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 | |
Witnesses: Mr. and Mrs. L.J. Wise.
One silver, diamond-shaped object with several balls constantly in very fast motion around it, and much light. Object hovered over the trees for 3-4 minutes, while a dog barked, and then zipped out of sight. Sighting lasted 1 hour.
Witnesses: Mr. and Mrs. K.R. Gulley.
One yellow, lighted object at 500, altitude and a pulsating red glow on the lawn. The house lights went out, and high frequency bothered the witnesses' ears. Sighting lasted 5-10 minutes.
Witness: USAF Res. Maj. K.C. Smith, employee of NASA at Cape Kennedy.
One pulsating light which varied from white to intense blue made a jerky ascent and then rapidly accelerated away to the north after 5 minutes.
Witness: S.J. Musachia.
White flashing lights, and the air full of smoke. Lit up witness' apartment. Sound of "yen " heard up close during 4 minutes sighting.
Witness: W.E. Laxson.
One large object, like a wingless C-124 transport plane, 75' long, 8' high and 12' wide, with a bubble canopy on top. Sat on highway, a man dressed in military work clothes entered, and it rose after about 40 seconds.
Witnesses: Mrs. P.N. Beer and Mrs. E. Smith.
One flashing light buzzed their car from the front then hovered. Sighting lasted 10 minutes.
Witness: W. Smith.
One oval object with a dark top, appeared cone-shaped when moving. It made a high-frequency noise during the 2.5 hour sighting.
Witness: Lillian Louis.
One vapor-like sphere hovered and spun at low altitude, shooting its exhaust onto the ground below. Sighting of 1 minute.
Witness: Anita Miller.
One light moved around the sky for 2.5 hours. No further detail in files.
Witness: A/3c W.L. Whitehead.
One short, cylindrical object with pointed ends and a yellow light at one end and blue light at the other, flew straight and level for 35 seconds.
Witness: Dorothy Gray.
Two domed discs with sparkling upper surfaces and square windows in their tops, revolved above a lake, apparently causing strange behavior of the lake water during the 25 second sighting.
Witness: Max Baker.
One bright silver, cigar-shaped object, as long as an airliner, buzzed the witness' car. Sighting lasted 1 minute.
Witnesses: members of a Boy Scout group, including Sterrett.
One bell-shaped object with three flashing red lights hovered for 5 hours and was then joined by six others.
Witness: Radio Officer Steffen Soresen, of the S/ Mt. Vernon Victory.
One "cloud" expanded with a light inside, and then accelerated away after several minutes.
Witnesses: Carl Wood and Charles Hawthorne.
One large (100' wide, 20' high) bright red object with small windows and yellow lights. The object emitted a humming noise, seemingly from the outside, and a grinding noise which seemed to come from inside. Observed for 1 hour.
Witness: college student James Clark.
One object which changed color from orange to red to blue to green and back to orange. Followed witness' car at high speed, then stopped and hovered over the car. Rose and flew up and out of sight in less than 5 seconds. Entire sighting involved about 1 hour.
Witnesses: Douglas Tibbetts, 16, Betty Klem, 16, Anita Haifley, 22, and Gerald Labelle, 29.
Square or hexagonal object with edges lit or reflecting light, came tumbling down from right to left. Stopped 5-10' above the beach and settled heavily down, circle of spotlights at top were visible when it was on the ground. Sighting lasted 5 minutes.
Witness: U.S. Border Patrolman Don Flickenger.
Round disc with domed top, 30' in diameter and 15' high, colored white, silvery or aluminum. Moved across a valley from the southeast, hovered over a reservoir, appeared to land in a small field, then rose up into clouds very rapidly. Sighting lasted 5 minutes.
Witnesses: Broomall and Gilpin.
One circular, luminous white object split into five objects and all streaked away toward the west. Sighting lasted 15 minutes.
Witnesses: Mr. and Mrs. Funk and their three children.
A cluster of four small, glowing, orange-yellow lights in a triangular formation, moved from east to west for 4.5 minutes.
Witness: T.H. Ridman.
One oval object with lights that flashed red and white and occasionally blue, travelled west, then disappeared downward. It returned, several minutes later, at which time a loud noise was heard. The entire sighting lasted 30 minutes.
Witnesses: Stahl and Ladesic.
One white cylinder of light came from the east at high speed, stopped and hovered for 3 minutes, and then turned and slowly disappeared. Sighting lasted 8 minutes.
Witness: Jacobson.
One solid object, larger than an army tank, with lights all around it, made a low humming sound and disappeared into woods at the end of the 30 minute sighting.
Witness: Rotenberger.
One silvery-grey ellipse with a clear bubble protruding from its top, hovered about a mile away, then landed within 300 yards and took off very fast. It made a low-pitched whine during the 5 minute sighting.
Witness: Clarke.
Three round, oval-shaped, aluminum-colored objects with rotating rings around them. Two remained stationary, while the third varied its altitude during the 90 second sighting.
Witnesses: several members of one family.
One small, bright orange, moon-shaped object remained stationary in the northeast for about 20 minutes, then suddenly took off very fast to the WNW.
Witness: Mr Acquino.
One object with arms in front of it which sparkled like an arc-light. Traveled south along some power lines, then turned southwest. Made a slight humming sound during the 4 minute sighting.
Witness: civilian control tower operator Ralston.
One white object approached runway at 50' altitude. Runway lights were then turned on, and object accelerated and climbed away so fast that witness was unable to use binoculars. Sighting lasted 3 seconds.
Witness: college graduate Annis.
A group of lights that flashed and changed color hung stationary, almost touching the road, and would abruptly vanish during the 5 minute sighting.
Witnesses: civilians and military persons.
Three round objects, as large as cars, gave off vapor, then became three bright reddish-orange lights. Blast at beginning of 90 minute sighting pushed one witness against a car.
"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.
