Naval History and Heritage Command

High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect—a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) [known today as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)]. In the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet and military aircraft like the B-47s operated at altitudes below 40,000 feet. Consequently, once U-2s started flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet, air traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports.

Such reports were most prevalent in the early evening hours from pilots of airliners flying from east to west. When the sun dropped below the horizon of an airliner flying at 20,000 feet, the plane was in darkness. But, if a U-2 was airborne in the vicinity of the airliner at the same time, its horizon from an altitude of 60,000 feet was considerably more distant, and, being so high in the sky, its silver wings would catch and reflect the rays of the sun and appear to the airliner pilot, 40,000 feet below, to be fiery objects. Even during daylight hours, the silver bodies of the high- flying U-2s could catch the sun and cause reflections or glints that could be seen at lower altitudes and even on the ground. At this time, no one believed manned flight was possible above 60,000 feet, so no one expected to see an object so high in the sky.

Not only did the airline pilots report their sightings to air traffic controllers, but they and ground-based observers also wrote letters to the Air Force unit at Wright Air Development Command in Dayton charged with investigating such phenomena. This, in turn, led to the Air Force's Operation Blue Book. Based at Wright-Patterson, the operation collected all reports of UFO sightings. Air Force investigators then attempted to explain such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena. Blue Book investigators regularly called on the [Central Intelligence] Agency's Project staff in Washington to check reported UFO sightings against U-2 flight logs. This enabled the investigators to eliminate a majority of the UFO reports, although they could not reveal to the letter writers the true cause of the UFO sightings. U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.

From Gregory W. Pendlow and Donald E. Welzenbach. The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974. Central Intelligence Agency, 1998, pp. 72-73.

***** 

Additional Resources

• FBI—Project Blue Book
• FBI—UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo
• National Archives—The Investigation of UFOs
• Maj. Gen. John A. Samford’s Statement on “Flying Saucers,” Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
• Air Force Declassification Office: UFOs 

Selected Imagery