In late December 1951, Captain Edward J.
Ruppelt met with a group based in Columbus,
Ohio. Ruppelt wanted their experts to assist
them in making the Air Force UFO study more
scientific, starting with a standardized
reporting form. Beginning in late March 1952,
the Institute started analyzing existing
sighting reports and encoding about 30 report
characteristics onto IBM punched cards for
computer analysis. The classified version was
completed in late 1953; a declassified version
was published for government use only in 1955
by the Air Technical Intelligence Center.
Documents in the Blue Book file make it clear
that the contractor was the Battelle Memorial
Institute, probably because of its proximity
to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base ("home" of
the Air Technical Intelligence Center, the
parent organization of Project Blue Book) and
because of its uniquely large (at that time)
computing facility. The project carefully
analyzed 3,201 sightings that occurred between
June, 1947 and December, 1952. Of these, 21.5%
were listed as "unknown." The sightings were
ranked according to credibility of the
observer and quality of the information
supplied. Four classification were used:
Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor. (*) Of the 213
Excellent sightings, 33% were "unknown"
whereas for the 435 Poor sightings only 17%
were "unknown." (TAB C -2). The final report
started out as 300 pages and was later
sanitized down to about a hundred pages. For
more details see synopsis and analyses by
researchers below.
Papers and
Commentaries
Project Blue Book Special
Report No. 14 (Full report, Project 1947,
SIGN Historical Group)
UFOs and Government: Blue
Book Special Report 14 (Michael Swords)
youtube.com/watch?v=5KfvLqjxx_I
(Stanton Friedman/YouTube)
Bluebook/Scientific_Study_of_UFOs.ppt
(Bruce Maccabee)
Air Force Figures Tell Real
Story: 88.79% Unexplained (Fran Ridge) *
Special Report 14:
Insufficient Data Cases (Brad Sparks)
Intelligence Summary