Project Sign
Encyclopedia
Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying object
s (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force
and active for most of 1948.
Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft there was not enough data to determine their origin. However, prior to this final report, Sign officially argued that UFOs were likely of extraterrestrial origin, and most of the project's personnel came to favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis
before this opinion was rejected and Sign was dissolved and replaced with Project Grudge
.
Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt
. The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.
By the first week of July 1947, Pentagon officials were expressing alarm about the flying disk reports, due in no small part to a remarkable series of close encounters in and near the restricted airspace near Muroc Army Air Base (now Edwards AFB). On 7 July 1947 at about 10.00 a.m., pilot Major J.C. Wise was readying his XP-84 jet at Muroc when he observed a circular white-yellow object at about 10,000 feet. It flew to the east at what Wise estimated was 200 to 225 mph. On 8 July at about 8.00 a.m., three highway department employees near Yuma, Arizona
reported three silvery disks flying at high altitude towards the northeast. At roughly 9.30 a.m., four military personnel at Muroc reported two circular objects flying against the wind at about 300 mph, making tight circular motions as they receded towards the horizon. At about noon at nearby Rogers Dry Lake test range, two technicians observing an ejection seat test also observed a silvery object at about 20,000 feet for about 90 seconds. At about 9.00 pm that evening, a P-51 pilot twice attempted to intercept what he would describe as a "flat object of light-reflecting nature," thought he was unable to reach its altitude. Though they occurred six months before Sign's official creation, the Muroc incidents were cataloged as the first case in Sign's files.
Following the Muroc incidents, military personnel were told to not publicly discuss flying saucers without permission. New orders were issued requiring all unexplained flying saucer incidents to be reported to the T-2 division at Wright Field. T-2, which studied enemy aircraft during WWII, would soon be renamed Technical Intelligence Division (TID).
In a document dated July 10, the office of Air Force Directorate of Intelligence at the Pentagon requested the assistance of other branches of the armed forces and the Federal Bureau of Investigations in compiling data and determining how to best investigate the flying saucer reports.
In a document dated 30 July 1947, Lt. Col. George Garrett at the Pentagon analyzed data from sixteen flying saucer reports which had occurred from 19 May to 12 July 1947; several had occurred at military facilities. Garrett's report noted that credible eyewitnesses, some of them with scientific or technical training, gave detailed descriptions of highly unorthodox aircraft that exhibited advanced flight capabilities and were seemingly under intelligent control. He wrote, "something is really flying around." Given the distinct lack of inquiries about the flying saucers from "topside" (i.e., higher-ranking officials), Garrett thought it probable that they were a newly-developed "domestic aircraft." Garrett's report was forwarded to his superiors and to the FBI, both of whom inquired of military contacts to determine if the flying disks were in fact domestically-developed aircraft. The answer was a resounding no.
Gen. George Schulgen, Garrett's superior at the Pentagon, ordered a more thorough review of flying saucer data. In response, Lt. Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then-head of Air Material Command's intelligence and engineering divisions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
(then Wright Field
), compiled and analyzed the data. Twining's memorandum to Schulgen, dated 23 September 1947, stated, in part:
Twining also recommended that " ... Army Air Force
s issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and code name for detailed study of this matter." Though conducted by the Army Air Force
, the study's information and conclusions would be made available to all the armed services, and to scientific agencies with formal government ties.
In early December 1947, Gen. Curtis LeMay
asked for an update on the flying saucer investigation. Twining's memo, which had been revised and expanded as it climbed the chain of command, recommended that a project be formally established to investigate the flying saucer phenomenon. The project was formally authorized on 30 December 1947 by Director of Research and Development under the Deputy Chief of staff for Materiel at Headquarters U.S. Air Force., Maj. Gen. Laurence Craggie, who had recently replaced LeMay.
On January 22, 1948, a week after the Air Force was officially separated from the Army, Project Sign formally began its work. Sign was a branch of Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
, under the direction of Captain Robert R. Sneider. Michael D. Swords
writes:
Notable were the facts that Leodding had worked extensively on disk-shaped and low-aspect aircraft designs for both the military and private companies, and that he was also one of very few people in America with first-hand expertise in rocket
engines. He was firmly convinced that a disc-shaped aircraft could fly, and he had designed several such models and prototypes.
Ruppelt wrote that Sign "was given a 2A priority, 1A being the highest priority an Air Force project could have." Though it was classified "restricted", Sign's existence was eventually known to the general public under the moniker "Project Saucer". However, UFO historian Wendy Connors claimed, through an interview with a surviving Sign secretary, that "Project Saucer" was the project's original informal name and had actually begun in late 1946. If this was the case, then the Army Air Force had already begun investigation of UFOs well before the Kenneth Arnold
sighting that launched the first flood of UFO reports of June–July 1947 in the United States. (See, e.g., WWII foo fighter
UFOs and the post-war ghost rockets
)
Flying saucer investigations were conducted by Air Intelligence at the Air Force base nearest to any particular UFO report. However, some cases were studied directly by Air Materiel Command personnel.
By late 1947, Air Force files included 109 UFO reports, nine of which remain listed as unsolved. There were four categories for UFOs: flying disks; cigar/torpedo shaped objects; balloon/spherical objects; and "balls of light". Preliminary investigation revealed that about a fifth of Sign's UFO cases were explained prosaically, with the expectation that a substantial portion of the remaining cases could be similarly explained.
