More information about Project Blue Book here.
French scientist and ufologist Jacques Vallée established friendly relationships with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, then official consultant of the USAF's project Blue Book, their study of UFOs. Vallée then had the opportunity to browse through the Blue Book archives and he wrote this summary of that case:
"In the afternoon of April 5 (1948) Holloman (New Mexico) AFB personnel reported having witnessed an object in the shape of a disk, 35 m in diameter, executing a series of violent turns and maneuvers - it is worth making a note of the dimensions of the disk as estimated by these competent observers. Another disk was seen the same day displaying similar behavior at Manila (?)"
What happened?
The witnesses were Geophysics Lab balloon observers Alsen, Johnson, Chance. They observed two irregular, round, white or golden objects. One of them made three loops then rose and disappeared rapidly; the other flew in a fast arc to the west during the 3O second sighting. Maintenance duty officers as well as pilots were astonished to observe a saucer shaped object perform rapid, dangerous maneuvers over the Air Base. The witnesses agreed that the craft had a diameter of 35 feet (not 35 meters).
In the Blue Book listing, this case is in the category "unknown," that is, no trivial explanation could be proposed. The witnesses were all qualified scientists, particularly, they were trained balloon observers. They were not lunatics, as some claim that all UFO witnesses are. The Blue Book case number is 139.
This wasn't the only UFO sighting made by scientists that day. The same April 5, 1948, another team watched a UFO for several minutes as it streaked across the afternoon sky in a series of violent maneuvers. The disk-shaped object was about a fifth the size of a full moon.
Many more observations and UFO events occurred again later at Holloman AFB, those of 1967 being the best remembered.
