Transcript of a Presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1952

5
So that's some of the shapes that we've had. Now, getting back to this disc or spherical shaped
objects, these things are always silent. I mean, if we want to assume that this object we're dealing
with is a disc-shaped thing, these are always silent, and they're usually highly maneuverable.
Although lately, the reports that have been coming in have neglected to put this 90-degree turn
business in; they just go over at a great rate of speed. But the fact that they're silent is quite
interesting because we, we have no knowledge of any type of power plant that would be
completely silent.
These are the types of people that send in our reports. This segment here are civilians, and most
of these reports came in when the project was first initiated back in 1947 and '48. This black
segment here are reports from military sources, and they are, we've put them in as just ground
officers, not usually not flying officers, or at least the reports are not made from the air. We have
a small segment here of radar returns that we've been unable to explain. This section right here
are reports from civilian pilots who were airborne at the time of the sighting. This segment in
here especially is the one that we're very interested in. They're reports from airline pilots, from
tower operators, and balloon observers. Now, these balloon observers are normally people like
the General Mills crews that launch these high-altitude balloons. And here we have technically
trained personnel such as scientists, engineers, and so forth.
This segment, as I said, are the ones that we're very much interested in. Now, airline pilots are,
we consider very reliable because they're very, well, they don't like to stick their neck out and
make one of these reports unless they're absolutely sure they saw something. They received some
very unfavorable publicity during this last rash of reports, or the first one, I should say in '47 and
'48, and they absolutely refuse to give us reports unless they're completely sold that they saw
something. I've talked to quite a few of the pilots, and one of them made the statement if he
looked out his window and saw a V-2 rocket or something like that flying wingtip to wingtip
with him over Spokane, he wouldn't tell anybody about it. I mean, he'd never report it to the Air
Force because or to anybody because they just say he was crazy and probably ground him. So
that's the big difficulty we have in getting reports from airline pilots. We do hear through the
grapevine that they see an awful lot of odd things that they don't report, especially over in the
Near East, Iran, and the Middle East, I should say, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, in those runs. Now, we
haven't been able to pin that down as fact. That's just a rumor that we've picked up in talking to
other airline pilots who've heard other airline pilots say that, but we've never been able to pin it
down. However, it would be very interesting to find out, and we're making attempts, although
we've run up against a lot of trouble because, as I said, the pilots just don't want publicity and
they won't make those reports. This segment in here have been reported by Air Force pilots, and
they're aerial sightings. A lot of these have been balloons. We've had a lot of trouble with the
balloons in that a pilot meeting a balloon in the air isn't familiar with what that balloon's going to
do. I mean, he's familiar with meeting another airplane, and he's already made up his mind as to
what the rate of closure should be and different things like that. He'll usually assume that the,
when he meets a balloon, that it's instead of a balloon, it's some object about 30 or 40 feet in