Project Blue Book

The year is 1948 and America has a bit of a UFO problem. As in, people were seeing flying saucers all over the place. It was thrilling when people saw them at the local movie theater, which people seemed to want to do at the time. The problem was that some of the people who saw them weren’t looking at The Silver Screen.

Project SAUCER and Project Sign

For some Americans, UFOs or flying saucers or little green men from Mars or whatever was just a fantasy, and they seemed okay with things if it stayed that way. Other people, though, wanted to know what would happen if these aliens did in fact exist. Do we treat them like foreigners, the same way we’d treat someone from Canada or Mexico? Or, what if they’re hostile to humans? What if they really do have advanced technology and are intent on enslaving us, dressing us in weird metallic and satin outfits and forcing us to go with them to their home world where we would have to clean their toilets? Eek! Surely our government will have something in place so that I don’t have to clean up alien poo???

Since the United States Air Force knew about most flying things, the US Government turned to them and Project SAUCER was created, Nathan F. Twining taking the head position. As soon as it was announced, the Air Force became the nation’s laughingstock. A lot of people seemed to think it was a joke. At first, the Air Force blamed the name, so they changed it from Project SAUCER to Project Sign.

Project Sign spent a year collecting as much information as they could on UFO sightings before releasing a report that said it was possible that there is intelligent life somewhere out there in the universe, and maybe they’re sending flying saucers to Earth for some reason, we need to investigate this further.

The US Air Force, however, was not convinced and demanded proof of extraterrestrial life, which Project Sign could not produce since they really didn’t have anything. So, Project Sign went away.

Project Grudge

Not everybody in the Air Force was all that happy when Project Sign went away after such a short period. First, they tried to make the argument that because nobody knows if there is life out there in the universe somewhere, we should go out looking for it just in case there is. When that didn’t work, they tried a different tactic.

For their second attempt, rather than debating the existence of alien life forms that could be sending spacecraft to earth – they argued that foreign governments could manipulate The US over “alien” stuff, and the Air Force now had to admit they did have a point.

And so, the United States Air Force then created Project Grudge.

By now, the Air Force (and, for that matter, the US Government as a whole) was having a bit of a PR problem. There had been two UFO incidents on (or, over) US soil – one near Mount Rainier in Washington; the other just outside a small town called Roswell, New Mexico – and it didn’t seem like the Air Force was doing much about anything. When they do respond, it’s with something they tried to call Project SAUCER, and then that went away. Is all this a joke?

That’s why when Project Grudge was created, they kind of gave it two sides – the outside side, visible to the American Public; and an inner side, that was about something else entirely. In other words – to the public, Project Grudge was about investigating reports of UFOs (see, the Air Force doesn’t want you cleaning up alien poo either) when the project was more about finding some kind of “Earthly” answer for all those UFO sightings.

Thanks to Project Grudge, someone would call and say, “hey, there’s this shiny thing up in the sky, I think it’s a UFO” and someone from Project Grudge would show up, ask a few questions, and say, “Nope. That’s clearly a weather balloon.” … or, “That’s a conventional airplane.” … or “That’s an optical illusion.” … or, “Solar Reflections” … or, “Meteors” or “Planets” … or, (I’m not kidding) “That’s really just some huge hail stones.”

It seems like Project Grudge had an excuse for just about everything.

Now, let’s get serious here for just a moment. Around this time there were hundreds of UFO sightings every year, and reporting UFO sightings was starting to become the national pastime. Let’s watch some baseball, drink a few brews, down some hot dogs and wash them down with some apple pi…oh, crap, was that a UFO?

Chances are good that most UFO sightings were easily explained as things like “weather balloons” or “optical illusions” but sometimes the given explanation didn’t seem to fit the facts. They might call something a “weather balloon” but then someone would ask if a weather balloon could do blah blah blah and the Air Force would say “how dare you question us, if we say it’s a weather balloon it’s a weather balloon.”

Now, as if by magic, a lot of conspiracy theories started to pop up.

Officially, Project Grudge didn’t last very long, just a year or so, although it seemed to keep operating with the final report coming out around 1999.