The earliest hypothesis, even before Sign was formally established, was that UFOs were Soviet aircraft. Sign was based at Wright Field partly because it was the headquarters for American analysis of German aeronautical data. There was concern in U.S. military intelligence circles that the Soviet Union could make aeronautical advances on the work of Nazi scientists, especially the Horten brothers
, "a pair of brilliant aeronautical engineers far in advance of their U.S. counterparts." The Horten brothers's "flying wing
" designs were strikingly similar to some early UFO reports, such as Arnold's crescent-shaped objects. However, due to a lack of evidence supporting the Soviet hypothesis, a faction within the U.S. Military began contemplating an extraterrestrial explanation -- not because any specific evidence supported it, but mainly because all other interpretations for the data were exhausted.
. On 7 January 1948, Air Force pilot Capt. Thomas Mantell crashed his aircraft near Franklin, Kentucky
while in pursuit of a UFO. Numerous eyewitnesses, both civilian and military, had reported a large, metallic object in the skies. Mantell was one of four pilots on a nearby training mission who were ordered to investigate. Upon reaching about 10,000 feet, Mantell's companions abandoned their pursuit due to a lack of high-altitude oxygen gear. Mantell continued, however, and reportedly described the aerial artifact as "a metallic object ... it is of tremendous size." Mantell is presumed to have blacked out from oxygen deprivation at about 15,000 feet, whereupon his airplane crashed and he died. The USAF formally announced that Mantell had died in pursuit of the planet Venus. Sign's personnel never accepted this explanation, and regarded the incident as an unknown. It is now widely believed that Mantell died while chasing a then-secret Skyhook high-altitude weather balloon.
Other investigations followed the Mantell case. On the evening of 18 February 1948, an unusual light illuminated the skies over Norcatur, Kansas
. An accompanying shockwave broke windows, and area residents initially thought an airplane had exploded in flight. Sign did not formally investigate, but consulted with scientist Lincon La Paz. The incident was probably an exceptionally bright bolide, said La Paz. But his explanation was provisional as no fragments were discovered and some eyewitnesses testimony was inconsistent with a meteor.
On 5 April 1948, three experienced balloon technicians at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico reported an unusual sighting of two roughly circular objects, white in color and very high in altitude, moving erratically and at great speed. The technicians asserted to Loedding that the objects were definitely not balloons or conventional aircraft. Moreover, the witnesses also reported that odd radar returns were common at Holloman, distinct from the usual radar "angels" caused by clouds or other known phenomena. The Holloman incident was reported as an "unknown" in Sign's files.
On 7 May 1948, two witnesses near Memphis, Tennessee
claimed to have observed 50-60 silvery objects moving at high altitude and in tight formations. Sign reached no conclusion on this incident, but later Air Force records describe the objects as meteors. However, astronomer Paul Herget had earlier specifically excluded this explanation. This case was the first to feature the involvement of J. Allen Hynek
, who is believed to have invented the meteor explanation. Hynek, then teaching astronomy
at Ohio State University
, was hired as a consultant to help weed out UFO reports which could be misidentified meteor
s, star
s and the like. He would consult not only for Sign, but for Project Grudge
and Project Blue Book
until the latter was decommissioned in 1969. In a 1985 interview, Hynek reported that he was initially dismissive of UFO reports: "I was quite negative in most of my evaluations. I stretched far to give something a natural explanation, sometimes when it may not have really had it." By the mid-1960s, however, Hynek's opinion had changed: he believed, after encountering a minority of UFO reports, that, in his opinion, some reports seemed to defy conventional explanation. Hynek also spoke out against what he saw as shoddy research by the Air Force.
On 17 May, businessman William A. Bonneville reported an extended UFO incident while driving between Plevna, Montana
and Miles City, Montana
. A luminous ball, brilliantly lit and brighter than the moon, emerged from behind hills to the northwest and traveled first to the south, then to the west, over a 20 minute period. Sign regarded this as an unknown but later files, possibly Hynek's interpretation, blamed the incident on "refraction of the planet Mars."
Near Monroe, Michigan
on 25 May, two Air Force officers reported a UFO sighting. They were passengers in an Air Force plane when one officer observed three disk-like objects flying at about the plane's altitude for 10–15 seconds before making a sudden sharp turn and accelerating rapidly out of view. The officer spoke to his traveling companion, who hadn't observed the incident. Moments later, however, both officers reported the appearance of two objects, similar to the first grouping, which maneuvered radically and accelerated rapidly into the distance. Sign classified this incident as an unknown.
