Documents / Report
The Project Twinkle Final Report, approved 27 November 1951 by Louis Elterman of the Air Force Geophysics Research Division's Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, describes a camera and observation program begun in 1950 to investigate green fireballs and other light phenomena over New Mexico, at Vaughn and Holloman AFB. It says the findings were essentially negative and puts most sightings down to aircraft, balloons, birds, planets, meteors or clouds. It recommends no further spending, with meteor camera film to be checked instead.
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# UNCLASSIFIED Summary of Recent Aerial Phenomena Reports from 17th OSI District 11 Nov. 1950 - Reports of a large-sized balloon. It was determined that this was released by General Mills. The balloon subsequently was recovered. 13 Jan. 1951 - Report from ten Los Alamos employees. Tear shaped object with small tail; very bright appearance; descended slowly; sky lighted up for about 1 sec; observation time 05:00. 16 Feb. 1951 - Aerial object reported in the vicinity of Holloman AFB. This turned out to be a General Hills balloon functioning for Project "Skyhook". 19 Feb. 1951 - A C-54 pilot reported a green flare or rocket observed in the vicinity of Rodeo, N.M. Its motion was vertical and passed the plane at 9000 ft. Investigators believed this to be a meteor. - Report from four Los Alamos personnel of very bright object crossing sky. Also observed by two Kirtland AFB pilots who reported this as a meteor; time - 14:30; reported by Dr. La Paz to be a detonating fire-ball. No fragments recovered.
Report, cited by the archive. 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. 16 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.