by Dan Wright
October 4, 1959
At Quezon, Philippine Islands, for 15 minutes beginning at 9:25 p.m., a USN lieutenant and a chief petty officer watched a round or oval object fly straight and level as its appearance changed from red to red-orange. 27
October 6, 1959
At 8:15 p.m., in Lincoln, Nebraska, a lieutenant colonel (in Selective Service) and his wife observed a round, yellow-white light execute several abrupt turns before it sped away. Their sighting lasted two minutes. Project Blue Book declared the object unknown.28
October 19, 1959
At Plainville, Kansas, 9:25 p.m., a USAF captain and engineering instructor at the US Air Force Academy was flying a T-33 jet trainer when a bright yellowish light approached head-on. The pilot used an evasive maneuver to avoid a collision and the light dimmed.29 No other conventional aircraft was reported in the vicinity.
November 16, 1959
Commencing about 8:00 p.m., at a Czechoslovakian Air Force base, two officers were driving when their engine suddenly died. They then saw an odd ring of light crossing the night sky. Concurrently, pilots and ground personnel watched a “flaming ball” fly silently at great speed across the terrain, execute a 90-degree turn, then leave the area. Tower radar tracked its movements. Moments later it returned and stopped 100 meters over a runway. Personnel described it as a disc, at least 150 meters in diameter, with a ring of light around the perimeter. For reasons left unexplained, none of the jet aircraft present were able to take off. After hovering for two minutes, the machine shot into the night.30
Chapter 13
1960: What's This All About?
As what would be a tumultuous decade societally got underway, genuinely unidentified flying objects would not stay away.
The 1960s awoke with an unusual turn. One or more anonymous CIA staffers, on plain sheets of paper, drafted ten instructions, “Guidance to UFO Photographers,” then eight more titled “UFO Photographic Information Sheet.” These were practical tips, from setting the camera's shutter speed and focal length to physically changing one's shooting angle and including terrain in the viewing frame. Most of these instructions remain relevant today. Both documents were prepared in the first week of January 1960 and seemed to appear in CIA files out of nowhere—and out of context. The first sheet especially provided tips to maximize one's chance of capturing imagery of an unknown object that would pass muster with skeptics:1
Set the focus scale of the lens to infinity.
Use fast film. (400 ASA/ISO or higher is more sensitive, permits photography in low light, allows the freezing of motion, minimizes the effect of camera shake, and allows a large depth of field. In all, fast film can result in sharper pictures.)2
For moving objects, set the shutter speed no slower than 1/100 second.
Keep the camera still during exposure.
Take several shots; include the terrain if possible. Note: A film processing technique called “edge enhancement” compares the relative focus of the unknown's outline with other known objects in the frame, for example, a tree limb or telephone pole, to aid in determining the unknown's distance from the camera.
If the object is a few hundred feet away or closer, photograph it from different angles, moving 40–60 feet between shots. If a mile or more away, drive toward it between shots. “This establishes what is known as a base line and is helpful in technical analysis of your photography.”
After taking the UFO shots, take overlapping pictures of the surroundings while swiveling 360 degrees.
Process the original negative or negatives with care.
Make a second negative from the original.
Any reproduction for analysis should be from the entire original frame including borders and sprocket holes.
Accompanying the “Guidance to UFO Photographers” draft and likewise issued in the first week of January 1960 was another single-sheet draft document (likely by the same author or authors), a form for completion by the photographer titled “UFO Photographic Information Sheet.”3 This form was composed of eight areas of questioning—strikingly similar to the elements covered in the original MUFON Photographic Cases form of a decade later:
Camera model and manufacturer, lens number, and other data printed around the lens. Also, if known, the focal length of the camera lens and any external lens used.
Date the pictures were taken.
Time of day the pictures were taken “(to the nearest minute if you can).”
Direction in which the pictures were taken.
Using a roadmap or the like to illustrate, the photographer's location and direction faced when taking the pictures.
Using a map or sketch, the direction faced for each of the 360-degree ground-orientation pictures.
Sketch of details of area where standing when photography was taken; include such things as telephone poles, fence posts, buildings, and the like.
Place where each original negative was processed and when.
To borrow a mid-century phrase uttered by plain folks in America, it's mighty curious that, at a time when CIA officials were trying to swear off UFOs, congratulating themselves on their dual impulses (to educate the public about observational errors and debunk the strongest cases by whatever means), amid that supposedly unified front lurked an outlier. Someone was seeking documented proof of a UFO. But what name or office might we ascribe? Someone from the Physics and Electronics (P&E) Division? Maybe he toiled in the Applied Science Division, the most recent unit in the Agency assigned UFO-related responsibilities. Or perhaps the person was not in the CIA at all but rather connected to the Air Force, the instructions emanating from Wright-Patterson or thereabouts. Project Blue Book was limping along as a USAF entity, as it were, so its lone officer may have doodled these drafts out of boredom. The record does not inform us who within the Defense Department was paying enough attention to UFOs to desire better photographs.
