Documents / Analysis
Special Report No. 14 was issued by the U.S. Air Force's Air Technical Intelligence Center on 5 May 1955. It is a statistical study of about 4,000 reports of unidentified aerial objects from June 1947 to December 1952. The reports were reduced to IBM punched cards and analyzed with methods including chi square tests. The report concludes that the reports it examined are very unlikely to represent technology beyond present scientific knowledge, and it notes that no case produced valid physical evidence.
“Jet Propulsion Laboratory”1 page
These 12 sightings can be classed into four categories on the basis of their shapes, as follows: M (l) Propeller shape - Case I m (2) Aircraft shape — Cases II and III (3) Cigar shape - Cases IV and V (4) Elliptical or disc shape - Cases VI to XII The criterion for choosing the above sightings was that their descrip-^1 tions were given in enough detail to permit diagrams of the objects to be drawn. It might be noted here that in all but one of these cases (Case XI) the observer had already drawn a diagram of what he had seen. The objective of this section of the study was the conceiving of a model, or models. The requirement that the description be detailed is an important one, and was the easiest to determine in the re-evaluation pro- gram. However, a good model ought to satisfy the following conditions as well: (1) The general shape of the object and the maneuvers it performed should fit the reports of many of the UNKNOWNS and thus explain them. i (2) The observer and the report should be reliable. (3) The report should contain elements which should have been observed with accuracy, and which eliminate the v possibility that the sighting could be ascribed to a familiar object or to a known natural phenomenon. (4) The model should be derived from two or more good UNKNOWNS between which there is no essential conflict. It can_bji_jLhciWji_ih^l-it-is not possible to deduce a model from the 12. cases that will satisfy all of these conditions. The following case-by-case discussion of the 12 good UNKNOWNS will illustrate this point: (1) Case I does not satisfy Conditions 1 and 4. The reported shape of this object is not duplicated in any of the other UNKNOWNS. (2) Case II does not satisfy Conditions 1 and 3. There are very few UNKNOWNS in the aircraft shape classification. ^ In addition, the unusual characteristic of this sighting (i.e. , the red glow) could have been reflection of the lights of Flint from the objects if they were either birds or aircraft. 91
Analysis, from the classic collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 309 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.