EVOLVING ATTITUDES

 OFFICIAL AIR FORCE STATEMENTS ON UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS (UFO Investigator, NICAP, January 1958, pg.25)

This article was a recap of the official statements made through the years via newspapers and official statement.

In response to the June 27, Kenneth Arnold sighting, the Pentagon stated:” We have no idea what these objects are, if they actually exist.”

July 5, an Air Corp spokesman at the Pentagon said: “No investigation is needed. The saucers are only hallucinations."

July 5, an Air Corps spokesman at Wright Field said: “The Air Corp is making a careful investigation.”

[Note: Obviously, the official line was in some flux at this time. ]

July 7, Air Corp public relations spokesman at the Pentagon: “We can’t ignore this, too many reliable pilots are telling the same story- flat, round objects, able to outmaneuver ordinary planes and faster than any we have….we have a jet at Muroc and fighters at Portland standing by…”

July 7, An unnamed and unknown source at the Pentagon, made a statement to the Associated Press claiming the unknowns may be one of three things: “solar reflections off low hanging clouds”, “small meteors which break up, their crystals catching the rays of the sun”, or “icing conditions could have formed large hailstones and they might have flattened out and glided a bit, giving the impression of horizontal movement…”

[Note: Ruppelt cites this as an unknown source and notes the science was laughed at for this hasty statement generated by an unknown office and using a person labeling themself an Air Corp spokesman]

July 7, the Pentagon, perhaps a different spokesman, said: “Army Air Force Intelligence, since July 2, have been investigating reports of unidentified objects…no such phenomena can be explained away by any experiments of the Army Air Force…”

[Note: This appears to be an untruth, documents seem to indicate that since reports were being received earlier in the year, some level of investigation was going on, and this was quickly labeled "SIGN" and put to official work within a short time of the creation of a special study]

July 8, Air Corps statement at the Pentagon, “we are investigating a flying disc report by Navy rocket engineer C.T. Zohn and three other rocket scientists.”

[Note: This is also the day the Roswell disc story will hit the wires later in the afternoon. In the July 9 editions papers are giving the "balloon" story that same day Brigadier General George F. Schulgen is meeting with agents with the FBI to solicit their help because of a "fear" of some generating these "flying disc stories" for political reasons. There is a strong emphasis on this communist link by Schulgen. He wants the two to work together with the FBI doing investigations of the early stories seeking motivations. Later, however, a communication to commanders of bases comes to the attention of the FBI indicating that they would leave the "ash can" level events for the FBI to investigate. The other cases the AAF would investigate. Hoover nixes any working partnership.]

Sept. 23, Official report from ATIC to General Vandenburg, “the reported phenomena are real.”

Within two years the tune had changed as the official line was established.  Most everyone was now singing in unison on the UFO topic. In December of 1949 the Air Force press release proclaimed: “The Air Force has discontinued its special project investigation and evaluating reported “flying saucers”…The reports are the result of misinterpretation of various conventional objects, a mild form of mass hysteria, or hoaxes, and continuance of the project is unwarranted.”

This was the official line through 1950, even in the face of the report of Cdr. R.B. McLaughlin, USN, who when he was an officer in charge of guided missile tests at White Sands Proving Grounds reported seeing an elliptical object over 100 feet long, tracked at 18,000 mph at an altitude of 56 miles (March 1950).

The published statement of Col. Harold E. Watson, Chief of ATIC, in Nov. 1950: “Behind nearly every report tracked down stands a crackpot, a religious crank, a publicity hound, or a malicious practical joker.” At the start of 1951 the rhetoric had calmed down to state” hallucinations, mistakes, hoaxes, or natural phenomena.”