At 9:27 P.M. on December 5, 1948, an air force C-47 pilot at eighteen thousand feet near Albuquerque observed a huge green fireball arch upward, then level off to horizontal trajectory. Seven minutes later, a Pioneer Airlines pilot saw a large orange object approach in a flat trajectory, become green, then dodge to the side and fall away toward the ground. Thus began the mystery of the green fireballs, which the U.S. defense establishment in the Southwest studied intensely.
According to Ruppelt, “everyone, including the intelligence officers at Kirtland AFB, Air Defense Command people, Dr. La Paz, and some of the most distinguished scientists at Los Alamos had seen at least one.” That is, all the people Kaplan had spoken to the previous April following the White Sands sighting. No one could figure it out. From December 1948 through April 1949, at least thirty-nine reports of green fireballs were sent to Air Material Command. Afterwards, they were seen sporadically in the area for years.
La Paz saw his first green fireball on December 12, 1948. He tracked the object’s path and decided it was distinctly possible that it had flown over Los Alamos. Even more startling, however, was that the object maintained a horizontal path at the extremely low altitude (for a meteorite) of eight to ten miles. Moreover, it moved too slowly to be a meteor, and was completely silent. In a confidential memo dated December 20, 1948, La Paz argued that it was no meteor or fireball; if so, it was certainly no type he had ever studied. He later told Ruppelt that he did not believe it was a natural phenomenon.
By December 20, the interest in fireballs inspired the creation of an informal group called the Los Alamos Astrophysical Association. Its members, all scientists and engineers with security clearances, gained permission to examine several of Project Sign’s classified reports on the green fireballs. They agreed with La Paz that the objects were not meteors. Some wondered whether the objects were missiles being fired into the Earth’s atmosphere. But if so, how was such a thing possible, and who would do it? Naturally, the question allowed for no satisfactory answer.16
TOP SECRET DOCUMENTS
By the end of 1948, Project Sign had received several hundred UFO reports, of which 167 had been saved as “good.” Of these, about three dozen were classified as “unknown.” Ironically, as UFO reports became better and more numerous, the encouragement to study them waned. Elsewhere, however, people were thinking about the UFO problem. On December 10, 1948, air intelligence completed its top-secret, nineteen-page “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.” The document did not suggest that UFOs might be extraterrestrial. But it did state that the objects seen were real and baffling:
The frequency of reported sightings, the similarity in many of the characteristics attributed to the observed objects, and the quality of observers considered as a whole support the contention that some type of flying object has been observed. ... The origin of the devices is not ascertainable.
The paper made no attempt to explain individual reports or offer a definitive conclusion on flying saucers. It did, however, rest on the assumption that the Soviets were a reasonably likely source for UFOs, as indicated in this statement:
Assuming that the objects might eventually be identified as foreign or foreign-sponsored devices, the possible reason for their appearance over the U.S. requires consideration. Several possible explanations appear noteworthy, viz: (1) to negate U.S. confidence in the atom bomb as the most advanced and decisive weapon in warfare; (2) to perform photographic reconnaissance missions; (3) to test U.S. air defenses; (4) to conduct familiarization flights over U.S. territory.
This document remained classified until 1985. While its conclusion may be less incendiary than those claimed for the Estimate of the Situation, the report shows continued concern about UFOs, continued speculation about the possibility of their Soviet origins, and a continued lack of evidence to support such a belief.17
The matter of extraterrestrial origins, on the other hand, was studiously avoided. If one accepts the existence of the Estimate of the Situation, and the account from Ruppelt and others about how the air force leadership responded to it, then the tenor of the analysis is readily understandable: an ET explanation was off-limits, and analysts naturally considered the remaining possibilities. However, even if the estimate were merely a figment of Ruppelt’s imagination, the conclusions of the analysis leave us with the distinct impression of the ET hypothesis as the elephant in the dining room that no one would acknowledge.
