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.
# UNCLASSIFIED CONFIDENTIAL ## V. STATUS OF STATISTICAL ANALYSIS In the spring of 1952 the Air Technical Intelligence Center established a project with a civilian contractor to make a statistical analysis of all incidents. As of 31 Oct 52, all reports for 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, and 1951 had been reviewed and coded for IBM punch cards. By the end of October the data to date on 1952 incidents will be on punch cards ready for a preliminary analysis by statisticians. When this is completed, the contractor will begin work on the coding of the 1952 reports. No completion date has been established for this phase. It is not contemplated that the 1952 reports will be completed in the near future, because, as was stated in Section I of this report, the total for the year of 1952 exceeds the total number of reports for all previous years. ## VI. TECHNICAL INFORMATION SHEET A questionnaire or technical information sheet to be filled out by observers making a visual sighting was completed in Oct 52. Preliminary work on this questionnaire began in May 52. A panel consisting of Blue Book personnel and several civilian scientists and engineers met and drafted a list of questions whose answers would be needed in evaluating reports. These questions were then given to a panel of psychologists who reworded them and made them into questionnaire form. Test samples of these questionnaires were reproduced and sent to persons reporting sightings. As test questionnaires were completed and returned by observers they were studied by the psychologists and others. Several such test questionnaires were developed before a final form was established. The final questionnaire is inclosed in this report as Appendix II. These questionnaires are now being sent directly from ATIC to all persons making reports, if a mailing address is in the report. This includes both reports made by military in accordance with AFL 200-5 and reports made directly to ATIC by civilians. ## VII. COOPERATION OF AIR DEFENSE COMMAND Excellent cooperation has been received from the Air Defense Command in the utilization of their radar, fighter aircraft and the Ground Observer Corps. ADC has directed all their radar sites that are equipped with operational radar scope cameras to keep these cameras on a 24-hour alert basis. It has been found that scope photos are an extremely valuable aid when it is necessary to evaluate reports of extremely high speed or unusual radar tracks.
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.