But, that’s okay, I guess, because the Air Force had yet one more “Project” under its sleeves and … as they say … Third time’s the charm?

Project Blue Book

Project Blue Book began in 1952 and was operated out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton until it closed in December 1969.

At first, it was run by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, and he continued the work of both Project Sign and Project Grudge. His mission, it is now known, was twofold: To determine if aliens constitute a threat to National Security; and to collect and study scientific data on UFOs.

Throughout the run of both Projects Sign and Grudge, Air Force Leadership was a bit mixed in their views of UFOs. Some were believers, or were at least open minded to their existence, while others denied the possibility and felt American tax dollars were being wasted on stupid projects. That didn’t change with Project Blue Book much, but with new leadership in place, maybe it would have a chance.

Ruppelt also took Project Blue Book seriously, and he demanded the same of his staff. Also, learning from mistakes made by the previous projects, he tried to make each investigation a bit more streamlined. He helped work to create a computerized system (remember, this was the mid 1950s so computers were a bit … different back then) that would analyze the data collected by his agents as well as set in place a number of protections in hopes that those reporting UFOs wouldn’t face the ridicule that past reporters had.

In 1954, a report called (don’t you just love how creative the US Military can be) Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 was released that contained the findings of their research.

According to the report:

• 38% of the UFO reports were deemed “identified conclusively” while 31% were either “doubtfully identified” or only partly explained. 9% of the cases could not be judged for lack of sufficient data. That leaves 20% to be, officially, “Unknown”.
• Of the Known Flying Objects, 86% were identified as aircraft, balloons, or other astronomical phenomena.
• Less than 2% of the cases were deemed “Crackpot” which included things such as hallucinations or claims by the mentally ill.
• 8% of the reports studied were declared hoaxes or deliberate misinformation of some sort.
• Perhaps the oddest discovery (for lack of a better word) is that the higher quality of information gathered (or the more that is known about the UFO sighting) the bigger the chance of it falling into the “unknown” category.

When the Air Force released the report to the public the following year, they tried to claim that the report unequivocally proved that UFOs weren’t real, but anybody who actually read the report discovered it said quite the opposite. In fact, the number of reports where whatever was going on was “unidentified” was quite a bit higher than the average person had previously believed.

That being said, there was no proof that “flying saucers” were piloted by “little green men” who were “abducting people” for “whatever reason”.

That same year (1954) Captain Charles Hardin was promoted to the head of Project Blue Book, which was overall an odd choice because he was known for believing that anybody who thought UFOs were real was “crazy” and he acted as if the Project was a joke. Under his leadership, the Project no longer tried to study and analyze UFO reports, but rather they tried to minimize the number of “unidentified” objects being reported.

Captain George T. Gregory took over the following year and attempted to make Project Blue Book even more anti-UFO. The major way he accomplished this was by a simple shift in classifications. Suddenly, anything that was “possibly” something (say, a meteor or some kind of known aircraft) suddenly became “probably” that thing … and everything that had been “probably” something was now “definitely” that thing. And there was no need to investigate since in most cases, “probably” was good enough.

When Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Friend took over in 1956, he attempted to push the Project to something more resembling its original goals. For Friend, though, this was a massively uphill battle. But, at least someone was trying to actually do …something.

Then came the 1960 Congressional hearings into UFOs after a civilian research group called The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena accused Project Blue Book of covering up legitimate UFO sightings which they believed the knowledge of was being kept from The American People. And, it turns out the NICAP people had made some pretty good friends with several members of Congress, who it seems really wanted to believe them.

After the investigation into Project Blue Book was complete, Friend was able to convince Congress (and thus The Air Force) that more money was needed to fully study these UFO reports, and they succeeded in getting a little bit of more manpower (including hiring a few civilian assistants as secretaries).

Still, this did not please NICAP, who seemed to become even more critical of Project Blue Book, and they were becoming even more vocal about the American Government, and Project Blue Book in particular, covering up the proof that alien life truly exists.

Three years after the congressional hearing, as Friend was on his way out, he urged the Air Force to shut Project Blue Book down. Project Blue Book wasn’t able to do anything it was designed to do, therefore it should just go away. The Air Force, for whatever reason, wasn’t quite ready for that just yet.

