The story of the UFO now goes back to late January 1949, the time when the Air Force was in the midst of the green fireball mystery. In another part of the country another odd series of events was taking place. The center of activity was a highly secret area that can't be named, and the recipient of the UFO's, which were formations of little lights, was the U.S. Army.

The series of incidents started when military patrols who were protecting the area began to report seeing formations of lights flying through the night sky. At first the lights were reported every three or four nights, but inside of two weeks the frequency had stepped up. Before long they were a nightly occurrence. Some patrols reported that they had seen three or four formations in one night. The sightings weren't restricted to the men on patrol. One night, just at dusk, during retreat, the entire garrison watched a formation pass directly over the post parade ground.

As usual with UFO reports, the descriptions of the lights varied but the majority of the observers reported a V formation of three lights. As the formation moved through the sky, the lights changed in color from a bluish white to orange and back to bluish white. This color cycle took about two seconds. The lights usually traveled from west to east and made no sound. They didn't streak across the sky like a meteor, but they were "going faster than a jet." The lights were "a little bigger than the biggest star." Once in a while the GI's would get binoculars on them but they couldn't see any more details. The lights just looked bigger.

From the time of the first sighting, reports of the little lights were being sent to the Air Force through Army Intelligence channels. The reports were getting to ATIC, but the green fireball activity was taking top billing and no comments went back to the Army about their little lights. According to an Army G-2 major to whom I talked in the Pentagon, this silence was taken to mean that no action, other than sending in reports, was necessary on the part of the Army.

But after about two weeks of nightly sightings and no apparent action by the Air Force, the commander of the installation decided to take the initiative and set a trap. His staff worked out a plan in record time. Special UFO patrols would be sent out into the security area and they would be furnished with sighting equipment. This could be the equipment that they normally used for fire control. Each patrol would be sent to a specific location and would set up a command post. Operating out of the command post, at points where the sky could be observed, would be sighting teams. Each team had sighting equipment to measure the elevation and azimuth angle of the UFO. Four men were to be on each team, an instrument man, a timer, a recorder, and a radio operator. All the UFO patrols would be assigned special radio frequencies.

The operating procedure would be that when one sighting team spotted a UFO the radio operator would call out his team's location, the location of the UFO in the sky, and the direction it was going. All of the other teams from his patrol would thus know when to look for the UFO and begin to sight on it. While the radio man was reporting, the instrument man on the team would line up the UFO and begin to call out the angles of elevation and azimuth. The timer would call out the time; the recorder would write all of this down. The command post, upon hearing the report of the UFO, would call the next patrol and tell them. They too would try to pick it up.

Here was an excellent opportunity to get some concrete data on at least one type of UFO. It was something that should have been done from the start. Speeds, altitudes, and sizes that are estimated just by looking at a UFO are miserably inaccurate. But if you could accurately establish that some type of object was traveling 30,000 miles an hour, even 3,000 miles an hour - through our atmosphere, the UFO story would be the biggest story since the Creation.

The plan seemed foolproof and had the full support of every man who was to participate. For the first time in history every GI wanted to get on the patrols. The plan was quickly written up as a field order, approved, and mimeographed. Since the Air Force had the prime responsibility for the UFO investigation, it was decided that the plan should be quickly coordinated with the Air Force, so a copy was rushed to them. Time was critical because every group of nightly reports might be the last. Everything was ready to roll the minute the Air Force said "Go."

The Air Force didn't O.K. the plan. I don't know where the plan was killed, or who killed it, but it was killed. Its death caused two reactions.

Many people thought that the plan was killed so that too many people wouldn't find out the truth about UFO's. Others thought somebody was just plain stupid. Neither was true. The answer was simply that the official attitude toward UFO's had drastically changed in the past few months. They didn't exist, they couldn't exist. It was the belief at ATIC that the one last mystery, the green fireballs, had been solved a few days before at Los Alamos. The fireballs were meteors and Project Twinkle would prove it. Any further investigation by the Army would be a waste of time and effort. This drastic change in official attitude is as difficult to explain as it was difficult for many people who knew what was going on inside Project Sign to believe. I use the words "official attitude" because at this time UFO's had become as controversial a subject as they are today. All through intelligence circles people had chosen sides and the two UFO factions that exist today were born.

