Flying Saucers

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

# Approved For Release 2001/04/02RDP81R0000R000100020013-6 Security Information

unidentified objects. Planes had orders not to shoot.

Now, let's examine for a moment what all these people claim to have seen. Grouped broadly as visual, radar, and combined visual and radar, ATIC has two major visual classes -- first, spherical or elliptical objects, usually of bright metallic lustre, some small (2 or 3 feet across), most estimated at 100 foot diameter and a few 1000 feet wide. There are variants in this group, such as torpedos, triangulars, pencils, even mattress-shapes. These are all daylight reportings.

The second visual group, all night reporting, consists of lights and various luminosities, such as green, flaming-red or blue-white fire balls, moving points of light, and luminous streamers.

Both categories are reported as single objects, in non-symmetrical groups and in formations of varying numbers.

Reported characteristics include three general levels of speed: hovering; moderate, as with a conventional aircraft; and stupendous, up to 18,000 miles per hour in the White Sands incident. Violent maneuvering was reported in somewhat less than 10%. Accelerations have been given as high as 20 g's. With few exceptions, there has been a