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.
## INCLASSIFIED Incident p67 -- near Placerville, California -- 14 August 1947 If details of the observers' statement are accurate, it would be difficult to assign an astronomical origin to the object seen in this incident. There are a few statements which, taken alone, strongly suggest that a meteor was observed: high rate of speed, "messed to be in a shallow dive," white smoke trail, "disappeared in a puff of dark gray smoke." However, unless the description of the object (4-6 feet long and 10-14 inches wide) and the estimated distance (less than 1000 feet) are illusory, the meteorio explanation will not hold.
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.