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.
reported at 50K at about 60 $ ^{\circ} $ to 110 $ ^{\circ} $ ; steadily rising, is also indicative of weather balloon.
No date given; very little information; cannot determine object.
Po. 194. Definite Identity established by K.I.T.
No. 195: Very little information, only radar pipe, cannot determine if weather balloon or rope.
No. 196. Radar scope observation only; object travelling directly into wind. Cannot determine if balloon, but unlikely.
No. 197: Almost certainly the coast discovered by the Sydney astronomer. No balloon could have reached highsided at the time the object was sighted in much as the sighting time and release time were almost simultaneous.
No. 196: So visual observation; radar blip moving at high speed and constantly charging direction. If radar report is accurate, couldn't possibly be a balloon.
No. 199: Find, time and number of objects sighted, rule out possibility of weather balloons.
No. 200: Definitely not weather balloon. Course southerly, wind almost due North at all levels. Only station releasing balloon in this area is North of Crescent City.
No. 201. Pilot balloons sounding released from Azores station at 0900 I. Time of sight "about" that time. Description sounds very much like lighted pilot balloon sounding. Only discrepancy is speed which is reported from 25 U.P.H. to 800 M.P.H. If the lower speed is our- root, object may be almost certainly assumed to be a weather balloon.
No. 202: Time of sighting was five hours after last scheduled release time for any rawin or pilot balloon sounding, thus discounting a balloon leak, would put it far too high for easy sighting. Definitely not a weather balloon.
No. 203. Again last scheduled release was over five hours prior to sighting. Only possibility, and a definitely unlikely one, is a lighted balloon falling in flames from an extremely high altitude.
## No. 204: Texas.
No. 205. To date given on this, therefore, impossible to check wind flow pattern. Time, two hours after scheduled release time for Kansas City, Coluabla, and St. Louis, No. balloons. 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.