On one side was the faction that still believed in flying saucers. These people, come hell or high water, were hanging on to their original ideas. Some thought that the UFO's were interplanetary spaceships. Others weren't quite as bold and just believed that a good deal more should be known about the UFO's before they were so completely written off. These people weren't a bunch of nuts or crackpots either. They ranged down through the ranks from generals and top grade civilians. On the outside their views were backed up by civilian scientists.

In early 1949 the term "new look" was well known. The new look in women's fashions was the lower hemlines, in automobiles it was longer lines. In UFO circles the new look was cuss 'em.

The new look in UFO's was officially acknowledged on February 11, 1949, when an order was written that changed the name of the UFO project from Project Sign to Project Grudge. The order was supposedly written because the classified name, Project Sign, had been compromised. This was always my official answer to any questions about the name change. I'd go further and say that the names of the projects, first Sign, then Grudge, had no significance. This wasn't true, they did have significance, a lot of it.

UFOs at Camp Hood: Became National Stockpile in 1948 (33 pages)

  Camp Hood/Killeen Base Reports (23 pages) - AFOSI/LaPaz Catalog (orig)

  March 2-4; Los Alamos/Then Killeen Base (21 pages)

March 8, 1949; Killeen Base, Camp Hood, TX (AFOSI Case 39) (BBU)
2 a.m. Army infantrymen in separate locations 1/2 mile apart sight different lights, one white seen by Payne, the other, by Cpl. Luke Sims, was of a yellowish red light in level flight crossing 60° of sky. (FOIA; FUFOR Index)

May 5, 1949; Ft. Bliss, TX (BBU 376)
11:40 a.m. Army officers Maj. Day [May?], Maj. Olhausen, Capt. Vaughn saw 2 oblong white discs, flying at about 200-250 mph, make a shallow turn. (Berliner)

Reports from Camp Hood - May 6,7,8, 1949 (17 pages) - BB Microfilm - Dan Wilson
  Camp Hood sightings: May 6 - July 7, 1949 (21 pages) - BB Microfilm - Dan Wilson
Camp Hood Reports: May and June 1949 (114 pages) - BB Microfilm - Dan Wilson

June 6, 1949; Killeen Base, Camp Hood, TX (BBU)
9:05-9:08 p.m. Williams, Jones and others in UFO observation and triangulation network tracked a hovering orange object about 30-70 ft in diameter, 2 mils angular size, 1 mile above ground, 3 miles S of the observation post, 4-1/2 miles S of the Plotting Center, which suddenly started moving in level flight then exploded in a shower of particles. (FOIA; FUFOR Index)

Report from Camp Hood/Killeen Base to Commanding General Eighth Air Force, Carswell AFB, Fort Worth, Texas, covering 23 reports of unnatural phenomena from March 6, 1949, through May 24, 1949.

August 15, 1949; Dallas, TX
4:15 pm. BB files. Two ladies observed four perfectly silver round flat discs flying in a straight line from southwest to southeast for three minutes.

February 2, 1950; 20 miles E. of Rock Springs, TX

February 11, 1950; Waco, TX
Aug. 25, 1951; Lubbock, TX
Listed as item 11 under photographic evidence in the Special Evidence section of NICAP's UFO Evidence, is the Lubbock Texas Lights.  These photographs by Carl Hart, Jr., show a V-formation of large circular objects. Capt. Ruppelt, head of Air Force Project Blue Book, reported that "In each photograph the individual lights in the formation shifted position according to a definite pattern." Main photograph reproduced in True, May 1954. Skeptics have always had a field day with this one because it seemed to be only a set of photographs, taken by a young, inexperienced photographer, of geese, later explained as moths. Little did anyone know that even the Air Force, including the professors who also witnessed the overflights, did not buy the explanations. In fact, it appears some people, alerted to UFO activity, saw birds; others saw UFOs. And the most damning evidence against birds, a professional photographer, with professional equipment and better film, could not capture lighted bellies of geese. And that's not all. A swept-back winged object was being seen around the country during the period and two radars confirmed an unknown. 