The research papers written by Dr. Thornton Page's freshman students (see page 143) had now been reviewed at OSI's Applied Science Division. Its chief, Wilton Lexow, penned a memo to the deputy assistant director at the OSI Collection Division on January 26. Lexow noted that most of the papers “reflect a solid intellectual attempt to evaluate the evidence.” He added, “It seems significant that no essentially new substantiating evidence emerged from this exercise.”4 Readers might be amused by Lexow's assertion that nothing groundbreaking was unearthed by a dozen or so 18-year-olds asked for the first time in their young lives to consider the UFO subject.
On February 28, 1960, United Press International reported on a new set of Air Force regulations released on Christmas Eve 1959. These were directed to air bases in particular and USAF personnel generally. In sending out the seven-page directive as an Operations and Training pamphlet, the Air Force's inspector general was forceful and clear: “Unidentified flying objects—sometimes treated lightly by the press and referred to as ‘flying saucers’—must be rapidly and accurately identified as serious USAF business.. .”5
The UPI article quoted Air Force statistics: Since 1947 it had investigated 6,312 reported sightings, including 183 in the latter six months of 1959. In citing those numbers, the Air Force inspector general implied that USAF's concern lay with the danger of foreign attack veiled as an extraterrestrial presence, not with ETs per se: “... [N]o physical or material evidence, not even a minute fragment of a so-called flying saucer has ever been found.”6
After learning of this new emphasis on an old policy, NICAP's retired Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter responded, “It is time for the truth to be brought out in open congressional hearings.” He insisted that, “behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFO's.”7
A separate take on the same topic was in print the next day, February 29, in the form of an editorial in the Telegram (city not shown).
The Air Force, it appears is in trouble again.... This time the complaintants [sic] are the flying saucer people. (NICAP) has charged that the Air Force real
ly believes in the existence of unidentified flying objects while, at the same time, it tries to kid the public into thinking that they are nonsense.
NICAP and similar groups had never made clear “why they believe that officialdom would sit on such information if they actually have it, or how, in the nature of things, they would be able to do so even if they wished.”8
Still another printed reaction to the Air Force's Operations and Training pamphlet appeared as an editorial on March 4 in the Journal (city not shown), “Flying Saucer Alert.” This item outlined the USAF's directive to commanders that UFOs were “serious business,” before expressing an opinion: It conveyed that a retired Navy admiral, Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter:
... charges that through official secrecy and ridicule many citizens are led to believe flying objects are nonsense. He says the Air Force has operated to hide the facts.... He had added, “We suspect the Air Force simply doesn't know the answer and hesitates unduly to alarm the public.”9
According to an Information Report from within the Soviet Union, sometime in 1959 in a desert region of Kazakhstan, “glittering” objects were frequently seen in the sky moving at high speed, accompanied by explosive sounds. Local Kazakhs and other tribesman abandoned the area out of superstition.10 Note: an aircraft reflecting sunlight and exceeding Mach 1 would be a potential explanation.
An FDD Note on the 17th of March concerned aerial objects seen and photographed in Sweden. This was an English translation of a March 8, 1960, article appearing in the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter, “Light in Sky New Satellite, Experts Believe.” On the morning of March 6, shortly after 5:15 a.m., a photographer in Norrtaelje, near Stockholm, captured on film two luminous objects, each remindful of a satellite, moving southeast. Suddenly both reversed direction. Minutes later a Bromma resident saw a light moving laterally that abruptly dropped straight down out of sight. That evening, shortly after 10:00 p.m., a light believed to be a satellite was spotted by an airliner and at an observatory.11 Note: Because satellites neither travel in pairs nor reverse direction, the initial sighting would necessitate a different headline. Either the witness misspoke or the event was truly anomalous.
On behalf of NICAP, Richard Hall offered commentary to The Hartford Times on June 9, 1960. He referred to having “documentary proof” of a “cover-up” by the Air Force in UFO reporting. A NICAP colleague, Dewey Fournet, claimed a 1948 USAF top secret intelligence estimate referred to the unknowns as “interplanetary spaceships.” Reluctance by Air Force brass to discuss the matter in detail made a meeting of minds difficult. Events involving US Navy personnel were also cited in the interview.12
In response to the suggestion of secret weaponry as the source of UFO reports, NICAP board member Roscoe Hillenkoetter, a retired Navy vice admiral and the CIA Director after World War II, addressed the question in a special NICAP bulletin. “I know that neither Russia nor this country had anything even approaching such high speeds and maneuvers.”13
A few days later on June 12, the Worcester Evening Gazette carried further, related remarks by Hillenkoetter: “The unknown objects are operating under intelligent control. It is imperative that we learn where the UFO's come from and what their purpose is.” He thereafter called for prompt and thorough congressional hearings on the matter.14
The writer of the article issued a broadside then posed accusatory questions.
In the light of the Air Force handling of the UFO matter, insisting against plain evidence to the contrary in certain cases that the UFOs can all be explained as familiar objects mistakenly identified, the question inevitably arises: Is the Air Force following a prearranged plan of public statements on the strange objects? Is the Air Force deliberately misleading the public?15
Perhaps in part from the heat brought by a growing list of clamoring news sources, on July 21, 1960, the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Defense brought a boatload of statistics on the Air Force experience relative to aerial anomalies, titling the work “Fact Sheet Air Force UFO Report.”
