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Secret aircraft:

U2 as explanation for UFO reports

1997: CIA claims UFOs were the U2 secret aircraft:

The U-2 is the high altitude spy plane made famous by the 1960 shootdown of Gary Powers as he flew over the Soviet Union and by photos of Russian missile sites in Cuba during the "Cuban Missile Crisis." Mr. Haines has written, "According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71 or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950's through the 1960's were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project. While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later conspiracy theories and the cover-up controversy of the 1970's. The percentage of what the Air force considered unexplained UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956."

This explanation for many ("over half of all") UFO reports is new in the sense that it has never before been publicized. It was not contained within documents released by the CIA in December, 1978 after a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FOIPA) by Ground Saucer Watch, a civilian UFO organization which closed in the early 1980's. According to Mr. Haines the U-2 was reported as a UFO because "the early U-2's were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays of the sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. They often appeared as fiery objects to observers below. Air Force Blue Book investigators, aware of the secret U-2 flights, tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions. By checking with the Agency's U-2 Project Staff in Washington, Blue Book investigators were able to attribute many UFO sightings to U-2 flights. They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public."

Project Blue Book was the publicly known Air Force effort to collect UFO sightings and explain, or at least categorize, them as explainable or unexplainable. Project Blue Book ran from early 1951 through 1969. When it closed Blue Book and its predecessors (Project Sign, 1948, and Project Grudge, 1949-1951) had collected about 13,000 sightings, of which about 700 were left unexplained.

The claim that the U-2 caused "over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950's through the 1960's" is, to put it gently, preposterous. The U-2, with its 80 feet long by 6 feet wide (front to back) wingspan flew at 60-70,000 feet and at that altitude was essentially invisible during the day. It created no contrail because of the lack of moisture at that altitude. It was, after all, intended to be invisible! During the hour before sunrise and the hour following sunset it would be possible for an unpainted aircraft to reflect the sun enough to be visible, perhaps with a reddish glow resulting from the reddening of sunlight (caused by passage of the sunlight through the atmosphere, which acts like a filter that removes blue and green relative to red). High altitude balloons (e.g., Project Skyhook) did cause some UFO reports during these times of day and were so identified by the Air Force and civilian investigators. However, only a small fraction of sightings occur during these times. The largest fraction of sightings is at night when the U-2 can't be seen and the next largest fraction is during the daytime.

A check of the Project Blue Book sighting statistics, which includes sightings by pilots and air traffic controllers as well as by military personnel and civilians, shows the following: for July, 1955 there were 89 reports and for August there were 67. These numbers are the sum of explained and unexplained sightings and so, presumably, include U-2 sightings, if any. These numbers show that the sighting rate **diminished** just as the U-2 started flying. The Blue Book record shows about 316 sightings in the 6 months before the U-2 and about 326 in the six months afterward. Not much change over this longer time period. Mr. Haines has pointed out that the percent unexplained fell from 5.9% in 1955 to 4% in 1956, with the implication that this decrease was a result of more explained U-2 sightings. If we assume that the increase in sightings from 316 to 326, mentioned above, was caused by the U-2, then the U-2 could account for about 100 x (10/320) = 3% of the sightings in the 6 months following. Hence these statistics do not bear out the claim that there was a large increase in sightings by any segment of the population, pilots and air traffic controllers included, once the U-2 aircraft started flying.

Statistics based on a different set of data are contained within the "U Database" of over 14,000 sightings by Larry Hatch (Larry Hatch Software, 142 Jeter St., Redwood City, CA 94025-1957). This excellent PC based software provides statistics that are based on unexplained sightings recorded by Project Blue Book and by civilian UFO groups such as NICAP. If Project Blue Book investigators explained some sightings as the U-2, these sightings would not appear in the list of unexplained Blue Book sightings and hence would not be included in this database. On the other hand, the far larger collection of non-Blue Book sightings in this database could include U-2 sightings, if the CIA is correct, that were not identified by civilian investigators who were unaware of the U-2's existence and hence a comparison of the sighting statistics before and after U-2 flights started could provide evidence that the U-2 was being reported as a UFO. In this database you can find the following:

The above table shows that there is scant evidence of a jump in sighting rate following the first flight of the U-2 on August 4, 1955. The surprising jump in November, 1957 is coincident with the "Sputnik flap" which occurred just after Sputnik 2 was launched.

This flap is noted for the large number of close-range car-stopping events. Most of the sightings were not sightings of Sputnik itself. As a matter of fact, due to the Sputnik events, many more people than usual looked at the sky at night, which explains a higher number of sightings.

An even more telling set of statistics uses the sightings which occurred near sunrise or sunset when, according to Mr. Haines, the U-2 would have appeared as a shiny or fiery bright spot in the sky. TIME 0400 to 0700 (which encompasses the time before sunrise) (With a time window this wide we get an overestimate of the number of sightings just before sunrise since the time of sunrise varies during the year.) August 1955 is noted by *_*.

TIME: 17:00 to 21:00, which encompasses the time after sunset, with a time window this wide we get an overestimate of the number of sightings just after sunset since local sunset time varies during the year.

There is no statistical support for a sudden increase in the number of sightings at sunrise or sunset when the U-2 started flying. On the contrary, the number of sightings in August 1955 was lower than during the previous month.

In the early 1960's many of the U-2s were painted black or other camouflage colors thus reducing the number of U-2's that could potentially be seen by glint reflection from the sun.

Moreover, many unexplained sightings involved relatively nearby, structured objects, not nearly invisible distant points of reflected light. These objects were reported to move rapidly at speeds that would far exceed in apparent speed that of the U-2, flying at about 500 mph at 70,000 ft. The U-2 would seem to move slowly, if seen at all.

See also:

• U-2 fact sheet.

Other secret aircraft supposed to explain UFOs:

• Horten flying wings.
• SNECMA's Coléoptère.
• Boeing Bird of Prey.
• X-47A Pegasus.
• AURORA.
• A-17.
• S-4.
• The LoFlyte.
• U-2.
• F-117.
• X-15.
• B-2.
• Black helicopters.
• A-12.

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This page was last updated on June 28, 2001.