UFO Encounters, Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations: AN “ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION”
By late July 1948 Project Sign investigators had come to an incredible conclusion: Visitors from outer space had arrived. They had begun with suspicions. Now they now had the proof. The proof was . . . well, it depends on which of two versions of the story is to be believed. In the better-known version, the proof arrived in the sky southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, at 2:45 a.m. on July 24, 1948. To Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, pilot and copilot respectively of an Eastern Airlines DC-3, the object at first looked like a distant jet aircraft to their right and just above them.
But it was moving awfully fast. Seconds later, as it streaked past them, they saw something that Whitted thought looked like “one of those fantastic Flash Gordon rocket ships in the funny papers.” It was a huge, tube-shaped structure, its fuselage three times the circumference of a B-29 bomber, and with two rows of square windows emanating white light. It was, Chiles would remember, “powered by some jet or other type of power shooting flame from the rear some 50 feet.” The object was also glimpsed by the one passenger who was not sleeping. After it passed the DC-3, it shot up 500 feet and was lost in the clouds at 6,000 feet altitude.
Although Chiles and Whitted didn’t know it at the time, an hour earlier a ground-maintenance crewman at Robins AFB, Georgia, had seen the same or an identical object. On July 20, observers in The Hague, the Netherlands, watched a comparable craft move swiftly through the clouds.
It took investigators little time to establish that no earthly missile or aircraft could have been responsible for these sightings. Moreover, with independent verification of the object’s appearance and performance, there seemed no question of the witnesses’ being mistaken about what they had seen. In the days following the sighting, Project Sign prepared an “estimate of the situation”—a thick document stamped TOP SECRET—that argued that this and other reliably observed UFOs could only be otherworldly vehicles. But when the estimate landed on the desk of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, he promptly rejected it on the grounds that the report had not proved its case.
In short order Project Sign’s advocates of extraterrestrial visitation were reassigned or encouraged to leave the service. The Air Force then embarked on a debunking campaign interrupted only for the brief period between 1951 and 1953 when Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, who took an open-minded approach, headed the official UFO project. Project Sign was succeeded by Project Grudge (1949-1952); Project Blue Book, established in March 1952, succeeded Project Grudge. Practically until the day the Air Force closed down Project Blue Book in December 1969, it denied that such a document had ever existed, even when former UFO-project officers swore they had seen or heard of it. No one could produce a copy of the document, however, because the Air Force had all copies burned.
At least one source disputes this account, on the authority of Capt. Ruppelt, who tells it in his memoir of his Project Blue Book years, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956).
Years after the original incidents, a retired AMC-assigned officer (now deceased) claimed that Project Sign prepared two drafts of the estimate. The first draft referred to what the officer remembered as a “physical evidence” case in New Mexico. When Vandenberg saw this reference, he demanded its removal. The second draft, with the offending paragraphs deleted, argued its case solely from eyewitness testimony—of which the Chiles/Whitted encounter was an impressive example. Vandenberg could now claim that, in the absence of physical evidence, no proof existed.
A long time would pass before civilian investigators learned of this New Mexico physical-evidence case. It would turn out to be one of the most important incidents—perhaps the most important incident—in UFO history. With these revelations would come the belated realization that ufology has two histories: a public one and a hidden one. But we’re getting ahead of our selves. . . .
MR. MOORE GOES TO WASHINGTON
Driving near Montville, Ohio, late on the evening of November 6, 1957, Olden Moore was startled to see a glowing disc, 50 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, come down along the roadside. He got out of his car and watched the landed UFO for the next 15 minutes. It was still there when he left to get his wife, but it was gone when they returned. Police and Civilian Defense investigators found both “footprints” and radioactivity at the site.
A few days later Moore disappeared. When he resurfaced, he would not say where he had been.
But in private conversations with ufologist C. W. Fitch, Moore claimed that Air Force officers had flown him to Washington, D.C., and hidden him away while they repeatedly interviewed him. Toward the end of his stay, the officers showed him a UFO film, apparently taken from a military plane, and said UFOs seemed to be of interplanetary origin. Moore then signed a document swearing him to secrecy.