Just A Simple Little Form...

The form sent to witnesses was a complex and sometimes intimidating one that more than once frustrated would be witnesses. Many of the non-returned forms, I suspect, were as much from the income tax file like headache the form engendered. For non-technical witnesses, in an era when finishing high school was still a dream for many adults, the probing questions would have put them off. Add to that the intimidation factor of a U.S. Military uniformed presence or "men from the government" and the recipe was clearly going to fail. In addition, those investigators were weighing each witness for the overall reliability of character, clearly expressed and well thought out answers delivered in a determined and assured voice, and people of education or technical experience. If you hesitated, seemed a little vague on a point, or said something they were taught to refuse to accept, your witness statement was questioned and the statement downgraded.

Here are some of the base knowledge a witness had to be able to convey:

Take a walk outside and look for an airplane in the sky, locate it using the two illustrations here, can you assign it elevation, arrive at an azimuth, estimate its speed?  What was the weather like, how fast was the wind blowing, what was the air temperature, upper air cloud status?

Below are some of the early - shorter - forms.  At one time there were as many as 16 pages to this form sent out for more detailed responses. Often, very often, despite the details the files were labeled as having "insufficient data to make a determination."

One file contains a transcript of a phone interview of Dr. J. Allen Hynek with two witnesses, young men in the 16-30 age range, and it is a model of how to conduct an interview. Dr. Hynek understood breaking down what was needed into terms or experiences "normal" people could readily understand. The Air Force, from the later files and their letters, sometimes were frustrated by his methods and his conclusions based on merging witness statements with science to arrive at non- AF approved potential conclusions. What a difference there might have been to the whole UFO subject  - and the state of global science itself - had men like Hynek been allowed to fully - completely - explore the sightings, their causes (when man-made) and use science to arrive at local possibilities