A B-50 aircraft of the 509th Bombardment Wing at 15,500 feet Radar observer, Captain James F. McClelland,  picked up unidentified object on the radar scope. Rate of closure three times that of B-29. Radar scope photos. Radar observer later reversed his first estimate of the "speed of closure" of the Unidentified Flying Object from 3 times that of a B-50 to that of a conventional fighter plane, after interrogation by a Wing Intelligence Officer. Members of the crews of both the lead aircraft and the aircraft flying the #4 position confirm the presence of the unidentified aircraft, both through visual sighting and its producing a return on the radar scope. For a long time all that was available was the scope photograph. On 16 September 2005 Dan Wilson located documents in the BB Archives, linked below. However, the report was re-evaluated by Tom DeMary and Brad Sparks (Sept 2005) and removed from Unknown status..

April 4, 1952; Duncanville, TX (BBU 1095)
8:30 p.m. (CST) USAF Cpl. Billy D. Greer and PFC John W. Harrington of the Radar Maintenance Section, 147th AC&W Sq, tracked unidentified target by FPS-10 radar first to the NW at 310°-315° azimuth at about 70 nautical miles (80 miles) moving at high speed of about 2,160 knots (2,500 mph) until it disappeared off scope at maximum range of 260 n.mi. (300 miles). Height­finder reading nott aken, estimated at 42,000+ ft due to radar beam coverage at max range. (Jan Aldrich)


April 6, 1952; Dallas, TX
10:03 pm. BB files: Boy scouts observed 9-10 circular objects, 4 red, 4 yellow, 1 white. All objects made 90-degree turn. Observatio time: 20 minutes.


April 29, 1952; Marshall, TX (BBU 1167)
3:30 p.m. (CST). Private pilot R. R. Weidman [Weedsman?] saw a round, white object fly straight, with a side-to-side oscillation. (Berliner; FUFOR Index)

May 19, 1952; 30 miles SW of San Angelo, TX (BBU)
8:05 [7:46?] p.m. (CST). USAF 31st Strategic Recon Sq pilot and crew of RB­36 flying at 18,000 ft on a 301° heading at 214 mph TAS, Capt. Gerard A. Sharrock, Capt. Jack L. Bailey, Capt. Bernice O. Bowers, 1st Lt. Constantine G. Kollinzas, 2nd Lt. Norman V. Stewart, S/Sgt. John J. Fisher, S/Sgt. William O. Warr, A/1c Robert Schick, saw 7 bright white circular or doughnut shaped white contrails, like lenticular clouds, stacked vertically about 10°-20° elevation estimated distance 50-75 miles height ranging from 25,000 to 60,000 ft about 1 mile wide. Sighted through 6x binoculars and photographed in 6 frames with 35 mm camera by Bailey, also seen by radar station ground observer alerted by radio. Contrails persisted for at least 15­20 mins possibly 1 hr. Last seen when RB-36 was at 30°53' N, 101°20' W. (Jan Aldrich)

May 20, 1952; Houston, TX (BBU 1219)
10:10 p.m. USAF pilots Capt. J. Spurgin and Capt. B. Stephan [Steven?] saw a bright or white oval object move from side-to-side while making a gradual turn. (Berliner; FUFOR Index)

May 25, 1952. Randolph AFB, TX (BBU)
9:27 p.m. (CST). USAF navigator in charge of navigation section of Combat Crew Training School, Capt. J. S. J., his wife, and pilot Lt. P. H., saw a group of about 12 orange-white tear-drop shaped lights, points forward, in 3 groups of 4 objects moving from W to E at high speed 2,000 mph at 10,000 ft at 70° elevation. Heard deep soft intermittent noise. (McDonald files; Jan Aldrich; cf. Ruppelt p. 140; FUFOR Index)


