Australian Dept of Defense Scientific and Intel Aspects of the UFO Problem

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4.

Headquarters USAF will release summaries of evaluated data to the public.

9.53 When the head of Project Blue Book departed, the staff was reduced to just one airman (first-class). All instrumentation plans had been negated except for diffraction cameras which had been shown to be useless.

1.12.53 The distribution of 275 diffraction-grating cameras (200 to U.S. bases and 75 to overseas bases) was completed.

17.2.54 Airline pilots at a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood were coerced by military intelligence using JANAP 146 to agree to not informing the public of their sightings, and confine their reporting to official channels.

15.5.54 USAF Chief of Staff, General Nathan Twining, stated "The best brains in the Air Force are working on this problem of Unidentified Flying Objects, trying to solve this riddle". General Twining, was not referring to Project Blue Book.

10.6.54 Deputy Commander of Intelligence at ATIC, Colonel O'Mara, stated that more than a thousand people were working on the problem.

2.2.55 William P. Lear, Chairman of Lear Inc., Santa Monica stated that because of flying saucers, serious efforts were being made in the U.S. to prove the existence of anti-gravitational forces.

23.8.55 Revealed that the U.S. Government had taken over the Canadian Avro 'flying saucer' project. This was a circular aerofoil powered by jets and designed to take-off and land vertically, hover, travel at 1500 mph and change direction rapidly. The design specifications for performance and shape were clearly directly related to UFO reporting. The project was started in 1951-52 and in 1954 after $400,000 had been spent, the Canadian Government withdrew its financial backing. When the U.S. assumed control over the project it imposed a high level of security, preventing even Canadian officials from inspecting the premises. At the press release meeting on 25 October 1955 for the Special Report No. 14, photographs of a drawing of the proposed version showed a typical flying disc.

25.10.55 Release of Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 dated 5 May 1955. The report was originally compiled by Project Blue Book research consultants who analysed 3,200 reports out of 4,000 received by the end of 1952. These results were used to brief the Robertson panel in Jan. 1953. To this basic 316 page report, a 3 page so-called "summary" has been added dealing mainly with the 1953-55 period and dismissing UFO's as mainly misidentifications. The more uncomfortable conclusions of the main report were concealed. Only 100 copies of the main report were distributed on a restricted non-public basis (the only Australian copy was destroyed by the RAAF in 1959) whereas copies of the misleading "summary" were freely available to press and public.

National Archives of Australia

NAA: A13693, 3092/2/000