Along with a short summary, the location and dates, the witness or witnesses name are given. This may surprize many readers, as these names have been censored from the files before they were archived and later available to the public under the FOIA.
Please read the reference information at the end of the page to learn how I found out the witness names. Please refer to my main page on Project Blue book for more information on this USAF project.
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The cases which I have further studied or documented are accompanied by links to the supplemental information. To keep the browsing time reasonably short, I have split the summaries in one file for every year, you need to click on the years underneath to read all the summaries: |
Choose: | 1947 | 1948 | 1949 | |
| 1950 | 1951 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954 | |
| 1955 | 1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959 | |
| 1960 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | |
| 1965 | 1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | |
Witness: Mr. T.F. Mains.
One mushroom or lightbulb-shaped object, 75-80' high, 25' diameter on top and l0' bottom diameter, metallic grey with a red-orange glow on the near side and a blue glow on the far side. The object made a sound like a vacuum cleaner. The witness' car electrical system was affected as the object moved away at an altitude of 4'. The sighting lasted 25 seconds.
Witness: W.V. Harrison.
Three lights rose from the ground, several seconds apart. The next day, an oily spot was found at the site.
Witness: J.H. Martin, instrument maker for U.S. Bureau of Standards.
Six lights flew overhead slowly for 3 minutes.
Witnesses: USAF A/2c Corum, a weather observer, confirmation by college student R. Pittman not clear from available data.
One 40' black, oval object with four lights along the bottom, flew in and out of the clouds for 15 seconds.
Witness: M.E. Marshall.
One light, like a satellite, split into two parts, one of which was copperish color, then two more joined up. One object may have been tumbling. Sighting lasted 1 minute.
Witness: Mrs. E.R. Hayner.
One flashing light, like a satellite, was seen for less than 1 minute. No further data was in the files.
Witness: amateur astronomer M.D. Harris, 16.
One bright blue star crossed 90 of sky in 10-15 seconds.
Witness: J.A. Carter, 19.
One light flew fast, straight and level for 12 seconds. No further data in files.
Witnesses: two unnamed 14 year old.
One light moved around the sky for 16-17 seconds. No further data in files.
Witnesses: Mrs. William Butcher, son Harold, 17, and children.
A large elliptical object, with a reddish vapor underneath, came close to the ground, then shot straight up into the clouds a few seconds later. Radio drowned out by static, a tractor engine stopped. When the object was on the ground, a steady beeping sound could be heard. Afterwards, a strange odor was noticed, and the next day, a purplish liquid, 2"x2" marks and patches of singed grass were found at the site. A bull bellowed and tried to break its bonds.
Witnesses: M.A. Lilly, N. Smith, T. Nastoff.
One white ball, 5-8' in diameter and trailed by a 2-3' light, hit the road 100' in front of the witness' car, bounced and flew away. Sighting lasted 3-4 seconds.
Witnesses: Exeter Patrolmen Eugene Bertrand, Jr. and David Hunt, and Norman Muscarello.
One large, dark, elliptical object with a row of red lights around it, moved slowly and erratically around houses and trees, while lights blinked in sequence. Farm animals were very noisy. Sighting lasted about 1 hour.
Witnesses: Brazoria County Chief Sheriff's Deputy Billy McCoy and Deputy Robert Goode.
One triangular object, 150-200' long, 40-50' thick at middle and dark grey, with a long, bright, pulsing, purple light on the right side and a long blue light on the left side. Came from distance to 150' off highway and 100' in the air. Purple light illuminated ground beneath object and interior of police car. Driver felt heat on his left arm. Initial sighting lasted 5-10 minutes. Second sighting.occurred later that night.
Witness: Bett Diamon.
Five orange lights in a row flew fast and made an abrupt turn during the 1 minute sighting.
Witnesses: Dr. George Walton, physical chemist, and wife.
Two round white objects flew side-by-side, at 30-50' altitude, pacing the witnesses' car for 6 minutes.
Witness: Tucker.
Case missing from official files.
"Unidentified" says a great deal... and it says almost nothing.
Probably the most controversial aspect of the entire Air Force investigation of UFOs was its handling of individual cases.
