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U-2s, UFOs, and Project Blue Book
A United States Coast Guard photographer, Shell R. Alpert, took a photograph that allegedly shows unidentified flying objects flying in a “V” formation at the Salem, Massachusetts, air station at 9:35 a.m. on 16 July 1952, through a window screen. (Official U.S. Coast Guard photograph: 5554. Library of Congress Control Number: 2007680837)
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
- CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–90
- CIA “X-Files”
- National Security Agency—UFO Documents Index
- FBI—Project Blue Book
- FBI—UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo
- FBI—How to Investigate a Flying Saucer
- National Archives—The Investigation of UFOs
- Maj. Gen. John A. Samford’s Statement on “Flying Saucers,” Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
- NASA—UFO No Longer Unidentified: Apollo 16
- Air Force Declassification Office: UFOs
Selected Imagery
Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) captured by astronauts from Apollo 16 near the moon, April 27, 1972. After an analysis was conducted, “All of the evidence in this analysis is consistent with the conclusion that the object in the Apollo 16 film was the EVA (spacewalk) floodlight/boom. There is no evidence in the photographic record to suggest otherwise.” NASA photograph taken from video footage.
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