Spy-plane secrecy fed UFO reports
CIA, 1954.
This is a CIA History Staff study of the U-2 and OXCART spy plane programs, and its UFO relevance comes from a section explaining that high altitude flights by those aircraft caused most UFO reports in the late 1950s and 1960s. It offers one of the archive's strongest ordinary explanations, since secret planes the public did not know about naturally produced strange sightings. That does not account for every report, but it shows how secrecy itself can manufacture UFOs.
open the original, on war.gov ↗ Connections
- U-2 and OXCART programs strong linkThe CIA history says secret high-altitude aircraft helped generate UFO reports.
- Blue Book turned sightings into statistics strong linkThe CIA history says secret reconnaissance flights accounted for many reports in the Air Force UFO era.
- Blue Book turned sightings into statistics strong linklater intelligence history offers mundane explanations for some Blue Book-era reports