The means by which one case was determined to be "identified" and another "unidentified" has no doubt fueled more arguments about Project Blue Book than anything else it did.
For many years, Blue Book's most vocal opponents have insisted that the standards by which cases were allegedly explained were grossly unscientific. Blue Book's goal, according to those who held it low esteem, was to attach some explanation to every case, regardless of logic or common sense. Examples of Blue Book saying a violently maneuvering disc was an aircraft, or of blaming a puzzling radar tracking on a supposedly malfunctioning radar set which it never bothered to check out, are numerous in the popular UFO literature.
And they are even more numerous in the files of Project Blue Book. The urgency with which Blue Book officials tagged answers onto cases without having done the proper investigation is obvious, though not proven. But if the Air Force was so eager to label cases "identified", despite the lack of supporting evidence, then those few cases which it labeled "unidentified" presumably withstood every attempt to apply every other kind of label. And so it may be that those cases are truly unidentifiable in familiar terms.
Indeed, the Air Force defines "unidentifiable" cases as those which "apparently contain all pertinent data necessary to suggest a valid hypothesis concerning the lack of explanation of the report, but the description of the object or its motion cannot be correlated with any known object or phenomenon."
To meet such criteria, a report must obviously come from a reputable source, and it must not bear any resemblance to airplanes, balloons, helicopters, spacecraft, birds, clouds, stars, planets, meteors, comets, electrical phenomena, or anything else known to frequent the air, the sky, or nearby space.
Unfortunately, the Air Force failed to stick to its own rules. Some of the "unidentifiable" cases most certainly can be correlated with known objects or phenomena. But most of them cannot. Moreover, many of the so-called "identified" cases cannot honestly be so correlated. But we are primarily concerned here with those cases which Project Blue Book openly admits it tried to explain and failed.
The amount of detail in these cases varies enormously. Some cases - frequently those which were well publicized at the time of the event - contain considerable information, while others are vague and seriously incomplete. Project Blue Book generally placed the blame for such incompleteness on the witnesses, but it should take its own share of the responsibility. In thousands of cases, there is no completed questionnaire in the Project files, nor even any indication that one was sent to the witness. And in most of the instances where a questionnaire was filled out, it was never followed up to get more complete answers to questions which the witnesses failed to deal with properly. For much of the life of Project Blue Book and its predecessors, there was no satisfactory questionnaire at all. And one of those used for a lengthy period was so badly organized that a witness should not be held to blame for giving incomplete answers.
Yet, despite all the roadblocks, many reports are sufficiently complete to tell a pretty clear story of a puzzling experience. With this data now available, anyone can look at Project Blue Book's "unidentified" UFO reports and make up his own mind.
The above case summaries are from the work of Don Berliner, who compiled a listing of the Project Bluebook "unknowns". In January, 1974, he visited the U.S. Air Force Archives at Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, Alabama, to review the files of Project Blue Book as the first step toward writing a book on the subject.
In a full week, he read all the "unexplained" cases in the original files and made extensive notes, including the names and other identifying information on all witnesses where given. The cooperation of the staff of the Archives was excellent, and no restrictions were placed on his work.
A few months later, the files were withdrawn from public view so they could be prepared for transfer to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. This process involved making a Xerox copy of almost 30 file drawers of material, blacking out the names and other identifiers of all witnesses, and then microfilming the censored Xerox copy. The microfilm has been available to the public at the National Archives since 1976. The original Project Blue Book files remain under lock and key at the Archives.
On almost every page of the 12,000+ case files, there are big black marks where information that could be used to cross-check Project Blue Book's controversial work has been censored.
This includes the names of witnesses to widely-publicized cases, and even names in newspaper clippings!
As it was perfectly legal for him to copy witness' names when he visited the Air Force Archives, those names can be found in this report of 585 (less 13 missing) unexplained cases. And since the Privacy Act, which motivated the Air Force to censor the files in the first place, does not apply to reporters or anyone else outside the Government, they can be used as the reader pleases.
Inasmuch as the book he planned to write has never further than the manuscript stage, he saw no reason to keep this information under wraps any longer, thinking that perhaps it will encourage others to re-investigate cases and make the results known.
This is why I published here all the summaries of these more than 700 cases, and publish a French translation for the French speaking UFO researchers.
