Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 (Analysis of Reports of Unidentified Aerial Objects)

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INTRODUCTION
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In June, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman and
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private pilot, publicly reported the now-famous sighting of a chainlike
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formation of disc-shaped objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. Result­
ing newspaper publicity of this incident caught the public interest, and,
shortly thereafter, a rash of reports of unidentified aerial objects spawned
the term "flying saucers". During the years since 1947, many reports of
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unidentified aerial objects have been received by the Air Force from many
and diverse sources.
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The unfortunate term "flying saucer", or "flying disc", because of
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its widespread and indiscriminate use, requires definition. Many defini­
tions have been offered, one of the best being that originated by Dr. J.
Allen Hynek, Director of the Emerson McMillin Observatory of The Ohio
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State University, who has taken a scientific interest in_the problem of
unidentified aerial objects since 1949. Dr. Hynek' s definition of the term
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is "any aerial phenomenon or sighting that remains unexplained to the
viewer at least long enough for him to write a report about it11 ( 1). Dr. Hynek,
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elaborating on his definition, says, "Each flying saucer, so defined, has
associated with it a probable lifetime. It wanders in the field of public in­
spection like an electron in a field of ions, until I captured' by an explana­
tion which puts an end to its existence as a I flying saucer' 11 ( 1).
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This definition would be applicable to any and all of the sightings
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which remained unidentified throughout this study. However, the term
"flying saucers" shall be used hereafter in this report to mean a novel,
airborne phenomenon, a manifestation that is not a part of or readily ex­
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plainable by the fund of scientific knowledge known to be possessed by the
Free World.
This would include such items as natural phenomena that are
not yet completely understood, psychological phenomena, or intruder air­
craft of a type that may be possessed by some source in large enough
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numbers so that more than one independent mission may have been flown
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and reported. Thus, these phenomena are of the type which should have
been observed and reported more than once.
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Since 1947, public interest in the subject of unidentified aerial objects
fluctuated more or less within reasonable limits until the summer of 1952,
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when the frequency of reports of sightings reached a peak, possibly stimu­
lated by several articles on the subject in leading popular magazines.
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Early in 1952, the Air Force's cumulative study and analysis of
reported sightings indicated that the majority of reports could be accounted
for as misinterpretations of known objects ( such as meteors, balloons, or
aircraft), a few as the result of mild hysteria, and a very few as the result
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of unfamiliar meteorological phenomena and light aberrations. However,
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(1) Hynek, J. A.• "Unusual Aerial Phenomena"• Journal of the Optical Society of America. 43 (4).
pp 311-314, April, 1953.
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