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
Extract of Letter from AFCRL, dated 15 September 1950, Subject: Status of Project Twinkle TO: Commanding General Air Materiel Command Attn: MCREEP-4 Major J. W. Kodis Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio "If no fire balls are observed in the next six month period, it is recommended that the project be discontinued. In a phenomenon as sporadic as the fire balls appear to be, it is felt that at least one year is required in order to establish whether their occurrence is or is not a seasonal phenomenon. 4. There is considerable doubt in the minds of some of the project personnel that this is a natural phenomenon. As long as a reasonable doubt exists, it is not wise to discontinue entirely the observations. Dr. Whipple's suggestion that these may be moon reflections on small clouds cannot be discounted. That fire balls have been observed in the past cannot be discounted due to the reliability of several witnesses. It may be considered significant that fire balls have ceased abruptly as soon as a systematic watch was set up At present it does not appear likely that the next six months of observations will yield any more information than the first six months, but it is felt that even negative information may be significant. 5. It is requested that a six month extension of the Land Air contract be negotiated. It is also requested that the spectrographic equipment abandoned by Holloman Air Force Base due to lack of personnel be turned over to Land Air for operation in the next six month period. At the conclusion of the six month extension, an evaluation of the observations will be accomplished by this Directorate and recommendations as to the future conduct of this project will be forwarded to your command."
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.