In the history of the UFO, 1952 rivals 1947 as The Great Year. In the United States, the number of good sightings reached a still-unmatched peak. Even ATIC’s new and improved Project Grudge (renamed Blue Book in early spring), with an enlarged staff of about a dozen people, could not keep up with the reports. By the middle of the year, the situation was in crisis. First of all, the public debate about UFOs threatened to go completely beyond the control of the Pentagon, where it had firmly resided for five years. Second, the sheer number of unidentified objects, including over the White House for two consecutive weekends, posed a substantial threat of unknown dimensions.
As a result, national security measures were taken to push UFOs deeper under cover. Not only was the air force involved in this, but so was the CIA. The policy met with some resistance behind closed doors, but by early 1953 it was clear that secrecy prevailed. The measures undertaken in 1952 created a policy that remained relatively unchanged for more than ten years—until the nationwide UFO wave of the mid-1960s.
BASE SIGHTINGS
The crescendo of UFO sightings that began in August 1951 continued onward. On the very first day of the new year, an object circled and maneuvered for eight minutes over a Royal Canadian Air Force Base at North Bay. It appeared to be very large and traveled at supersonic speed. On January 20 at Fairchild AFB near Spokane, two intelligence specialists saw a large, bluish-white, spherical object approaching, which they later determined to be moving at 1,400 mph. The next day, a U.S. Navy pilot chased a white dome-shaped object over Mitchell AFB on Long Island; the UFO simply accelerated and pulled away. The case stumped Ruppelt.1
On the following evening, a UFO once again violated restricted airspace. At a northern Alaska outpost on January 22, 1952, radar captured an object traveling 1,500 mph at twenty-three thousand feet. When an F-94 was sent to intercept, the target slowed down, stopped, reversed course, and headed directly for the radar station. It came to within thirty miles of the station, then disappeared from the screen. The F-94 headed back to refuel, and a second F-94 was scrambled. This pilot obtained a strong and distinct radar return. At first, the object was almost stationary, but then it dived suddenly, at which point ground radar picked it up again. A third F-94 was scrambled, also obtained the object on radar, and closed to within two hundred yards. At this point, the pilot pulled away for fear of collision, as the UFO was nearly immobile in the air. Since none of the pilots obtained a visual of the object, the air force concluded that the radar returns were weather-related, although the people involved in the incident strongly disputed this.2
In Korea on January 29, a bright, disc-shaped orange object, also described as a “huge ball of fire,” paced two B-29s on the same night, eighty miles from each other in the towns of Wonsan and Sunchon. This incident received some media attention in mid-February, and added to the growing interest in Washington.
GRUDGE BECOMES BLUE BOOK
Under Ruppelt’s leadership, Project Grudge became respectable. In early February, Ruppelt met with the commander of Air Defense Command, Gen. Benjamin Chidlaw, who issued a directive to all units explaining procedures in UFO situations. This began a period of cooperation between Project Grudge and ADC. The 4602nd AISS was also activated under ADC’s command. Originally intended to obtain air combat intelligence, by mid-1953 the unit actually supplanted the staff at Dayton in the UFO arena.3
For now, however, Grudge was busy. After his meeting with Chidlaw, Ruppelt met with two Royal Canadian air force officers who brought their own UFO reports and wanted to know how Grudge operated. By March 1952, Project Grudge went from being a mere project within a group to a separate organization under the title Aerial Phenomena Group. By the end of the month, its name became Blue Book.4
On April 3, the air force announced that it had not stopped investigating and evaluating UFO reports, as it had previously stated. This may have been news to the public, but was common knowledge to those following the matter. On April 5, the secretary of the air force signed Air Force Letter 200-5, which stated that UFOs were not a joke, that Blue Book was making a serious study of them, and directed intelligence officers on every air force base throughout the world to report UFOs immediately to ATIC and all major air force commands, then to send a more detailed report later to ATIC (with copies to the air force director of intelligence). AFR 200-5 enabled Blue Book staff to communicate directly with any air force base or unit without going through the normal chain of command. AFR 200-5 noted that “reports should not be classified higher than ‘Restricted’ unless inclusion of data required ... mandates a higher classification.”5