A husband and wife driving near Hecla, South Dakota
reported another sighting which Sign classified as an "unknown." On the evening of June 30, the couple spotted what they took to be an unusually bright star. The husband, a professional engineer and amateur astronomer, stopped their car several times to observe the light, which he eventually realized was not a star. Three small glowing fragments seemed to "fall off" the light. The three fragments arranged themselves in the points of an equilateral triangle around the light. The triangular formation maintained its geometric proportions as it rose to a great height and disappeared from view. The engineer would later assert, "my convictions at this point were that it could not have been anything terrestrial."
over Montgomery, Alabama
on 24 July 1948. In this case, two experienced airline pilots, both veterans of combat flying during WWII, reported that a rocket-shaped UFO, 100 feet long and emitting reddish exhaust, approached them on a near-collision course. Chiles and Whitted also reported the object appeared to show a double row of ports or windows emitting an intense bluish-white light. The reports of "windows" also suggested the object was possibly occupied. Additional corroboration came from four sources: a passenger on the plane who saw the object's exhaust trail as it sped from view; from an experienced military ground witness in Alabama; from a military pilot who reported an unusual light in the vicinity of Montgomery at roughly the time of the encounter; and from a sighting of a very similar object near The Hague
, Netherlands
on July 20. Moreover, the Chiles-Whitted object also faintly echoed the mysterious Scandinavian "ghost rockets
" of 1946, reports of which had intrigued American military officials.
Loedding and others interviewed Chiles and Whitted two days after the incident, and were deeply impressed by their testimony. Ruppelt would later write,"According to the old timers at ATIC, this report shook them worse than the Mantell Incident. This was the first time two reliable sources had been really close enough to anything resembling a UFO to get a good look and live to tell about it."
The Chiles-Whitted case became the centerpiece of Project Sign's investigation for the next several months. According to Swords, "The flying fuselage encounter [i.e., Chiles-Whitted] intrigued them." Such a torpedo-like design was in fact flightworthy according to the theories of German engineer Ludwig Prandtl, but would require power far in excess of conventional fuels in 1947, possibly nuclear power. Given that no American technology could account for the flying saucer sightings, and that there was no definitive evidence of the German/Russian hypothesis, Sign's personnel began to take the interplanetary hypothesis more seriously. Swords argues that this consideration of non-earthly origin was "not as incredible in [military] intelligence circles as one might think." Because many in the military were "pilots, engineers and technical people" they had a "'can do' attitude" and tended to regard unavailable technologies not as impossibilities, but as challenges to be overcome. Rather than dismissing UFO reports out of hand, they considered how such objects might plausibly function. This perspective, argues Swords, "contrasted markedly with many scientists' characterizations of such concepts as impossible, unthinkable or absurd."
," probably written in September 1947 mainly by Sneider and Loedding, Sign explained their controversial assessment of the unknowns. As Ruppelt wrote, "The situation was the UFO's; the estimate was that they were interplanetary!"
In September or October 1948, the Estimate was approved by Colonels William Clingerman and Howard McCoy (Sneider's superiors) who then submitted the document to Gen. Charles Cabell, chief of Air Force intelligence. In the Pentagon, opinions about UFOs were divided. Some took the extraterrestrial hypothesis seriously; others believed the flying discs were a puzzling problem while reserving final judgement; others still dismissed the entire subject as absurd. According to Ruppelt, the Estimate "drew considerable comment but no one stopped it on its way up [the Air Force chain of command]." Cabell, newly appointed, was presumably reluctant to take a strong stand for or against the Estimate, passing it on to then-Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg. Citing a lack of supporting physical evidence, Vandenberg rejected the Estimate. All copies of the Estimate were ordered destroyed. A few copies were allegedly saved as keepsakes for at least half a decade or so and the Estimate has been described as the "Holy Grail of ufology."
At about the same time the Estimate was working its way up the ranks, another group was arguing against any extraterrestrial origins for the saucers. Informally led by Major Aaron J. Boggs, this group doubted that any flying saucers existed; Swords noted that his peers described Boggs as "the Pentagon's 'saucer killer'". Under Boggs' guidance, a competing document prepared by the anti-extraterrestrial group in the Directorate of Intelligence was also making the rounds in military intelligence. With input from the Office of Naval Intelligence
this study argued that the flying saucers were probably real, though made by the Soviet Union. The saucers were operated so openly in U.S airspace by the Soviets probably as a method of psychological warfare
"to negate U.S. confidence in atom bomb as the most advanced and decisive weapon."
levels of George Gorman's National Guard
aircraft which was said to have had a "dog fight
" with a flying saucer over Fargo, North Dakota
on October 1, 1948. When a Geiger counter
revealed evidence of radiation, Sign personnel thought they'd discovered more corroboration for their extraterrestrial hypothesis. Clingerman wrote a memo requesting a Rand Corporation study on how an interstellar spacecraft might plausibly function.
General Charles P. Cabell
asked Sign for a second, non-extraterrestrial opinion of the flying saucers. Sign submitted a brief response which did not explicitly mention extraterrestrial ideas but strongly hinted at them, even citing the works of Charles Fort
to argue that unusual objects had been flying in the earth's skies for decades before the Arnold encounter. A document signed by Sneider, dated December 20, 1948 but written earlier, has been called the "Ghost of the Estimate" since it echoes many of the same ideas explained in the lost Estimate of the Situation.
Sign's continued devotion to the interplanetary explanation led to a debate at the National Bureau of Standards in November, 1948 where the competing hypotheses were represented by Sneider and Boggs (other personnel attended, but their identities are uncertain). Ultimately, Boggs and the anti-extraterrestrial faction were victorious.
The rejection of the Estimate quickly took its toll on Project Sign and supporters of the ETH. As Ruppelt wrote, "More and more work was being pushed off onto the other investigative organization that was [sic] helping ATIC. The kickback on the Top Secret Estimate of the Situation was beginning to dampen a lot of enthusiasms. It was definitely a bear market for UFOs."
