8]On September 11, 2001, exactly 60 years after the building's construction began, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people (59 victims and the five perpetrators on board the airliner, as well as 125 victims in the building), according to the 9/11 Commission Report.[9] It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812.The Pentagon is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark.White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a military testing area operated by the United States Army. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on July 9, 1945.A cinetheodolite (a.k.a. kinetheodolite) is a photographic instrument for collection of trajectory data. It can be used to acquire data in the testing of missiles, rockets, projectiles, aircraft, and fire control systems; in the ripple firing of rockets, graze action tests, air burst fuze tests, and similar operations. Cinetheodolites provide angular measurements of the line of sight to the vehicle. This permits acquiring accurate position data. Together with timing systems, velocity and acceleration data can be developed from the position measurements. Cinetheodolites can serve as primary sources of position and velocity data to about 30 km slant range.These instruments were developed from a family of optical devices known as theodolites by the addition of a movie camera, thus adding the ability to track the vehicle in flight and to obtain continuous trajectory data.In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to it from known points.Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle measurements, rather than measuring distances to the point directly as in trilateration; the use of both angles and distance measurements is referred to as triangulateration.Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging.[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization.The following derivation was also suggested during RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5: at Yatesbury Training Camp: Radio Azimuth Direction And Ranging. The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels. Radar is a key technology that the self-driving systems are mainly designed to use, along with sonar and other sensors.[3]Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents.In meteorology, an inversion, also known as a temperature inversion, is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to an inversion of the thermal lapse rate. Normally, air temperature decreases with an increase in altitude. During an inversion, warmer air is held above cooler air; the normal temperature profile with altitude is inverted. [2]An inversion traps air pollution, such as smog, close to the ground. An inversion can also suppress convection by acting as a "cap". If this cap is broken for any of several reasons, convection of any moisture present can then erupt into violent thunderstorms. Temperature inversion can notoriously result in freezing rain in cold climates.Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Department of Defense, tasked with air defense for the Continental United States. It comprised Army, Air Force, and Navy components. It included Army Project Nike missiles (Ajax and Hercules) anti-aircraft defenses and USAF interceptors (manned aircraft and BOMARC missiles). The primary purpose of continental air defense during the CONAD period was to provide sufficient attack warning of a Soviet bomber air raid to ensure Strategic Air Command could launch a counterattack without being destroyed. CONAD controlled nuclear air defense weapons such as the 10 kiloton W-40 nuclear warhead on the CIM-10B BOMARC.[1] The command was disestablished in 1975, and Aerospace Defense Command became the major U.S. component of North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).Anomalous propagation (sometimes shortened to anaprop or anoprop)[1] includes different forms of radio propagation due to an unusual distribution of temperature and humidity with height in the atmosphere.[2] While this includes propagation with larger losses than in a standard atmosphere, in practical applications it is most often meant to refer to cases when signal propagates beyond normal radio horizon.Anomalous propagation can cause interference to VHF and UHF radio communications if distant stations are using the same frequency as local services. Over-the-air analog television broadcasting, for example, may be disrupted by distant stations on the same channel, or experience distortion of transmitted signals ghosting). Radar systems may produce inaccurate ranges or bearings to distant targets if the radar "beam" is bent by propagation effects. However, radio hobbyists take advantage of these effects in TV and FM DX.Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) (IATA: FFO, ICAO: KFFO, FAA LID: FFO) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is approximately 16 kilometres (10 mi) northeast of Dayton; Wright Field is approximately 8.0 kilometres (5 mi) northeast of Dayton.The host unit at Wright-Patterson AFB is the 88th Air Base Wing (88 ABW), assigned to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Materiel Command. The 88 ABW operates the airfield, maintains all infrastructure and provides security, communications, medical, legal, personnel, contracting, finance, transportation, air traffic control, weather forecasting, public affairs, recreation and chaplain services for more than 60 associate units.The base's origins begin with the establishment of Wilbur Wright Field on 22 May and McCook Field in November 1917, both established by the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps as World War I installations. McCook was used as a testing field and for aviation experiments. Wright was used as a flying field (renamed Patterson Field in 1931); Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot; armorers' school, and a temporary storage depot. McCook's functions were transferred to Wright Field when it was closed in October 1927.