Project Blue Book documents on the Killian case, compiled by Dan Wilson

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

policy on the handling of UFO sightings over the years to be found in the case of the UFO incident of February 24, 1969. The key investigator of this phenomenon was Captain A pilot for American Airlines. This plane was on a scheduled flight from New York, N.J. to Pennsylvania, on the idea of Feb. 24. Then over Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, at about 3:45 p.m., he observed three unidentified brightly illuminated serial objects trailing his plane. The plane was followed for 35 or 40 minutes by these objects, which were observed not only by the crew and 25 passengers of Captain A plane, but also by five other planes and numerous ground observers in the line of the trip. Exhaustive details with respect to this incident are given in the 22-page printed report compiled by the Unidentified Flying Objects Research Committee of Akron, Ohio. NICAP also thoroughly checked the facts of this sighting, and so we have here an incident concerning which we have the most reliable information possible. The files of the Akron Committee contain the plotted statements of several ground observers. Concerning this sighting it can be reasonably concluded that the number and character of the witnesses established the validity of the incident beyond doubt.

Representatives of the Air Force made only the most superficial investigation of this incident, an investigation (if such a turn could be used to dignify its sentience of effort) based on Captain brief preliminary statement once at the Detroit office of American Airlines and upon a news report from the Meron L edition of the New York Herald Tribune. The Akron Committee report states: "They (the Air Force) did not interview Captain (the pilot) not did they question co-pilot the stewardesses, the passengers, nor the ground observers. As far as is known, none of these people were at any time contacted by ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Command). Even though they had no first-hand information of this incident, the Air Force issued official explanations of the sighting on three separate successive dates, all three explanations completely contradictory. These so-called explanations are as follows:

(1) In the morning of February 23 the Air Force released to the press this official opinion: "Experts of the Technical Intelligence Agency said that they believed the pilots may have sighted stars, especially the formation Orion." - 07 The March 1 edition of the New York Herald Tribune carried an official Air Force statement in direct answer to an inquiry about this sighting by six American and United Airlines on February 24. Quoting the NICAP Bulletin, the NICAP Investigator, for February March 1959: "Some (witnesses) were astonistically labelled as persons who couldn't remember anything when they sober up the next day. The rest, included the official Air Force account, either were deluded by ordinary objects or were outright liars."

(2) Subsequent comments by the observers of this incident apparently disproved to the public the errors of these judgments, and so, three weeks later the Air Force offered an entirely different explanation, as follows: "The American Airlines sighting of February 24, near Bradford, Penns., three weeks later turned out to be a B-47 type aircraft accompanying night refueling from a KC-97 tanker." In a statement on the Long Island Daily Press on March 24, Capt. said "I don't care what the Air Force says, the objects I saw could grow at 2,000 miles an hour and were deflated not conventional aircraft. If the Air Force wants to believe that," he added, referring to the refuelling operation explanation). "It can. But I know what a B-47 looks like, and I know what a KC-97 tanker looks like; further, I know what they look like in operation at night. And that's not what I saw."