. Ruppelt reported that the choice of the word "Grudge" to describe the new project was deliberate: Grudge was intended to provide prosaic explanations for as many UFO reports as possible.
Ruppelt wrote,
Ruppelt referred to the Project Grudge era as the "Dark Ages" of official Air Force UFO investigations. Still, by late 1949, some 20 percent of UFO sightings remained classified as "unknown" by Grudge. By late 1951, according to Ruppelt, some highly influential Pentagon generals had become so disenchanted with Grudge's debunking that Grudge itself was dismantled and replaced by Project Blue Book
, with Ruppelt in charge.
Historian David Michael Jacobs argues that, overall, Project Sign's personnel did an admirable job. However, Jacobs has also stated, "[Project Sign's] main problem was that the staff was too inexperienced to discriminate between which sightings to investigate thoroughly. Because of unfamiliarity with the phenomenon, the staff spent inordinate amounts of time on sightings that were obviously aircraft
, meteor
s or hoax
es."
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
s (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
and active for most of 1948.
Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft there was not enough data to determine their origin. However, prior to this final report, Sign officially argued that UFOs were likely of extraterrestrial origin, and most of the project's personnel came to favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis
Extraterrestrial hypothesis
The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.-Etymology:...
before this opinion was rejected and Sign was dissolved and replaced with Project Grudge
Project Grudge
Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects . Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but actually continued on in a very minimal capacity...
.
Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt was a United States Air Force officer probably best-known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects...
. The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.
Background
On June 24, 1947 while flying his small airplane near Mt. Rainer, Washington, businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to have witnessed nine crescent-shaped aerial objects. By pacing their progress against known landmarks, Arnold conservatively calculated their speed at a then-fantastic 1,200 mph. Arnold, widely considered a sincere and credible witness, earned major press coverage, and his was easily the most prominent of the more than 800 "flying saucer" reports made by Americans in the summer of 1947. Arnold initially concluded he'd witnessed the test flight of a new military aircraft or radio-guided weapon.By the first week of July 1947, Pentagon officials were expressing alarm about the flying disk reports, due in no small part to a remarkable series of close encounters in and near the restricted airspace near Muroc Army Air Base (now Edwards AFB). On 7 July 1947 at about 10.00 a.m., pilot Major J.C. Wise was readying his XP-84 jet at Muroc when he observed a circular white-yellow object at about 10,000 feet. It flew to the east at what Wise estimated was 200 to 225 mph. On 8 July at about 8.00 a.m., three highway department employees near Yuma, Arizona
Yuma, Arizona
Yuma is a city in and the county seat of Yuma County, Arizona, United States. It is located in the southwestern corner of the state, and the population of the city was 77,515 at the 2000 census, with a 2008 Census Bureau estimated population of 90,041....
reported three silvery disks flying at high altitude towards the northeast. At roughly 9.30 a.m., four military personnel at Muroc reported two circular objects flying against the wind at about 300 mph, making tight circular motions as they receded towards the horizon. At about noon at nearby Rogers Dry Lake test range, two technicians observing an ejection seat test also observed a silvery object at about 20,000 feet for about 90 seconds. At about 9.00 pm that evening, a P-51 pilot twice attempted to intercept what he would describe as a "flat object of light-reflecting nature," thought he was unable to reach its altitude. Though they occurred six months before Sign's official creation, the Muroc incidents were cataloged as the first case in Sign's files.
Following the Muroc incidents, military personnel were told to not publicly discuss flying saucers without permission. New orders were issued requiring all unexplained flying saucer incidents to be reported to the T-2 division at Wright Field. T-2, which studied enemy aircraft during WWII, would soon be renamed Technical Intelligence Division (TID).
In a document dated July 10, the office of Air Force Directorate of Intelligence at the Pentagon requested the assistance of other branches of the armed forces and the Federal Bureau of Investigations in compiling data and determining how to best investigate the flying saucer reports.
In a document dated 30 July 1947, Lt. Col. George Garrett at the Pentagon analyzed data from sixteen flying saucer reports which had occurred from 19 May to 12 July 1947; several had occurred at military facilities. Garrett's report noted that credible eyewitnesses, some of them with scientific or technical training, gave detailed descriptions of highly unorthodox aircraft that exhibited advanced flight capabilities and were seemingly under intelligent control. He wrote, "something is really flying around." Given the distinct lack of inquiries about the flying saucers from "topside" (i.e., higher-ranking officials), Garrett thought it probable that they were a newly-developed "domestic aircraft." Garrett's report was forwarded to his superiors and to the FBI, both of whom inquired of military contacts to determine if the flying disks were in fact domestically-developed aircraft. The answer was a resounding no.
Gen. George Schulgen, Garrett's superior at the Pentagon, ordered a more thorough review of flying saucer data. In response, Lt. Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then-head of Air Material Command's intelligence and engineering divisions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in Greene and Montgomery counties in the state of Ohio. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is located approximately...
(then Wright Field
Wright Field
Wright Field was an airfield of the United States Army Air Corps and Air Forces near Riverside, Ohio. From 1927 to 1947 it was the research and development center for the Air Corps, and during World War II a flight test center....
), compiled and analyzed the data. Twining's memorandum to Schulgen, dated 23 September 1947, stated, in part:
- The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.
