Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report 14 (Hynek's annotated copy)

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

History and Background of this Collection

My interest in flying saucers began in New Mexico in 1949 when I started work at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. A local epidemic of "green fireballs" during the previous year (see p. A6) had led to the formation of one of the first flying saucer study groups, the Los Alamos Astrophysical Association. This was composed of scientists and engineers in the Lab., with official support. After joining this informal group, I carefully studied the secret Project GRUDGE Report which had been sent to the Lab. by the Air Force to help these studies.

In the GRUDGE Report (Report No. 102 AC 49/15-100, "Unidentified Flying Objects", Project GRUDGE, Project XS-304, Release date August 1949, written by Lt. H.W.Smith and Mr. G.W.Towles, Air Materiel Command HQ, Wright Field), I was greatly impressed by Prof. Hynek's chapter, in which he stated his opinion that the green fireballs of the Southwest were probably connected with U.S. research activities. I also was impressed with the chapter by the Air Force Chief Scientist, who concluded that the saucers couldn't possibly be Russian devices, but who never even mentioned the possibility that they might be American. Another interesting item in the report was a copy of RAND Corp. letter L-2563, March 29, 1949, asking for access to the Air Force files on the Maury Island incident (later discussed in great detail in the book "The Coming of the Saucers", by Ken Arnold and Ray Palmer.)

The press release on p. A3 appeared word-for-word in the Recommendations section of the GRUDGE report, in compliance with a letter from an Air Force general (also given in the report), dated in January 1949, directing that the project name be changed from SIGN to GRUDGE, and that the investigation be discontinued by the end of 1949. The report was issued in August 1949.

On behalf of the Los Alamos Astrophysical Association, I wrote to the Air Force requesting access to the original report files, which had been "microfilmed for research use" at Wright Field. I then visited Lt. Smith there on May 17, 1950, and was able to get some details from him, but instead of forwarding more data to Los Alamos, the Air Force took back our copy of the GRUDGE report, and the letter on p. A3 was sent to me. The Los Alamos Lab. officials also ceased then to support our saucer research efforts.

In January 1952 I moved to Arlington, Va., and asked to inspect the saucer files at the Pentagon, per letter on p. A3. The reply, enclosing two press releases, is reproduced on pages A4 and A5. I visited Lt. Col. Searles and Mr. Al Chop at the Pentagon A.F. Press Desk several times, and examined the paraphrased version of the GRUDGE Report there, verifying that my notes made at Los Alamos were covered by this declassified publicly available document.

Further correspondence followed, and I was invited to the Pentagon in Nov. 1952 to meet Col. W. A. Adams and Maj. Dewey J. J. Fournet for discussion of my contention that saucers, if real, were American. I presented a four-page list of questions, the answers to which proved to me that the A.F. "investigation" of saucers was completely a cover-up for something else. Col. Adams asked Maj. Fournet to give me a private showing of the "Tremonton films" which, at the time, convinced me that the saucers must indeed be real. (See my article in Leonard Stringfield's "C.R.I.F.0. Newsletter", Sept. 1954 issue, and see Capt. Ruppelt's article in "True" Magazine, May 1954.)