Documents / Official release
Project Blue Book Status Report No. 8, issued by the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and dated 31 December 1952, covers June through October 1952, when 886 reports were received, more than in the previous five years combined. It breaks down evaluations by category, summarizes a consultant astronomer's interviews with 44 astronomers, and notes General Samford's 29 July press conference. It also describes the statistical analysis, the new observer questionnaire, Videon diffraction cameras and weather balloon tracking.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# CONFIDENTIAL ## UNCLASSIFIED Category No. Reports % Total September Unknown 22 27.85 Insufficient Data 20 25.32 Aircraft 7 8.86 Balloons 12 15.19 Astronomical 12 15.19 Other 6 7.59 79 100.00% E. Cumulative total for June, July, August, and September Unknown 206 23.25 Insufficient Data 216 24.38 Aircraft 101 11.39 Balloons 211 23.81 Astronomical 113 12.75 Other 39 4.40 886 100.00% (Note: No breakdown for the month of October 1952 is included since at the time this report was written all October reports had not been evaluated.) ## II. SPECIAL REPORT ON CONFERENCE WITH 44 PROFESSIONAL ASTRONOMERS During the past summer a professional astronomer, under contract with ATIC as a consultant on Project Blue Book, held conferences with 44 professional astronomers in the U.S.A. and submitted a report of his findings. These people were either contacted on trips or at professional society meetings. Of these, 5 had observed objects or phenomena they could not readily explain. The feelings of the 44 astronomers toward the investigation of unidentified flying objects were as follows: % Total Number Completely Indifferent 6% 7 Mildly Indifferent 27% 12 Mildly Interested 40% 17 Very Interested 17% 8 100% 44 Although the report is too lengthy to reproduce in total, an excerpt from the summary of the report is as follows:
Official release, from the nara 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. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.