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 380°, a, b, c - increase of Basin, Maryland 10 December 1943 there is no astronomical explanation for the object observed in this issue. The similarity of the incident to 172 is striking, and it suggests a common origin for the objects. The two incidents were reported by a north and a half and by half a continent. The hours of observation were about the same. It may be significant that ground observers in each incident did not report the ocular tautities described by air observers, and it is tempting to hazard the guess that such tautities were largely the result of relative motion. It should be tilted whether a lighted balloon caught in the proy wash could give the appearance of a rapidly moving aircraft. In fact, this tilted observer believes that it will be an interesting experiment to have a typical lighted balloon enclosed by aircraft at night, with a spectator observer along to record apparent relative tautities of the balloon. (It is not clear whether the two observers in this incident who reported ervasive tectias were in the same plane, or not, but it is preacme that they were.)
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.