[2] Wright-Patterson AFB was established in 1948 as a merger of Patterson and Wright Fields.In 1995, negotiations to end the Bosnian War were held at the base, resulting in the Dayton Agreement that ended the war.The 88th Air Base Wing is commanded by Col. Thomas Sherman[3] Its Command Chief Master Sergeant is Chief Master Sergeant Steve Arbona.[4] The base had a total of 27,406 military, civilian and contract employees in 2010.[5] The Greene County portion of the base is a census-designated place (CDP), with a resident population of 1,821 at the 2010 census.The Grudge reportProject Grudge issued its only formal report in August 1949. Though over 600 pages long, the report's conclusions stated:A. There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. Headquarters AMC Air Material Command will continue to investigate reports in which realistic technical applications are clearly indicated.NOTE: It is apparent that further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein. It is further recommended that pertinent collection directives be revised to reflect the contemplated change in policy.B. All evidence and analyses indicate that reports of unidentified flying objects are the result of:1. Misinterpretation of various conventional objects.2. A mild form of mass-hysteria and war nerves.3. Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or to seek publicity.4. Psychopathological persons.Not long after this report was released, it was reported that Grudge would soon be dissolved. Despite this announcement, Grudge was not quite finished. A few personnel were still assigned to the project, and they aided the authors of a few more debunking mass media articles.The California Institute of Technology (Caltech)[7] is a private doctorate-granting research university in Pasadena, California. Known for its strength in natural science and engineering, Caltech is often ranked as one of the world's top-ten universities.[8][9][10][11][12]Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910 and the college assumed its present name in 1920. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán.[13][14] The university is one among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States which is primarily devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research.[15] Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. First-year students are required to live on campus and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus House System at Caltech. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks,[16] student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.As of November 2019, Caltech alumni, faculty and researchers include 74 Nobel Laureates (chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes), 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners. In addition, there are 56 non-emeritus faculty members (as well as many emeritus faculty members) who have been elected to one of the United States National Academies, 4 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force and 71 have won the United States National Medal of Science or Technology.[4] Numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA.[4] According to a 2015 Pomona College study, Caltech ranked number one in the U.S. for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD.George Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base located within the city limits, 8 miles northwest, of central Victorville, California, about 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California.George AFB was closed pursuant to a decision by the 1988 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission at the end of the Cold War. It is now the site of the Southern California Logistics Airport.Established by the United States Army Air Corps as an Advanced Flying School in June 1941, it was closed at the end of World War II. It was again activated as a training base by the United States Air Force with the outbreak of the Korean War in November 1950. It remained a training base throughout the Cold War and in the immediate post-Cold War period, primarily for the Tactical Air Command (TAC) and later the Air Combat Command (ACC), training USAF, NATO and other Allied pilots and weapon systems officers in front-line fighter aircraft until being closed in 1993.Since 2009, the California Air National Guard's 196th Reconnaissance Squadron (96 RS) has operated an MQ-1 Predator Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) training facility at the Southern California Logistics Airport.Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) (IATA: EDW, ICAO: KEDW, FAA LID: EDW) is a United States Air Force installation located in Kern County in Southern California, about 22 miles (35 km) northeast of Lancaster, 15 miles (24 km) east of Rosamond and 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of California City.It is the home of the Air Force Test Center, Air Force Test Pilot School, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. It is the Air Force Materiel Command center for conducting and supporting research and development of flight, as well as testing and evaluating aerospace systems from concept to combat. It also hosts many test activities conducted by America's commercial aerospace industry.Notable occurrences at Edwards include Chuck Yeager's flight that broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1,[3] test flights of the North American X-15,[3] the first landings of the Space Shuttle,[4] and the 1986 around-the-world flight of the Rutan Voyager.