June 21, 1952; Kelly AFB, TX (BBU 1319)
12:30 p.m. T/Sgt. Howard Davis, flight engineer of B-29 bomber at 8,000 ft altitude, saw a flat object with a sharply pointed front and rounded rear, white with a dark blue center and red rim, trailing sparks as it dove past the B-29 at a distance of 500 ft, in 1 sec. (Berliner)


July 30, 1952; San Antonio, TX (BBU 1758)
10 a.m. E. E. Nye and another saw a round, white object fly slow then speed away. (Berliner)
 
Aug. 7, 1952; San Antonio, TX (BBU 1855)
9:08 a.m. Mrs. Susan Pfuhl [Pzuhl?] saw 4 glowing white discs, one made a 180° turn, one flew straight and level, one veered off, and one circled. (Berliner; FUFOR Index)
 
Aug. 12, 1952; Big Spring, TX (BBU)



Aug. 21, 1952; Dallas, TX (BBU 1944)
11:54 p.m. Jack Rossen, ex-artillery observer, saw 3 blue-white lights hover then descend, 1.5 mins [30 secs?] later one [2?] of them descended further. (Berliner; cf. Hynek-CUFOS re-eval; Jan Aldrich)







Dec. 4, 1952; 8 miles SW of Laredo, TX (BBU)
8:46-8:53 p.m. USAF pilot Lt. Robert Arnold flying T-28 trainer aircraft at 6,000 ft saw a bright bluish-white glowing object below him rapidly climbing to his level, showing no navigation lights. Arnold tightened his left turn to keep object in view, object suddenly climbed to 9,000 ft in several secs then dropped down to his altitude again headed E to 6 miles SE of AFB where it stopped and hovered. Arnold pursued on SE heading but after 2 secs object suddenly headed towards him on collision course at high speed, wavering slightly at about 300 ft as if determining which side to pass the aircraft then heading off Arnold's left wing at 150 ft distance, at which point he could see object as a blurred reddish­bluish haze smaller than his T-28, all of which happened too fast for evasive action. Arnold in fear turned off running lights, spiraled down to 1,500 ft while keeping object in sight as object continued to head towards him in a dive then pulled up and disappeared.

Dec. 5, 1952; Lackland AFB, TX (BBU)
8:48 p.m. USAF pilot of T-28 saw a blue light maneuver in a counterclockwise orbit then climb. (Project 1947)

Dec. 29, 1952; Amarillo, TX (BBU)
35 mi west of. Extremely large and intense bright round bluish-white light.

Jan. 6, 1953; Nr. Dallas, TX  (BBU)
(McDonald list; FUFOR files)



Feb. 13, 1953; Carswell AFB, Ft. Worth, TX (BBU)
2:35 a.m. (CST). Pilots and crew of B-36 aircraft (one named Ruth) saw 3 bright lights of equal intensity in stacked vertical echelon formation approaching at moderately high speed (cruise speed of F-86), one object suddenly accelerated then came to complete halt and the other 2 objects did the same, then returned to original formation and repeated the maneuver, ending in a horizontal echelon with center object the pivot, then all climbed steeply in "swinging" motion at high speed. Possible ground radar contact. (Hynek-CUFOS re-eval; Jan Aldrich;
February 24, 1953; Sherman, TX (BBU 2441)
7:43 p.m. Warrant Officer and Mrs. Alden saw 2 bright red, round objects with big halos fly in small circles, climb and fade. (Berliner)







December 5, 1953; Houston, TX (BBU)
8:15 p.m. Children saw yellow-orange ellipse with 40x telescope. (Hynek-CUFOS re-eval; Jan Aldrich)
9 p.m. Army Sgt. Hubert Vickery and PFC John Ransom on patrol at the AFSWP (Armed Forces Special Weapons Project) nuclear weapons storage site saw a blue-white oblong object about 2 ft x 1 ft in size travel S from 286° to 279° azimuth elevation 5°45'. Other sightings by Army patrols from 8:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. (FOIA)