- There are objects probably approximately the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as a man-made aircraft.
- There is the possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors.
- The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.
- It is possible within the present U.S. knowledge... to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description ...
- Any development in this country along the lines indicated would be extremely expensive...
- Due consideration must be given to the following:
-
- The possibility that these objects are of domestic origin - the product of some high security project not known to AC/AS-2 or this command.
-
- The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects.
-
- The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion, possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge.
Twining also recommended that " ... Army Air Force
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....
s issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and code name for detailed study of this matter." Though conducted by the Army Air Force
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....
, the study's information and conclusions would be made available to all the armed services, and to scientific agencies with formal government ties.
In early December 1947, Gen. Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay
Curtis Emerson LeMay was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in 1968....
asked for an update on the flying saucer investigation. Twining's memo, which had been revised and expanded as it climbed the chain of command, recommended that a project be formally established to investigate the flying saucer phenomenon. The project was formally authorized on 30 December 1947 by Director of Research and Development under the Deputy Chief of staff for Materiel at Headquarters U.S. Air Force., Maj. Gen. Laurence Craggie, who had recently replaced LeMay.
Project Sign
Project Sign, designated MCIAXO-3, was established under the Technical Analysis division of T-2 (military intelligence) at Wright Field. According to Craggie's directive, it would be the role of Sign to: "...collect, collate, evaluate and distribute to interested government agencies and contractors all information concerning sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security."On January 22, 1948, a week after the Air Force was officially separated from the Army, Project Sign formally began its work. Sign was a branch of Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in Greene and Montgomery counties in the state of Ohio. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is located approximately...
, under the direction of Captain Robert R. Sneider. Michael D. Swords
Michael D. Swords
Michael D. Swords is an American scientist.In 1962 Swords graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.S.. He studied biochemistry at Iowa State University , and at Case Western Reserve University Michael D. Swords is an American scientist.In 1962 Swords graduated from the University of...
writes:
- The core personnel for the project were probably the most talented group to work on UFOs until the air force ended its investigation in 1969. Aiding chief officer, Capt. Robert R Sneider, were two outstanding aeronautical engineers, Alfred LoeddingAlfred LoeddingAlfred C. Loedding was an American aeronautics engineer.A 1930 graduate of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics, Loedding worked with the pioneering Bellanca Aircraft Company until 1938, when he became a civilian engineer for the U.S. Air Force at Wright Field, later Wright-Patterson Air Base...
and Albert B. Deyarmond ... Completing the group was nuclear and missile expert Lawrence Truettner ... The quality of these people indicates the seriousness (and the comparative difference in later years) with which the air force considered the flying disk problem.
Notable were the facts that Leodding had worked extensively on disk-shaped and low-aspect aircraft designs for both the military and private companies, and that he was also one of very few people in America with first-hand expertise in rocket
Rocket
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...
engines. He was firmly convinced that a disc-shaped aircraft could fly, and he had designed several such models and prototypes.
Ruppelt wrote that Sign "was given a 2A priority, 1A being the highest priority an Air Force project could have." Though it was classified "restricted", Sign's existence was eventually known to the general public under the moniker "Project Saucer". However, UFO historian Wendy Connors claimed, through an interview with a surviving Sign secretary, that "Project Saucer" was the project's original informal name and had actually begun in late 1946. If this was the case, then the Army Air Force had already begun investigation of UFOs well before the Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth A. Arnold was an American aviator and businessman. He is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington...
sighting that launched the first flood of UFO reports of June–July 1947 in the United States. (See, e.g., WWII foo fighter
Foo fighter
The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific Theater of Operations....
UFOs and the post-war ghost rockets
Ghost rockets
Ghost Rockets Danish Spøgelsesraketter were mysterious rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries....
)
Flying saucer investigations were conducted by Air Intelligence at the Air Force base nearest to any particular UFO report. However, some cases were studied directly by Air Materiel Command personnel.
By late 1947, Air Force files included 109 UFO reports, nine of which remain listed as unsolved. There were four categories for UFOs: flying disks; cigar/torpedo shaped objects; balloon/spherical objects; and "balls of light". Preliminary investigation revealed that about a fifth of Sign's UFO cases were explained prosaically, with the expectation that a substantial portion of the remaining cases could be similarly explained.
The earliest hypothesis, even before Sign was formally established, was that UFOs were Soviet aircraft. Sign was based at Wright Field partly because it was the headquarters for American analysis of German aeronautical data. There was concern in U.S. military intelligence circles that the Soviet Union could make aeronautical advances on the work of Nazi scientists, especially the Horten brothers
Horten brothers
Walter Horten and Reimar Horten , sometimes credited as the Horten Brothers, were German aircraft pilots and enthusiasts, and members of the Hitler Youth and Nazi party...
, "a pair of brilliant aeronautical engineers far in advance of their U.S. counterparts." The Horten brothers's "flying wing
Flying wing
A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft which has no definite fuselage, with most of the crew, payload and equipment being housed inside the main wing structure....
" designs were strikingly similar to some early UFO reports, such as Arnold's crescent-shaped objects. However, due to a lack of evidence supporting the Soviet hypothesis, a faction within the U.S. Military began contemplating an extraterrestrial explanation -- not because any specific evidence supported it, but mainly because all other interpretations for the data were exhausted.
