Documents / Report
This declassified U.S. Air Force file contains the final report of Project Twinkle, dated 27 November 1951 and written by Louis Elterman of the Geophysics Research Division, together with related correspondence. The project was set up to investigate the green fireballs and other light phenomena around Holloman AFB and Vaughn, New Mexico, and it was run with Askania cameras. The report calls its findings essentially negative and recommends no further funding. In March 1952 the Directorate of Intelligence declined to declassify it.
“Nature”12 pages
# UNCLASSIFIED It should be noted that Dr. Whipple made a careful study of meteor photographs taken in New Mexico on 35 nights when observations were reported. None of the photographs revealed the presence of unusual sky phenomena. Finally, the overall picture obtained from the year of vigilance and inquiry does not permit a conclusive opinion concerning the aerial phenomena of interest. The comparatively high incidence of the phenomena since 1948 does not necessarily indicate that the objects are man-made. It is conceivable that the earth may be passing through a region in space of high meteoric population. Also, the sun-spot maxima in 1948 perhaps in some way may be a contributing factor. 6. Recommendations Since the findings to date cannot be considered conclusive, it appears that the following recommendations would be pertinent:
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. 29 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.