Documents / Official release
This 1952 memorandum for record, filed in the Project Blue Book case files, covers a trip to Washington by Col D. L. Bower and Capt E. J. Ruppelt. On 21 July they met MATS Air Weather Service and Flight Service at Andrews AFB to ask for help identifying balloons and aircraft, and proposed a CAA reporting letter. At the Pentagon the next day they worked on an Air Intelligence Digest issue and on public information arrangements. They also fielded press and presidential inquiries about the Saturday night radar sighting over Washington.
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Memorandum for Record Subject: Trip to Washington, D. C. 1. On 21 July 1952, Col D. L. Bower and Capt E. J. Ruppelt went to MATS Hq at Andrews AFB, Maryland, to discuss the possibility of the MATS Air Weather Service and Flight Service assisting in Project Blue Book. Col was contacted. He called in Major from the Director of Intelligence Office of Hq MATS. The proposition that these people could help us in Project Blue Book was presented. The Air Weather Service could help us by assisting the reports that we receive for possible balloons and Flight Service could help us by attempting to identify reports that turned out to be aircraft. 2. Capt and Warrant Officer were called into the meeting. These men were from Air Weather Service. The project was outlined to these people and a discussion was held as to how they can help us. Capt Ruppelt showed several examples of how we had tracked balloons previously and asked these people if they could do the same. After a lengthy discussion these people left the meeting and it was decided that ATIC would draw up a proposal stating what we wanted these people to do and submit it to them on an informal basis. They would then review this with ATIC people and make necessary corrections to arrive at a final proposal, then this final proposal would be sent to them through channels. They were advised that if the task appeared to be a big one a transfer of funds from ATIC to MATS could be arranged. 3. The of the meeting with the weather people, Lt Col who is Intelligence Officer, and Deputy for Operations of Flight Service, was
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. 4 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.