Documents / Report
This Black Vault copy of Air Force records centers on the Project Twinkle Final Report, which Louis Elterman of the Geophysics Research Division wrote on 27 November 1951. Project Twinkle investigated green fireballs and other light phenomena in New Mexico using Askania cameras run by Land-Air at Vaughn and Holloman AFB. Elterman found the results essentially negative, with most sightings put down to aircraft, balloons, birds, clouds and meteors. He recommended no further spending. The file also includes the 1949 and 1950 correspondence that set up the project and 1952 memos about declassifying it.
• • • • • • c0 p y • ll ABSTRACT• Early in 1950 the Geouhysics Hesoarch Division rec eived a directive to investigate peculiar li ;ht nhenomena that had been observed in the skies of the southwestern United ~tates • • Project '!\-Tinkle \o~as established to check into these phenomena and their exnlanation. The pist of the findings is essentially negative . The period of observation" covers a little over a yea:r . Some unusual pheno- mena were observed durinrt t ha t period , most of then can be at- tributed to such roan- made objects as airplanes, balloons , rockets, etc . Others can be attributed to natural nhenomena such as flying birds , small clouds' tllld meteorites . rrhere has been no in- dication that even the somewhat strange observations often called Green Fireballs · are anythine but natural ohenomena. Our recommendations are in essence that there is no use in sinking any more funds into this at the present time and that \.re \trill keen in connection with one of our meteor studies a sharp eye on anythin~ unusual a~ong this line . UNCLASSIFIED •
Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 34 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.