Documents / Report

Project Twinkle Final Report 1951 (PDF)

KLAS · 16 pages · text by OCR

The Project Twinkle Final Report, approved 27 November 1951 by Louis Elterman of the Air Force Geophysics Research Division's Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, describes a camera and observation program begun in 1950 to investigate green fireballs and other light phenomena over New Mexico, at Vaughn and Holloman AFB. It says the findings were essentially negative and puts most sightings down to aircraft, balloons, birds, planets, meteors or clouds. It recommends no further spending, with meteor camera film to be checked instead.

  • p. 2 …keep in connection with one of our meteor studies a sharp eye on anything unusual along…
  • p. 8 …Even during the meteor shower of 11-12 August 1951, no alarming reports were received. However…
  • p. 11 …Many of the sightings are attributable to natural phenomena such as flight of birds, planets, meteors…
  • p. 12 …Whipple made a careful study of meteor photographs taken in New Mexico on 35 nights when…
  • p. 13 …Whipple will have completed the installation of two 18-inch Schmidt cameras for meteor studies. The…
  • p. 16 …Investigators believed this to be a meteor. - Report from four Los Alamos personnel of very bright…
# UNCLASSIFIED

Summary of Recent Aerial Phenomena Reports from 17th OSI District

11 Nov. 1950 - Reports of a large-sized balloon. It was determined that this was released by General Mills. The balloon subsequently was recovered.

13 Jan. 1951 - Report from ten Los Alamos employees. Tear shaped object with small tail; very bright appearance; descended slowly; sky lighted up for about 1 sec; observation time 05:00.

16 Feb. 1951 - Aerial object reported in the vicinity of Holloman AFB. This turned out to be a General Hills balloon functioning for Project "Skyhook".

19 Feb. 1951 - A C-54 pilot reported a green flare or rocket observed in the vicinity of Rodeo, N.M. Its motion was vertical and passed the plane at 9000 ft. Investigators believed this to be a meteor.

- Report from four Los Alamos personnel of very bright object crossing sky. Also observed by two Kirtland AFB pilots who reported this as a meteor; time - 14:30; reported by Dr. La Paz to be a detonating fire-ball. No fragments recovered.

About this file

Report, cited by the archive. 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. 16 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.