Chapter 6! Once again, tons of interesting stuff by Ruppelt, the former head of Project Bluebook. UFOs, Grudge, Sign, the Grudge Report, White Sands Proving Grounds, Skyhook Balloons, The Mantell Incident, Flying Saucers, Kenneth Arnold, True Magazine, airline pilot reports, the Farmington sighting, Dr. Donald Menzel, ATIC, weather balloons, a MIB-like encounter, more sick burns, something that sounds suspiciously like the recent tic-tacs, and MORE!!!Some misc topic notes from Wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[2]Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased in January 19th project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.The Grudge reportProject Grudge issued its only formal report in August 1949. Though over 600 pages long, the report's conclusions stated:A. There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. Headquarters AMC Air Material Command will continue to investigate reports in which realistic technical applications are clearly indicated.Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force and active for most of 1948.Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin.[1] Project Sign was followed by another project, Project Grudge.Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.[2] The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.[3]White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a military testing area operated by the United States Army. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on July 9, 1945.Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons.On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). The event was among the most publicized early UFO incidents.Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell may have died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which in 1948 was a top-secret project that Mantell would not have known about.[1] Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb, and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen, his plane went into a downward spiral, and crashed.In 1956, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (the first head of Project Blue Book) wrote that the Mantell crash was one of three "classic" UFO cases in 1948 that would help to define the UFO phenomenon in the public mind, and would help convince some Air Force intelligence specialists that UFOs were a "real", physical phenomenon.[2] The other two "classic" sightings in 1948 were the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Gorman dogfight.[3]Historian David M. Jacobs argues the Mantell case marked a sharp shift in both public and governmental perceptions of UFOs. Previously, the news media often treated UFO reports with a whimsical or glib attitude reserved for “silly season news”. Following Mantell's death, however, Jacobs notes "the fact that a person had died in an encounter with an alleged flying saucer dramatically increased public concern about the phenomenon. Now a dramatic new prospect entered thought about UFOs: they might be not only extraterrestrial but potentially hostile as well."A flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1930[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.Kenneth Albert Arnold (March 29, 1915[1] – January 16, 1984[2]) was an American aviator and businessman. He is best known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported modern unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in tandem near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947.True, also known as True, The Man's Magazine, was published by Fawcett Publications from 1937 until 1974. Known as True, A Man's Magazine in the 1930s, it was labeled True, #1 Man's Magazine in the 1960s. Petersen Publishing took over with the January 1975, issue. It was sold to Magazine Associates in August 1975, and ceased publication shortly afterward.High adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts were highlighted in articles such as "Living and Working at Nine Fathoms" by Ed Batutis, "Search for the Perfect Beer" by Bob McCabe and the uncredited "How to Start Your Own Hunting-Fishing Lodge." In addition to pictorials ("Iceland, Unexpected Eden" by Lawrence Fried) and humor pieces ("The Most Unforgettable Sonofabitch I Ever Knew" by Robert Ruark), there were columns, miscellaneous features and regular concluding pages: "This Funny Life," "Man to Man Answers," "Strange But True" and "True Goes Shopping."Donald Howard Menzel (April 11, 1901 – December 14, 1976) was one of the first theoretical astronomers and astrophysicists in the United States. He discovered the physical properties of the solar chromosphere, the chemistry of stars, the atmosphere of Mars, and the nature of gaseous nebulae.[1][2] The minor planet 1967 Menzel was named in his honor,[3] as well as a small lunar crater located in the southeast of Mare Tranquilitatis, the Sea of Tranquility.Air Technical Intelligence CenterOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized.A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable.