Major Hector Quintanilla replaced Friend and changed the goal, yet again, to debunking all UFO reports, which didn’t seem to sit well with NICAP, or a growing number of the American population. Now, Project Blue Book explanations for UFO sightings didn’t even try to resemble the observable facts and with every month that passed, they were being seen as more and more of a joke.

One example, so that you can judge this for yourself – a meteorologist in Kansas noted several “objects” in his radar data that appeared to be hovering between six and nine thousand feet. The official finding from Project Blue Book – it was Jupiter. (Yeah, like I said, I don’t think they were really even trying at that point.)

By the Mid ‘60s, NICAP’s membership was quickly multiplying, as was their accusations of governmental cover-ups, and personally I think they were having way too much fun looking at all the Project Blue Book records they could find and pointing out that there was no way that Jupiter could have been spotted on Radar hovering at 6000 feet about Wichita.

Something had to be done, things were getting out of hand. So, an independent group was formed, under the leadership of a guy named Edward U. Condon. The Condon Committee would, as everyone who has been reading this far, be accused of bias from both the UFO Deniers and the UFO Believers … they, too, were accused of helping the government cover up alien technology and UFO reports and …

… and this continued even after the committee released their final report stating that there was no evidence that any of the reported UFO sightings were “extraordinary” … nor were any of them a threat to National Security …

So, on December 17, 1969, Project Blue Book was officially and unequivocally shut down for good.

(Or, was it?)

“Hangar 18” and the Mythology of Project Blue Book

In 1947, according to way too many conspiracy theories, a flying saucer (or perhaps some other UFO, maybe it was a weather balloon, or a satellite, or … maybe Dr. Who’s Tardis or whatever the heck those cargo haulers Sigorney Weaver was working on when the Xenomorphs showed up … whatever the heck it was – something fell to the ground outside Roswell, New Mexico and went BOOM!

Thank goodness there was a super-secret Air Force Base really close by … I mean, talk about convenient, right? That Air Force Base was so secret, it didn’t even have a proper name. They denied it was even there for quite some time, then someone (not sure who) started calling it “Area 51” and the name kind of stuck.

So, according to all these conspiracy theories, the Air Force, maybe the Army (which back in 1957 was technically the same thing) or maybe some other super-secret-governmental agency came in, picked everything up and hauled it off to Area 51.

While they tried to cover up the alien spaceship crash, they apparently didn’t do a good enough job and before long people figured out what had happened. And then people, as they are known to do, started asking important questions? Like, what fell onto the New Mexico Desert? Who moved it? Where did it go? And seriously, how do they get those cats to dance in those commercials?

So, they pulled out their maps and looked to see if there was something nearby. But this is New Mexico we’re talking about so there isn’t much there to find. But then someone discovered this super-secret place called Area 51 and decided the aliens went there. So, they went to Area 51, saw all the signs that said something along the lines of “turn back or we’ll kill you” and that was all the proof they needed – Area 51 is where they kept all the alien parts.

To some people, however, that explanation was too easy. I’m not sure why they thought that, but they did. If you look at them on a map, Area 51 and Roswell aren’t all that close to each other – in fact it’s roughly a 15 day walk and you have that whole state of Arizona between them. But, it’s “The American West” so everybody wants to think everything’s close by, I guess.

Now that the government knows that the American people are onto them – that people know Aliens are being held at Area 51, they decide that it’s time to move some (but apparently not all) of the “Alien Stuff” to a more secure, perhaps a more secret location. And, where might that be?

The Nevada desert is an isolated place, it’s kind of flat so you can see people coming from miles, not that are that many people around … so what’s more secure than that? Oh, I know – Dayton, Ohio – nobody thinks Dayton, Ohio really exists – people think it’s a fictional place, so let’s move the alien stuff there. Oh, and check this out – they have an Air Force Base called Wright-Patterson … let’s move the stuff there.

