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.
Loidens, 167 - Mokcand, India - b November 1944 This incident very likely has an astronomical explanation the object sighted was probably Venus. Venus rose on December 4 at about 3 a.m. and an hour later would have been a little south of east at an altitude of about 10°. Its magnitude was -2.4, or six times brighter than the brightest star in the sky. The photo-graph taken of the object closed does not control this hypothetical. It is unlikely that the object observed was the uplight comet (1640L) discovered one day earlier in the southern hemisphere, for this comet at that time was very far to the south and east, almost on the horizon, and was very much farther than Venus. If the object once here had been the comet, the persons observing it could lay claim to the first discovery. It was discovered one day later in Australia because of much more favorable location. Venus, of course was visible all during the motion of land in approximately the same position as that in which it was seen on the morning of November 2. It is also of interest to note that Mercury had its greatest western elongation on November 6, but it read just at the beginning of the morning twilight and would therefore have been just rising at the time of this insidert. Furthermore, Mercury was much less brilliant than Venus.
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.