Chapter 5 of The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt. This time we look at Project Sign, Project Grudge, the Grudge Report, and a few other things. Mostly the chapter is a sick burn, eviscerating Project Grudge and its failed attempt to debunk the UFO phenomenon.  Some notes from Wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[2]Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force and active for most of 1948.Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin.[1] Project Sign was followed by another project, Project Grudge.Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.[2] The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.[3]Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.The Grudge reportProject Grudge issued its only formal report in August 1949. Though over 600 pages long, the report's conclusions stated:A. There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. Headquarters AMC Air Material Command will continue to investigate reports in which realistic technical applications are clearly indicated.NOTE: It is apparent that further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein. It is further recommended that pertinent collection directives be revised to reflect the contemplated change in policy.B. All evidence and analyses indicate that reports of unidentified flying objects are the result of:1. Misinterpretation of various conventional objects.2. A mild form of mass-hysteria and war nerves.3. Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or to seek publicity.4. Psychopathological persons.Not long after this report was released, it was reported that Grudge would soon be dissolved. Despite this announcement, Grudge was not quite finished. A few personnel were still assigned to the project, and they aided the authors of a few more debunking mass media articles.

Chapter 4 of Ruppelt's excellent book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.This time he writes about topics such as the Green Fireballs, Project Twinkle, and Project Grudge. Some interesting sightings are discussed, including one that sounds like it could be a black triangle.He also talks about some behind the scenes stuff. Supposedly, he had to get the book approved by the air force before publication. Therefore he was not able to explicitly state certain things. However he got around this by asking questions and beating around the bush. Pay close attention to this chapter, Ruppelt hints at things that were later proven to be true.Topic notes from wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."Green fireballs are a type of unidentified flying object which have been sighted in the sky since the early 1950s.[1] Early sightings primarily occurred in the southwestern United States, particularly in New Mexico.[2][3][4] They were once of notable concern to the US government because they were often clustered around sensitive research and military installations, such as Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratory, then Sandia base.[2][3][4]Meteor expert Dr. Lincoln LaPaz headed much of the investigation into the fireballs on behalf of the military. LaPaz's conclusion was that the objects displayed too many anomalous characteristics to be a type of meteor and instead were artificial, perhaps secret Soviet spy devices. The green fireballs were seen by many people of high repute including LaPaz, distinguished Los Alamos scientists, Kirtland AFB intelligence officers and Air Command Defense personnel.[5] A February 1949 Los Alamos conference attended by aforementioned sighters, Project Sign, world-renowned upper atmosphere physicist Dr. Joseph Kaplan, H-bomb scientist Dr. Edward Teller, other scientists and military brass concluded, though far from unanimously, that green fireballs were natural phenomena. To the conference attendees, though the green fireball source was unknown, their existence was unquestioned.[6] Secret conferences were convened at Los Alamos to study the phenomenon[7][8] and in Washington by the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.[2][3][4][9]In December 1949 Project Twinkle, a network of green fireball observation and photographic units, was established but never fully implemented. It was discontinued two years later, with the official conclusion that the phenomenon was probably natural in origin.[10]Green fireballs have been given natural, man-made, and extraterrestrial origins and have become associated with both the Cold War and ufology.[2][3][4] Because of the extensive government paper trail on the phenomenon, many ufologists consider the green fireballs to be among the best documented examples of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.Black triangles are a class of unidentified flying object (UFO) with certain common features which have reportedly been observed during the 20th and 21st centuries. Media reports of black triangles originally came from the United States and United Kingdom.[1]Reports generally describe this class of UFOs as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways. Sightings usually take place at night. These objects are often described as having pulsing colored lights that appear at each corner of the triangle.[2]Black triangle UFOs have been claimed to be visible to radar. During the 1989-1990 Belgian UFO wave, two Belgian Air Force F-16s attempted to intercept an object detected by radar, but the pilots did not report seeing an object.In 2000, a key conclusion of the Project Condign report was that no attempt should be made on the part of civilian or RAF Air Defence aircraft to outmaneuver these objects except to place them astern to mitigate the risk of collision.[3]

