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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2. Contractual period - 1 April 1950 to 15 September 1950. Some photographic activity occurred on 27 April and 24 May, but simultaneous sightings by both cameras were not made, so that no information was gained. On 30 August 1950, during a Bell aircraft missile launching, aerial phenomena were observed over Holloman Air Force Base by several individuals; however, neither Land-Air nor Project personnel were notified and, therefore, no results were acquired. On 31 August 1950, the phenomena were again observed after a V-2 launching. Although much film was expended, proper triangulation was not effected, so that again no information was acquired. On 11 September, arrangements were made by Holloman AFB for Major Gover, Commander 93rd Fighter Squadron at Kirtland AFB, to be on call so that aerial objects might be pursued. This would make possible more intimate visual observation and photography at close range. Major Gover was not authorized to shoot at the phenomena. Generally, the results of the six-month contractual period may be described as negative. Although the photographic theodolites functioned continuously, the grating cameras functioned very little, since the military personnel assigned to operate them had been withdrawn due to the needs concerned with the Korean situation. The
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.