UFO research guide, August 2011

1
Briefing document
This briefing document should not be considered comprehensive and it is likely that
further information can be found by undertaking bibliographic research and searching
The National Archives’ Catalogue (http://www.catalogue.nationalarchives.gov.uk/).
Clicking on the relevant links in this file will take you to the relevant catalogue entry.
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)
1. What is a UFO?
The first reports of 'flying saucers' being sighted were on 24 June 1947 from the
Cascade Mountains of Washington state, USA. A private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reported
seeing nine strange objects that moved at tremendous speed across the sky ‘like a
saucer skipping on water’. His sighting triggered a wave of similar reports from
observers in North America and across the world. On 8 July 1947 a report came from
Roswell, New Mexico, that a disc-shaped object had landed on a remote ranch and had
been removed for examination by officers from the US Eighth Army Headquarters. The
age of the flying saucer had arrived.
The acronym UFO is an abbreviation for the US Air Force term ‘Unidentified Flying
Object.’ It was coined in 1950 by Captain Edward Ruppelt of ‘Project Blue Book’, the
USAF’s official 'UFO project', to replace flying saucers, a term that was widely used by
the media and public. A flying saucer is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a
disc or saucer-shaped object reported as appearing in the sky and alleged to come from
outer space’.
Although for the public and the media UFO has since become a synonym for ‘alien
spaceship,’ for the military forces of the world it is simply refers to something in the sky
the observer can see but does not recognise. In the vast majority of cases,
investigations have discovered ordinary explanations for UFO reports such as bright
stars and planets, meteors, artificial satellites, balloons, aircraft seen from unusual
angles and space junk burning up in the atmosphere. However, there are some cases
on record where no common explanation can be found. For the Ministry of Defence,
these types of report remain ‘unidentified’ rather than ‘extraterrestrial’. Some branches of
the MoD, such as the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), prefer the term UAP (unidentified
aerial phenomena) to describe those UFOs that remain unidentified. UAP does not imply
the existence of an ‘object’ of extraterrestrial origin.
2. UFOs in the early 20th century: 1909-1950
An understanding of the factors that lay behind the British government’s interest in the
UFO issue can be found by studying the range of documents available at The National
Archives. The vast majority of the records are found in the post Second World War
period. This reflects the growing post-war fascination with the idea of UFOs as
extraterrestrial visitors, as portrayed in popular science fiction films such as The Day the
Earth Stood Still (1951). In contrast, official policy was restricted to establishing whether
UFO sightings could be considered to be a threat to national security. During the Cold
War, for example, the major threat came from behind the Iron Curtain. Once Soviet