Chapter 3!This time our esteemed author Edward J Ruppelt covers UFO events and Project Sign during 1948. He walks us through the steps he took to investigate famous UFO cases. We don't often get a peek behind the military's wall of secrecy, so this chapter is a real treat for true aficionados of the topic.Some of the topics covered in this chapter are the famous Ghost Rockets, the Mantell Incident, the Chiles Whitted Incident, the Gorman Dogfight, the Estimate of the Situation, J. Allen Hynek's contribution to one of the cases, and more! Quite a lot of excellent UFO goodness packed into the chapter.Some more info on this episode's stuff from Wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."Ghost rockets (Swedish: Spökraketer, also called Scandinavian ghost rockets) were rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries.The first reports of ghost rockets were made on February 26, 1946, by Finnish observers. About 2,000 sightings were logged between May and December 1946, with peaks on 9 and 11 August 1946. Two hundred sightings were verified with radar returns, and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to ghost rockets.Investigations concluded that many ghost rocket sightings were probably caused by meteors. For example, the peaks of the sightings, on the 9 and 11 August 1946, also fall within the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower. However, most ghost rocket sightings did not occur during meteor shower activity, and furthermore displayed characteristics inconsistent with meteors, such as reported maneuverability.Debate continues as to the origins of the unidentified ghost rockets. In 1946, however, it was thought likely that they originated from the former German rocket facility at Peenemünde, and were long-range tests by the Soviets of captured German V-1 or V-2 missiles, or perhaps another early form of cruise missile because of the ways they were sometimes seen to maneuver. This prompted the Swedish Army to issue a directive stating that newspapers were not to report the exact location of ghost rocket sightings, or any information regarding the direction or speed of the object. This information, they reasoned, was vital for evaluation purposes to the nation or nations performing the tests.Mantell UFO Incident On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). The event was among the most publicized early UFO incidents.Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell may have died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which in 1948 was a top-secret project that Mantell would not have known about. Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb, and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen, his plane went into a downward spiral, and crashed.In 1956, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (the first head of Project Blue Book) wrote that the Mantell crash was one of three "classic" UFO cases in 1948 that would help to define the UFO phenomenon in the public mind, and would help convince some Air Force intelligence specialists that UFOs were a "real", physical phenomenon. The other two "classic" sightings in 1948 were the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Gorman dogfight.Historian David M. Jacobs argues the Mantell case marked a sharp shift in both public and governmental perceptions of UFOs. Previously, the news media often treated UFO reports with a whimsical or glib attitude reserved for “silly season news”. Following Mantell's death, however, Jacobs notes "the fact that a person had died in an encounter with an alleged flying saucer dramatically increased public concern about the phenomenon. Now a dramatic new prospect entered thought about UFOs: they might be not only extraterrestrial but potentially hostile as well."The Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter occurred on July 24, 1948 in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama. Two commercial pilots, Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, claimed that at approximately 2:45 AM on July 24 they observed a "glowing object" pass by their plane before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and travel out of sight. According to Air Force officer and Project Blue Book supervisor Edward J. Ruppelt, the Chiles-Whitted sighting was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that convinced the personnel of Project Sign, Blue Book's predecessor, "that UFOs were real," along with the Mantell UFO incident and the Gorman dogfight. However, later studies by Air Force and civilian researchers indicated that Chiles and Whitted had seen a meteor, possibly a bolide, and in 1959 Project Blue Book formally stated that a meteor was the cause of the incident.The Gorman UFO dogfight was a widely publicized UFO incident. It occurred on October 1, 1948, in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, and involved George F. Gorman, a pilot with the North Dakota Air National Guard. USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in his bestselling and influential The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that the Gorman Dogfight was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that "proved to [Air Force] intelligence specialists that UFOs were real," along with the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Mantell UFO incident. However, in 1949 the US Air Force concluded that the Gorman Dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon.The Estimate of the Situation was a document written in 1948 by the personnel of United States Air Force's Project Sign - including the project's director, Captain Robert R. Sneider - which explained their reasons for concluding that the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the best explanation for unidentified flying objects. The report's conclusions were rejected by General Hoyt Vandenberg, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, for lack of proof.As late as 1960, USAF personnel stated that the document never existed. However, several Air Force officers, and one consultant, claim the report as being a real document that was suppressed. Jenny Randles and Peter Hough describe the Estimate as the "Holy Grail of ufology" and state that Freedom of Information Act requests for the document have been fruitless.Josef Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910 – April 27, 1986) was an American astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three consecutive projects: Project Sign (1947–1949), Project Grudge (1949–1952), and Project Blue Book (1952–1969).In later years he conducted his own independent UFO research, developing the "Close Encounter" classification system. He was among the first people to conduct scientific analysis of reports and especially of trace evidence purportedly left by UFOs.See? I told you, lots of goodness packed in! And that's not even all of it!

The second chapter of Edward J. Ruppelt's classic book on UFO's. This time Mr. Ruppelt discusses the classic case of Kenneth Arnold and other related sightings of the 1947 UFO flap. He also gives behind the scene details on the Maury Island Mystery. A summary of the Arnold sighting from Wikipedia: "The Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting occurred on June 24, 1947, when private pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed that he saw a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds that Arnold estimated at a minimum of 1,200 miles an hour (1,932 km/hr). This was the first post-War sighting in the United States that garnered nationwide news coverage and is credited with being the first of the modern era of UFO sightings, including numerous reported sightings over the next two to three weeks. Arnold's description of the objects also led to the press quickly coining the terms flying saucer and flying disc as popular descriptive terms for UFOs." And Maury Island: "The Maury Island Incident, June 21 1947, refers to claims made by Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl of falling debris and threats by men in black following sightings of unidentified flying objects in the sky over Maury Island in Puget Sound." It may be worth checking out the wiki pages on these incidents, and others mentioned in the chapter. To protect the identity of people involved, Ruppelt changed some of the names. Follow the show on Twitter @alineconpod! Also listen to the end of the show for our new email address, which I don't want to post here because I don't want to get tons of spam. Questions? Comments? A sighting of your own that you would like to share? Send us an email and let us know.