Investigations
Sign's first major investigation occurred in the aftermath of the widely-publicized Mantell IncidentMantell Incident
The Mantell UFO incident was among the most publicized early UFO reports. The incident resulted in the crash and death of 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, on January 7, 1948, while in pursuit of a supposed UFO....
. On 7 January 1948, Air Force pilot Capt. Thomas Mantell crashed his aircraft near Franklin, Kentucky
Franklin, Kentucky
As of the census of 2000, there were 7,996 people, 3,251 households, and 2,174 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,074.7 people per square mile . There were 3,609 housing units at an average density of 485.1 per square mile...
while in pursuit of a UFO. Numerous eyewitnesses, both civilian and military, had reported a large, metallic object in the skies. Mantell was one of four pilots on a nearby training mission who were ordered to investigate. Upon reaching about 10,000 feet, Mantell's companions abandoned their pursuit due to a lack of high-altitude oxygen gear. Mantell continued, however, and reportedly described the aerial artifact as "a metallic object ... it is of tremendous size." Mantell is presumed to have blacked out from oxygen deprivation at about 15,000 feet, whereupon his airplane crashed and he died. The USAF formally announced that Mantell had died in pursuit of the planet Venus. Sign's personnel never accepted this explanation, and regarded the incident as an unknown. It is now widely believed that Mantell died while chasing a then-secret Skyhook high-altitude weather balloon.
Other investigations followed the Mantell case. On the evening of 18 February 1948, an unusual light illuminated the skies over Norcatur, Kansas
Norcatur, Kansas
Norcatur is a city in Decatur County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 151.-Geography:Norcatur is located at . According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land.-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 169...
. An accompanying shockwave broke windows, and area residents initially thought an airplane had exploded in flight. Sign did not formally investigate, but consulted with scientist Lincon La Paz. The incident was probably an exceptionally bright bolide, said La Paz. But his explanation was provisional as no fragments were discovered and some eyewitnesses testimony was inconsistent with a meteor.
On 5 April 1948, three experienced balloon technicians at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico reported an unusual sighting of two roughly circular objects, white in color and very high in altitude, moving erratically and at great speed. The technicians asserted to Loedding that the objects were definitely not balloons or conventional aircraft. Moreover, the witnesses also reported that odd radar returns were common at Holloman, distinct from the usual radar "angels" caused by clouds or other known phenomena. The Holloman incident was reported as an "unknown" in Sign's files.
On 7 May 1948, two witnesses near Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
claimed to have observed 50-60 silvery objects moving at high altitude and in tight formations. Sign reached no conclusion on this incident, but later Air Force records describe the objects as meteors. However, astronomer Paul Herget had earlier specifically excluded this explanation. This case was the first to feature the involvement of J. Allen Hynek
J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was a United States astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three consecutive names: Project Sign , Project Grudge , and Project Blue Book...
, who is believed to have invented the meteor explanation. Hynek, then teaching astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
at Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
, was hired as a consultant to help weed out UFO reports which could be misidentified meteor
METEOR
METEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
s, star
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s and the like. He would consult not only for Sign, but for Project Grudge
Project Grudge
Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects . Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but actually continued on in a very minimal capacity...
and Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects conducted by the United States Air Force. Started in 1952, it was the second revival of such a study...
until the latter was decommissioned in 1969. In a 1985 interview, Hynek reported that he was initially dismissive of UFO reports: "I was quite negative in most of my evaluations. I stretched far to give something a natural explanation, sometimes when it may not have really had it." By the mid-1960s, however, Hynek's opinion had changed: he believed, after encountering a minority of UFO reports, that, in his opinion, some reports seemed to defy conventional explanation. Hynek also spoke out against what he saw as shoddy research by the Air Force.
On 17 May, businessman William A. Bonneville reported an extended UFO incident while driving between Plevna, Montana
Plevna, Montana
As of the census of 2000, there were 138 people, 63 households, and 40 families residing in the town. The population density was 301.4 people per square mile . There were 81 housing units at an average density of 176.9 per square mile . The racial makeup of the town was 97.83% White and 2.17% Asian...
and Miles City, Montana
Miles City, Montana
Miles City is a city in and the county seat of Custer County, Montana, United States. The population was 8,123 at the 2010 census.- History :...
. A luminous ball, brilliantly lit and brighter than the moon, emerged from behind hills to the northwest and traveled first to the south, then to the west, over a 20 minute period. Sign regarded this as an unknown but later files, possibly Hynek's interpretation, blamed the incident on "refraction of the planet Mars."
Near Monroe, Michigan
Monroe, Michigan
Monroe is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 20,733 at the 2010 census. It is the largest city and county seat of Monroe County. The city is bordered on the south by Monroe Charter Township, but both are politically independent. The city is located approximately 14 miles ...
on 25 May, two Air Force officers reported a UFO sighting. They were passengers in an Air Force plane when one officer observed three disk-like objects flying at about the plane's altitude for 10–15 seconds before making a sudden sharp turn and accelerating rapidly out of view. The officer spoke to his traveling companion, who hadn't observed the incident. Moments later, however, both officers reported the appearance of two objects, similar to the first grouping, which maneuvered radically and accelerated rapidly into the distance. Sign classified this incident as an unknown.