So, for whatever reason, the Governmental People Who Work With Alien Stuff decided to pack up boxes of alien things, maybe they even packed up an alien or two as well, stuck them on a airplane in the middle of the Nevada desert and flew it all to the Air Force Base next to Dayton, where it has existed ever since.

Oh, and the place they took it – Hanger 18. Can’t find Hanger 18 on a map? Can’t find a single Air Force personnel who knows where Hangar 18 is? Well, that’s all the proof you need to know that Hanger 18 really, truly does exist, that they’re hiding aliens or alien stuff there, and the government is trying to cover it up.

That’s the “theory” anyway.

All joking aside, this Conspiracy Theory has been around for as long as I can remember, in one form or another. That after the alien space ship crashed in New Mexico, they sent it first to Nevada, then to Ohio for … reasons, I guess. There is no proof this happens (which I know to some makes the conspiracy theory even more true) But …

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is also the place where Project Blue Book was going on, and they were collecting stories about UFOs, so it makes sense why some people would think they were housing UFO parts or alien bodies or whatever.

According to legend (in other words Aunt Irma’s drunk neighbor’s dogwalker) somewhere on Wright-Patterson AFB exists Hangar 18. It’s probably somewhere underground since researchers have looked at satellite photos of all the buildings and are pretty sure it isn’t one of those, but who knows it could be one in disguise. Inside, you will find stored “artifacts” not just from Roswell, but from countless other Alien aircraft. Maybe, even an alien body that has been partly autopsied.

But, inside Hangar 18, you’ll also find “The Blue Room” and your guess is as good as mine as to what you’d find there. Is it an “apartment” where extraterrestrials are living the good life and getting to know humanity by watching every episode of Star Trek that has ever been produced? Or, perhaps it’s a secret scientific facility where researchers are finally going to figure out where socks go when they disappear from your laundry room, which of course needs alien technology to figure out.

If you want to go check it out for yourself … Don’t! Wright-Patterson is still an active Air Force Base and the lat time I checked, they have bigger guns (and a lot more of them) than I do. Then again, my gun won’t shoot a bullet through a stick of butter, unless its been melted or … ok, all I have is a squirt gun, so beware neighborhood kids intent on TPing my house … again … (sigh).

Further Tales of Project Blue Book

In 1978, a new television show was produced called Project UFO that chronicled the adventures (for lack of a better word) of Jake (William Jordan) and Harry (Caskey Swaim) as Project Blue Book investigators looking into UFO sightings. (In the second season, Jake was replaced by Ben (Edward Winter) who otherwise did the same job. Throughout the episode, the pair would investigate a UFO sighting, and in the end everything would be all wrapped up as the following words appeared on the screen on top of the USAF logo: “The United States Air Force, after twenty-two years of investigations, concluded that none of the unidentified flying objects reported and evaluated posed a threat to our national security.” It is also worth noting that one or two former Project Blue Book workers served as technical advisors for the show.

A few years later, Project Blue Book would feature prominently in the second season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. I’m pretty sure that happened, but honestly that show is really weird and hard to follow sometimes. But, I’m pretty sure it’s in there somewhere.

In 1980, ABC decided to produce a spin-off of Battlestar Galactica which they called … (bonus points for creativity) … Galactica 1980. (Seriously? That’s the best they could do?) The show didn’t reference Project Blue Book because of course they didn’t. But, every episode of the series ended with the quote, “the U.S. Air Force’s 1969 Project Blue Book findings that UFOs are not proven to exist and “are not a threat to national security”  … Sound familiar?

Finally, starting in 2019 (and concluding after its second season) The History Channel produced a serial drama called Project Blue Book that, according to the show, told the real story of Project Blue Book. Then again … this is the same network that produced shows like Ancient Aliens that suggested that ETs built the Egyptian pyramids and that produced a fake documentary on a captured Bigfoot. And if you’re wondering about the historical accuracy of Project Blue Book … (sigh) … they couldn’t even decide on how to spell Ken’s (a major character) last name … was it ‘Kehoe” or “Keyhoe” because it can’t be both.

I suppose the most surprising thing … and this is truly mind boggling … Project Blue Book was referenced in the hit Fox series The X-Files exactly 0 Times. How is that even possible?