US Report US Air Force, Battelle Memorial Institute
Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 is released
On 25 October 1955 the US Air Force issued a press release accompanied by the summary of Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, a statistical study of sighting reports dated 5 May 1955 and first issued in May 1955 in 100 copies with restricted distribution. The text supplied is the July 1966 third edition published by Dr Leon Davidson, which reproduces the full text of the report and some of its tables alongside early Air Force press releases, the 1953 CIA panel report and Davidson's own analysis. Davidson states his belief that the CIA was responsible for much UFO publicity. The reproduced tables classify each year's cases as balloon, astronomical, aircraft, insufficient information, unknown and other categories.
1 document·5 points·1 story
- The publishing history gives the original Air Force issue as 100 copies with restricted distribution in May 1955, and the report itself is dated May 5, 1955.
- The report's summary accompanied the Air Force press release of October 25, 1955.
- Davidson published a first edition of 1000 copies in December 1956, a second in October 1957, and a third edition with Ramsey-Wallace Corp. in July 1966.
- A reproduced table records 303 cases evaluated as Unknown for 1952, or 20.2 per cent, against 39 (23.0 per cent) in 1950 and 33 (27.3 per cent) in 1951.
- The coding scheme rated observer and report reliability and assigned a final identification, including categories for insufficient information and unknown.
Documents
- Report Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report 14 (Hynek's annotated copy) Center for UFO Studies· 139 pp.
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