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.
Incident 7141 - Keola, South Dakota - 30 June 1948 The description given here obviously does not answer to that of a star, or of any other astronomical body. In all probability the object was a cluster of balloons, carrying, perhaps, cosmic ray apparatus. This would account for the starlike appearance and the eventual breaking up into parts.
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.