The first chapter of Ruppelt's book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects." Edward J. Ruppelt was the head of project Blue Book until late 1953. He coined the term "UFO" to replace the less accurate "flying saucers." Dr. J. Allen Hynek said that you should read this book. The ultra-legendary Stanton Friedman was introduced to the UFO topic when he chanced upon a copy of this book. This is a big one. Ruppelt had the inside scoop on UFOs. As the head of Blue Book he had access to secret information not available to civilian researchers. He was a giant upon whose shoulders we still stand. This book was a nuclear bomb that gave us a peek behind the velvet curtain and revealed things like the estimate of the situation. I agree with Dr. Hynek: anyone interested in the topic of UFOs should definitely read this book. Or, better yet, hear me read it for you! So what are you waiting for? You can follow the ACP on twitter @alienconpod.

Objetos voladores no identificados, mejor conocidos como OVNIS, han inspirado curiosidad y especulaciones durante décadas. Existe una historia increíble y de la vida real del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos de largas décadas de investigación acerca de avistamientos reportados de OVNIS. Esta historia es la historia del programa secreto del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos llamado Proyecto Libro Azul, el cual se lanzó en 1952 y fue monitoreado por la Fuerza Aérea de los Estados Unidos hasta la terminación del proyecto en 1969. Durante este tiempo, expertos investigaron más de 12,000 reportes de avistamientos de OVNIS, de los cuales muchos permanecen sin explicación hasta el día de hoy. Durante el período en la historia de los Estados Unidos que dio origen al Proyecto Libro Azul, las superpotencias mundiales estaban probando los límites de la tecnología militar, como nunca antes se había visto. Por razones obvias, la Fuerza Aérea de los EE. UU. Quería vigilar todos los avistamientos de ovnis. The Report of Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt: https://www.nicap.org/rufo/contents2.htm

We talk about Project Sign, Project Grudge, Dr. J Allen Hynek, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, and the early eras of Project Blue Book's research into the UFO phenomenon. PART 1 of a two-parter! Intro music: Cruzer by Noah B Outro music: Lightspeed by Noah B Insta & Twitter: @ufosanonymous Email: ufosanonymous@gmail.com Sources cited: UFOs: 50 Years of Denial? Charles Fox and James Fox. Wikipedia: Project Blue Book Wikipedia: Edward J. Ruppelt www.CUFOS.orgSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/ufosanonymous)

This is a found audio show. It is an interview conducted with George Adamski in 1955 conducted by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt at the Giant Rock Spacecraft convention

Mantell UFO Incident Anniversary Special: Edward J. Ruppelt was the first head of Project Blue Book, an official U.S. Air Force investigation of UFOs. In his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt identified three UFO encounters of … Continue reading →

This week on the ZDP: Thorn begins by discussing the August 2014 Naval Warfare Development Group cross-training event hosted by the Minneapolis Police Department. In "We The People" Thorn dives into The History of the NWO Part 2 (1912-1973) This week marks the introduction of a new semi- regular segment on ZDP! An Introduction to Ufology, where Thorn begins topica such as Project Bluebook, Project Grudge, Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, and other pertinant Ufology topics. In "WTF!" Thorn breaks down the NSA's XKEYSCORE data collecting practices. How big is this program? How much data do they actually collect? Are they still spying on Americans? www.zombieradio.net www.zombielifepodcast.com www.xdexperience.com www.zombieasc.com www.whitemicmusic.com

Gene and Chris explore the early history of UFO research with author Colin Bennett, author of a new edition of “Flying Saucers over the White House: The Inside Story of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and His Official U.S. Airforce Investigation of UFOs.”