Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence, from Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence Herbert Scoville Jr., comments on report 00-B-90229 about a sighting of an unconventional aircraft. It says the distance and lighting made identification very hard and that the description partly fits a vertical take-off aircraft or a rocket launched from a zero length rail. It concludes the object was probably not a flying saucer. It also notes that a 1954 Air Force scientific committee recommended against supporting project "Y".
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MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence SUBJECT : Comments on 00-B-90229, Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft 1. The distance and lighting conditions under which the source sighted the unusual object would make it extremely difficult to determine just what was being seen. In some degree, the description fits a vertical take-off aircraft or a missile or aircraft launched from a zero length rail. The zero length launching could most certainly be accomplished only with a rocket which would produce a large flame and smoke which would have been very noticeable. The spiraling of the object as it left the launcher does not fit very well with a vertical take-off aircraft. 2. The very small amount of details given in the referenced report does not permit an identification of the object sighted. It does, however, tend to indicate that it was not a "flying saucer". In 1954, the Scientific Advisory Board to the Chief of Staff, USAF, appointed an ad hoc committee of three scientists to evaluate project "Y". The committee found that several factors had been overlooked or minimized in their development, such as payload, drag factors, and mechanical design problems, to such an extent that the committee recommended against support for the project. Air Force support of the project now is in basic research concerned with vertical thrust which modifies considerably the flying saucer concept. Adm't Sneath , G . MEMBERT SCOVILLE, JR. Assistant Director Scientific Intelligence Enclosure: 00-B-90229 Report
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. 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. 1 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.