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who is now a rocket expert.
It was an impressive collection of top scientific talent.
During the first two days of the meeting I reviewed our findings for the scientists. Since June 1947, when the first UFO report had been made, ATIC had analyzed 1,593
UFO reports. About 4,400 had actually been received, but all except 1,593 had been immediately rejected for analysis. From our studies, we estimated that ATIC received
reports of only 10 percent of the UFO sightings that were made in the United States, therefore in five and a half years something like 44,000 UFO sightings had been
made.
Of the 1,593 reports that had been analyzed by Project Blue Book, and we had studied and evaluated every report in the Air Force files, we had been able to explain a
great many. The actual breakdown was like this:
Type |
Known |
Probable |
Possible |
Total |
Balloons |
1.57% |
4.99% |
11.95% |
18.51% |
Aircraft |
0.98% |
7.74% |
3.04% |
11.76% |
Astronomical Bodies |
2.79% |
4.01% |
7.40% |
14.20% |
Other |
Searchlights on clouds, birds, blowing paper, inversions, reflections, etc |
4.21% |
Hoaxes |
- |
1.66% |
Insufficient Data |
In addition to those initially eliminated |
22.72% |
Unknowns |
- |
26.94% |
By using the terms "Known," "Probable," and "Possible," we were able to differentiate how positive we were of our conclusions. But even
in the "Possible" cases we were, in our own minds, sure that we had identified the reported UFO.
And who made these reports? Pilots and air crews made 17.1 percent from the air. Scientists and engineers made 5.7 percent, airport control tower operators made an
even 1.0 percent of the reports, and 12.5 percent of the total were radar reports. The remaining 63.7 percent were made by military and civilian observers in
general.
The reports that we were interested in were the 26.94 percent or 429 "Unknowns", so we had studied them in great detail. We studied the reported colors of
the UFO's, the shapes, the directions they were traveling, the times of day they were observed, and many more details, but we could find no significant pattern or trends.
We did find that the most often reported shape was