A husband and wife driving near Hecla, South Dakota
Hecla, South Dakota
Hecla is a city in Brown County, South Dakota, United States, located only a few miles south of the North Dakota border. The population was 227 at the 2010 census...
reported another sighting which Sign classified as an "unknown." On the evening of June 30, the couple spotted what they took to be an unusually bright star. The husband, a professional engineer and amateur astronomer, stopped their car several times to observe the light, which he eventually realized was not a star. Three small glowing fragments seemed to "fall off" the light. The three fragments arranged themselves in the points of an equilateral triangle around the light. The triangular formation maintained its geometric proportions as it rose to a great height and disappeared from view. The engineer would later assert, "my convictions at this point were that it could not have been anything terrestrial."
Chiles-Whitted
A turning point for Sign came with the Chiles-Whitted UFO EncounterChiles-Whitted UFO Encounter
The Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter occurred on July 24, 1948 when two American commercial pilots reported that their Douglas DC-3 had nearly collided with a strange torpedo shaped object flying near them....
over Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
on 24 July 1948. In this case, two experienced airline pilots, both veterans of combat flying during WWII, reported that a rocket-shaped UFO, 100 feet long and emitting reddish exhaust, approached them on a near-collision course. Chiles and Whitted also reported the object appeared to show a double row of ports or windows emitting an intense bluish-white light. The reports of "windows" also suggested the object was possibly occupied. Additional corroboration came from four sources: a passenger on the plane who saw the object's exhaust trail as it sped from view; from an experienced military ground witness in Alabama; from a military pilot who reported an unusual light in the vicinity of Montgomery at roughly the time of the encounter; and from a sighting of a very similar object near The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
on July 20. Moreover, the Chiles-Whitted object also faintly echoed the mysterious Scandinavian "ghost rockets
Ghost rockets
Ghost Rockets Danish Spøgelsesraketter were mysterious rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries....
" of 1946, reports of which had intrigued American military officials.
Loedding and others interviewed Chiles and Whitted two days after the incident, and were deeply impressed by their testimony. Ruppelt would later write,"According to the old timers at ATIC, this report shook them worse than the Mantell Incident. This was the first time two reliable sources had been really close enough to anything resembling a UFO to get a good look and live to tell about it."
The Chiles-Whitted case became the centerpiece of Project Sign's investigation for the next several months. According to Swords, "The flying fuselage encounter [i.e., Chiles-Whitted] intrigued them." Such a torpedo-like design was in fact flightworthy according to the theories of German engineer Ludwig Prandtl, but would require power far in excess of conventional fuels in 1947, possibly nuclear power. Given that no American technology could account for the flying saucer sightings, and that there was no definitive evidence of the German/Russian hypothesis, Sign's personnel began to take the interplanetary hypothesis more seriously. Swords argues that this consideration of non-earthly origin was "not as incredible in [military] intelligence circles as one might think." Because many in the military were "pilots, engineers and technical people" they had a "'can do' attitude" and tended to regard unavailable technologies not as impossibilities, but as challenges to be overcome. Rather than dismissing UFO reports out of hand, they considered how such objects might plausibly function. This perspective, argues Swords, "contrasted markedly with many scientists' characterizations of such concepts as impossible, unthinkable or absurd."
The Estimate of the Situation
In the document "Estimate of the SituationEstimate of the Situation
The Estimate of the Situation was a document supposedly written in 1948 by the personnel of United States Air Force's Project Sign -including the project’s director, Captain Robert R. Sneider - which explained their reasons for concluding that the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the best...
," probably written in September 1947 mainly by Sneider and Loedding, Sign explained their controversial assessment of the unknowns. As Ruppelt wrote, "The situation was the UFO's; the estimate was that they were interplanetary!"
In September or October 1948, the Estimate was approved by Colonels William Clingerman and Howard McCoy (Sneider's superiors) who then submitted the document to Gen. Charles Cabell, chief of Air Force intelligence. In the Pentagon, opinions about UFOs were divided. Some took the extraterrestrial hypothesis seriously; others believed the flying discs were a puzzling problem while reserving final judgement; others still dismissed the entire subject as absurd. According to Ruppelt, the Estimate "drew considerable comment but no one stopped it on its way up [the Air Force chain of command]." Cabell, newly appointed, was presumably reluctant to take a strong stand for or against the Estimate, passing it on to then-Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg. Citing a lack of supporting physical evidence, Vandenberg rejected the Estimate. All copies of the Estimate were ordered destroyed. A few copies were allegedly saved as keepsakes for at least half a decade or so and the Estimate has been described as the "Holy Grail of ufology."
At about the same time the Estimate was working its way up the ranks, another group was arguing against any extraterrestrial origins for the saucers. Informally led by Major Aaron J. Boggs, this group doubted that any flying saucers existed; Swords noted that his peers described Boggs as "the Pentagon's 'saucer killer'". Under Boggs' guidance, a competing document prepared by the anti-extraterrestrial group in the Directorate of Intelligence was also making the rounds in military intelligence. With input from the Office of Naval Intelligence
Office of Naval Intelligence
The Office of Naval Intelligence was established in the United States Navy in 1882. ONI was established to "seek out and report" on the advancements in other nations' navies. Its headquarters are at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland...
this study argued that the flying saucers were probably real, though made by the Soviet Union. The saucers were operated so openly in U.S airspace by the Soviets probably as a method of psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
"to negate U.S. confidence in atom bomb as the most advanced and decisive weapon."