For the six months encompassing January through June 1960, 173 sighting reports reached the Air Force. Of those, 139 were analyzed, with 34 pending. Foreign countries—mostly in the Pacific and Far East—accounted for an additional 41 cases in that six-month period.
Of the 139 addressed, over a third (51) had insufficient evidence to render a conclusion. Among these discarded were 37 simply because they were single-witness sightings—comparable, in the Air Force's judgment, to a science experiment conducted only once.
The first half of 1959 tallied 175 reports. In the latter six months there were 189. Only one for the entire year was declared a hoax.16
Astronomical sightings were prominent in the spring of 1960 due to April's meteor shower and Jupiter's proximity in June. Refraction, diffraction, reflections, and illusions accounted for many mistaken reports. Other misidentifications resulted from a startling natural object, for example a meteoric fireball. A single report was of a satellite.
Objects reported as anomalous from 1947 through June 1960 totaled 6,523, highlighted by 1,501 in 1952, and 1,178 in 1957.
Analysis of the sighting reports was done by a group of open-minded scientists, engineers, and other professionals under USAF supervision. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek was the chief scientific consultant.
Identification categories were: balloons, aircraft, astronomical, other, insufficient data, satellites, and unidentified.
Reason suggested that some of the 4,000 balloons released daily across the country accounted for substantial numbers of misidentifications, alongside conventional aircraft—sun reflections, jet pods, vapor trails.
Under the “other” category: generalized reflections, searchlights, clouds, birds, kites, blimps, sun dogs, spurious radar returns, fireworks, flares, meteoric fireballs and bolides, ice crystals, and hoaxes.
A report would be listed as unidentified “when the description of the object and its maneuvers cannot be correlated with any known object or phenomenon.” Air Force Project Blue Book's Special Report #14, October 1955, determined that 3 percent of all reports remained unidentified.17
From 13 years in this peculiar pursuit (6,500 reports), the Department of Defense had reached five basic conclusions. No evidence suggested the reported objects: (a) were inimical or hostile, (b) were interplanetary spaceships, (c) represented technology or principles beyond present- day scientific knowledge, (d) threatened national security, or (e) left any fragment.
“[I]f more immediate detailed objective observational data could have been obtained on the unidentified or unexplained sightings, these, too, would have been explained satisfactorily.”18
The December 24, 1959, USAF Inspector General's Brief to all unit commanders stressed that “UFO reports are serious business since they are vitally involved in the Air Force's air defense mission.” They were to be evaluated quickly, the public was to be kept informed, and the reports were not to be classified. The Air Force was charged by UFO groups with possessing information proving the existence of interplanetary spaceships. That was untrue, DoD responded. Meanwhile, the costs associated with UFO investigations were difficult to tally.19
An August 5, 1960, news article in the Chicago Daily News reported that, according to a certain UFO enthusiast, the Senate majority leader and vice-presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson had issued a standing directive to the Senate Preparedness subcommittee to keep a “close watch” on UFO matters. The claim came from retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe, the NICAP director. He added that Johnson ordered “subcommittee staff to report to him any ‘significant’ sightings of saucers along with an analysis of the Air Force investigation of them ...” Keyhoe also said NATO's General L.M. Chassin had warned that “unrecognized UFO's could accidentally set off a war with Russia.”20
OSI's deputy assistant director, Philip Strong, replied to Deputy Assistant Director Cary for collection on August 31 regarding an inquiry by Congressman Gordon Scherer about certain photos supposedly taken on
January 16, 1958, aboard a Brazilian Navy ship off the coast of Trindade. They were soon shown on the popular morning Today Show with Dave Garroway. A viewer, Catherine Carter Golden, had sent the attached August 15, 1960, letter asking Representative Sherer about the validity of the photos. Strong wrote that photographic evaluation by the Naval Attaché confirmed the pictures were fakes. The person who snapped them was a known trick photographer, and no one else was present when he processed the film. Mrs. Golden had frequently written to the Air Force and others about UFOs.21
In a partially duplicative file from the same day, in addition to the Strong-Cary exchange, the reply to an internal note was included. In a letter of August 29 from USAF Major Lawrence J. Tacker, Air Force Office of Information Services, to Mrs. Golden, Tacker underscored the government's contention that the UFO photos purportedly taken from a Brazilian Navy ship in 1958 were the products of trick photography, a hoax.22
An Information Report had been prepared on March 11, 1958, by USN Captain M. Sunderland, Office of Naval Intelligence, titled “Brazil Navy—Flying Saucer Photographed from Almirante Saldanha.” The photos had created something of a sensation in the Brazilian press. On February 21, 1958, Rio de Janeiro dailies carried the images, allegedly taken a month earlier on January 16 from the deck of a Brazilian Navy ship anchored off the Trindade coast. The report stated that the photographer, Almiro Barauna, “has a long history of photographic trick shots and is well known for such items as false pictures of treasure on the ocean floor.” 23