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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
called in. The problem of identifying these objects as aircraft was discussed. It was previously known that it is a difficult job to trace aircraft back to a given position in the U.S. or merely using flight plan reports, etc. However there is a possibility of working something out. Several suggestions were offered, (1) that ATIC would furnish personnel so that there will be one person at each Flight Service Center throughout the U.S. merely to handle unidentified aerial object reports. In this way as soon as a report comes in it could be easily checked. The possibility of having a roving representative visiting various flight services was also discussed. There was no definite plan made as to what would be done in this instance. It was decided however that it would be very advantageous for ATIC to prepare a letter to CAA and have it distributed to all CAA's installations. This letter would state how to report unidentified aerial objects and would give the CAA facility authorization to send a collect telegram directly to ATIC. This would alleviate much handling of messages. At the present time CAA facilities relay the message several times before it reaches the AF Flight Service. After it reaches Flight Service it is handled several more times before it reaches ATIC. In this interim handling it has been found that the message becomes distorted. The meeting ended with an agreement that ATIC would draw up what they desired in the way aid from Flight Service and that this would be presented to Flight Service and they would put any suggestions or corrections that they felt necessary. Lt Col also agreed to contact CAA and see how much cooperation they could give us on this subject. 4. On the next day Col Bower and Capt Ruppelt spent the day in the Pentagon. The prime purpose of the visit was to coordinate the articles that have been written for the copy of the digest, of the Air Intelligence Digest, that will devote about half the issue to the investigation of unidentified
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.