Rejection of Estimate
With Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg's rejection of The Estimate, Ruppelt said it was clear to the Sign personnel who supported ETH that there was no support at the top. Yet Sign's personnel stuck by their conclusions. Sign continued their investigations of UFO reports, still favoring the ETH. Swords speculates that this refusal to change their approach was due to strong minority support for the ETH within the Pentagon and/or a rather mild rejection of the Estimate. In one case, for example, seeking evidence of an advanced propulsion system, Sign personnel tested the radiationIonizing radiation
Ionizing radiation is radiation composed of particles that individually have sufficient energy to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. This ionization produces free radicals, which are atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons...
levels of George Gorman's National Guard
United States National Guard
The National Guard of the United States is a reserve military force composed of state National Guard militia members or units under federally recognized active or inactive armed force service for the United States. Militia members are citizen soldiers, meaning they work part time for the National...
aircraft which was said to have had a "dog fight
Gorman Dogfight
The Gorman UFO Dogfight was a widely-publicized UFO incident. It occurred on October 1, 1948 in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, and involved George F. Gorman, a pilot with the North Dakota National Guard. In 1956, USAF Captain Edward J...
" with a flying saucer over Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County. In 2010, its population was 105,549, and it had an estimated metropolitan population of 208,777...
on October 1, 1948. When a Geiger counter
Geiger counter
A Geiger counter, also called a Geiger–Müller counter, is a type of particle detector that measures ionizing radiation. They detect the emission of nuclear radiation: alpha particles, beta particles or gamma rays. A Geiger counter detects radiation by ionization produced in a low-pressure gas in a...
revealed evidence of radiation, Sign personnel thought they'd discovered more corroboration for their extraterrestrial hypothesis. Clingerman wrote a memo requesting a Rand Corporation study on how an interstellar spacecraft might plausibly function.
General Charles P. Cabell
Charles P. Cabell
Charles Pearre Cabell was an United States Air Force General and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.-Early life:...
asked Sign for a second, non-extraterrestrial opinion of the flying saucers. Sign submitted a brief response which did not explicitly mention extraterrestrial ideas but strongly hinted at them, even citing the works of Charles Fort
Charles Fort
Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena. Today, the terms Fortean and Forteana are used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print today.-Biography:Charles Hoy Fort was born in 1874 in Albany, New York, of Dutch...
to argue that unusual objects had been flying in the earth's skies for decades before the Arnold encounter. A document signed by Sneider, dated December 20, 1948 but written earlier, has been called the "Ghost of the Estimate" since it echoes many of the same ideas explained in the lost Estimate of the Situation.
Sign's continued devotion to the interplanetary explanation led to a debate at the National Bureau of Standards in November, 1948 where the competing hypotheses were represented by Sneider and Boggs (other personnel attended, but their identities are uncertain). Ultimately, Boggs and the anti-extraterrestrial faction were victorious.
The rejection of the Estimate quickly took its toll on Project Sign and supporters of the ETH. As Ruppelt wrote, "More and more work was being pushed off onto the other investigative organization that was [sic] helping ATIC. The kickback on the Top Secret Estimate of the Situation was beginning to dampen a lot of enthusiasms. It was definitely a bear market for UFOs."
Aftermath
By late 1948, Project Sign was discontinued in name and replaced by a much more negatively oriented Project GrudgeProject Grudge
Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects . Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but actually continued on in a very minimal capacity...
. Ruppelt reported that the choice of the word "Grudge" to describe the new project was deliberate: Grudge was intended to provide prosaic explanations for as many UFO reports as possible.
Ruppelt wrote,
"On February 11, 1949, an order was written that changed the name of the UFO project from Project Sign to Project Grudge. The order was supposedly written because the classified name, Project Sign, had been compromised. This was always my official answer to any questions about the name change. I'd go further and say that the names of the projects, first Sign, then Grudge, had no significance. This wasn't true; they did have significance, a lot of it."
Ruppelt referred to the Project Grudge era as the "Dark Ages" of official Air Force UFO investigations. Still, by late 1949, some 20 percent of UFO sightings remained classified as "unknown" by Grudge. By late 1951, according to Ruppelt, some highly influential Pentagon generals had become so disenchanted with Grudge's debunking that Grudge itself was dismantled and replaced by Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects conducted by the United States Air Force. Started in 1952, it was the second revival of such a study...
, with Ruppelt in charge.
Historian David Michael Jacobs argues that, overall, Project Sign's personnel did an admirable job. However, Jacobs has also stated, "[Project Sign's] main problem was that the staff was too inexperienced to discriminate between which sightings to investigate thoroughly. Because of unfamiliarity with the phenomenon, the staff spent inordinate amounts of time on sightings that were obviously aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
, meteor
METEOR
METEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
s or hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
es."
Further reading
- Dolan, Richard M. (2002) UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-up 1941–1973, ISBN 1-57174-317-0
- Peoples, Curtis (1994). Watch the Skies! - A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. Smithsonian, ISBN 1-56098-343-4.
External links
- the Twining letter
- http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/ufo/2d_af_1.pdf