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This file, from NICAP and CUFOS, collects US Air Force Office of Special Investigations records from 1949 on a Project Grudge special inquiry into a sighting at Rogue River, Oregon, on 24 May 1949. NACA Ames Laboratory employees Gilbert Rivera and Don Heaphy described a silvery pancake-shaped object about 30 feet across that sped off like a jet. An annotated analysis that follows rejects the radar kite explanation and concludes that the case must remain unexplained.
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difference in identifications ("kites" vs "aircraft"). If these cases referred to the same sighting of a single object, how could the identifications be so widely diverse? The second case, which was in the BB files, contained a copy of an OSI investigation of a Mrs. (name deleted; call her Mrs. A) who lived in Gold Beach. In her interview she stated that "at approximately 1700 hours, 24 May 1949, she and four other persons* while fishing on* the Rogue River near Elephant Rock* approximately 1 1/2 miles* above the highway bridge near Gold Beach, Oregon, sighted an object described as being round in shape, silver in color, and about the size of a C-47 aircraft. When first brought to Mrs. A's attention by one of the other witnesses, the object appeared to be three or four miles away. It was coming from the east, but later turned to the southwest. It appeared to be travelling at the same rate of speed as a C-47. It made no noise, left no exhaust trail, and made no maneuvers. The interviewee stated that she was not familiar with aircraft; therefore she could not estimate with any accuracy the speed or altitude at which the object was travelling. Mrs. A made the comparison between the object and a C-47 because she is familiar with that type of aircraft. Her son has pointed out C-47's to her as they flew over Gold Beach." This interview of Mrs. A was carried out on August 8, 1949 by Special Agent R. Hauser. The BB case card, which includes a short summary of the case, stated the following conclusion (or evaluation): AIRCRAFT. The reason for this identification as given as follows: "No data presented to indicate object could NOT have been aircraft." Although the sighting time and the rough description of the object seen by Mrs. A matches the time and general description of the object reported in Case X of BB#14, there is no way to positively connect these two reports from the evidence in the Blue Book files alone.
what about the missing case? A search of the OSI files turned up the original references on the missing case: the interviews of the witnesses including Mrs. A.Moreover, information in the OSI files essentially establishes the credibility of this case and shows that the BB staff erred significantly in their analyses. The two cases should be combined into one and should be listed as unidentified (as the Battelle Institute investigators realized).
The first report of this sighting was made on or just before June 14, 1949, to the Security Officer of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at Moffett Field in California. This officer requested an investigation, which was subsequently carried out by Special Agent C.E. Brooks and others during the following months. On June 24 agent Brooks interviewed a Mr. (name deleted, call him Mr. B) in the Drafting Section of the National Advisory Committee, at Ames laboratory, Moffett Field. This interview
*Underlining by this author Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 28 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.