Documents / Report
This August 1949 technical report from the US Air Force Air Materiel Command presents Project Grudge's investigation of unidentified flying objects through January 1949. Drawing on consultants including Dr. J. A. Hynek, Rand Corporation, the Air Weather Service and Dr. P. M. Fitts, it explains most of 244 incidents as balloons, aircraft, astronomical phenomena, hoaxes or psychological errors. It concludes the objects pose no direct threat to national security and recommends reducing the investigation in scope.
## UNCLASSIFIED Incident #49 - beyond Jekker Island - 12 September 1947 from the evidence at hand, it appears quite likely that the object observed was a fireball. Fireballs have been known to orange course abruptly when splitting. The reported orange to red dish hue from the previous color of inaundescent light, the length of time in sight, and the manner of disappearance all lend support to this hypothesis. At sunset one can expect relatively slow moving, nearly horizontal fireballs.
Report, from the classic collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 413 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.