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

# INTRODUCTION

NEW YORK OFFICE OF INFORMATION SERVICES Public Information Division

In June, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman and private pilot, publicly reported the now famous sighting of a chainlike formation of disc-shaped objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. Resulting newspaper publicity of this incident caught the public interest, and, shortly thereafter, a rash of reports of unidentified aerial objects spawned the term "flying saucers". During the years since 1947, many reports of unidentified aerial objects have been received by the Air Force from many and diverse sources.

The unfortunate term "flying saucer", or "flying disc", because of its widespread and indiscriminate use, requires definition. Many definitions have been offered, one of the best being that originated by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Director of the Emerson McMillin Observatory of The Ohio State University, who has taken a scientific interest in the problem of unidentified aerial objects since 1949. Dr. Hynek's definition of the term is "any aerial phenomenon or sighting that remains unexplained to the viewer at least long enough for him to write a report about it"(1). Dr. Hynek, elaborating on his definition, says, "Each flying saucer, so defined, has associated with it a probable lifetime. It wanders in the field of public inspection like an electron in a field of ions, until 'captured' by an explanation which puts an end to its existence as a 'flying saucer'"(1).

This definition would be applicable to any and all of the sightings which remained unidentified throughout this study. However, the term "flying saucers" shall be used hereafter in this report to mean a novel, airborne phenomenon, a manifestation that is not a part of or readily explainable by the fund of scientific knowledge known to be possessed by the Free World. This would include such items as natural phenomena that are not yet completely understood, psychological phenomena, or intruder aircraft of a type that may be possessed by some source in large enough numbers so that more than one independent mission may have been flown and reported. Thus, these phenomena are of the type which should have been observed and reported more than once.

Since 1947, public interest in the subject of unidentified aerial objects fluctuated more or less within reasonable limits until the summer of 1952, when the frequency of reports of sightings reached a peak, possibly stimulated by several articles on the subject in leading popular magazines.

Early in 1952, the Air Force's cumulative study and analysis of reported sightings indicated that the majority of reports could be accounted for as misinterpretations of known objects (such as meteors, balloons, or aircraft), a few as the result of mild hysteria, and a very few as the result of unfamiliar meteorological phenomena and light aberrations. However,