Summary

The big problem with the files from this time period is that the records for the entire month of August were poorly copied. Many were difficult to read and quite a few are missing or too difficult to locate. I suspect that has to do with the poor copies. I found a great deal of the files in the Illegible section. I could not locate 20 case files total (16 for the month of August).

Echo 1 and 2 accounted for 79 confirmed/possible sightings (about 27%). Other bright satellites/space debris accounted for thirteen more UFO reports. In total, objects in orbit produced almost a third of the UFO reports during this time period (about 31%). 

There continued to be a significant number of sightings by witnesses 16-years and younger. Some of the younger sightings appear to be more active imagination than careful observations. There was also a few submissions made by “collectors” of UFO reports in their region. The end result was having dozens of reports being lumped together in one file. Many were Echo 1 and 2 satellite observations. 

I found the UFO landing/alien reports particularly troublesome. There were several during the time period and one has to wonder how much influence the Zamora incident had on these stories. All but one can be attributed to hoax or overactive imaginations of young boys. The most significant one was from Harrisonburg, Virginia in December. The case file and investigation could have been more thorough. It did not help that a local UFO group, who had their own beliefs to confirm, performed an investigation before Blue Book sent Sergeant Moody to investigate. A lot of the newspaper stories and information in the file were from those individuals. The story, like most UFO landings, is hard to believe without convincing evidence that something actually landed and took off from the area. Apparently, while UFO proponents had found high levels of radiation, they did not see any marks of significance on the ground. They also complained about how Sgt. Moody conducted his survey. If accurate, then Moody really did not perform a good survey. Based on my experience in the Navy Nuclear Power Program, I wasn’t impressed with the way either survey was performed. One would expect a survey map be completed rather than random readings being performed. What were the normal background levels outside of the area and was there a specific concentration at a given location? We don’t know. In fact, the UFO investigator claimed they had to clean off the probe because the probe was reporting high radiation levels when it should not. He also stated that the radiation levels above the ground were something like 17-18 mR/hr. This kind of radiation level is awful high and that was over a week after the landing. If it was really that high then, the levels that existed at the time of the landing could have been extremely high and dangerous. That brings me to the question of why didn’t the UFO group make a second survey to measure potential half-lives? Why were no soil samples taken to be analyzed? All of this makes one question exactly what the true radiation levels were. Moody also noted that the road the event occurred upon was well traveled during the day. The event happened during the normal evening commute, so it seems unlikely that this witness was the only person who saw the landing/passage of such a large UFO (80-90 feet tall and 100 feet wide). The UFO investigator mentions finding witnesses around town but these were vague and could have been copy-cat reports following all the media attention. The bottom line is that the sole physical evidence that the object landed were these radiation readings, which may, or may not, be accurate. This leaves Blue Book’s explanation that it was nothing more than a psychological issue related to the witness or the possibility it was a hoax/made up story. For it to be a mistaken identity case, it would have required an overactive imagination, which might belong in the psychological category. It was Dr. Hynek, who seems to have given the psychological explanation in a letter on February 23, 1965. In that letter, after talking to the witness, Hynek wrote; “I think we need a psychiatrist here”. I left it with that classification because of the lack of solid physical evidence of the landing. 

As usual, a lot of the reports have a lot to be desired. Far too many have important information missing and make them difficult, if not impossible, to analyze. It is no wonder that Blue Book classified so many UFO reports as “Insufficient information/data”. 

The process of analyzing all of these reports can be tiresome. 1965-1967 are years with large numbers of sightings. I will attempt to perform the standard six month analysis but I would like to limit the number of sightings reviewed to about 300-400 per issue. This may mean that I can only do 4-5 month periods in the future. It depends on how much time I have on my hands so readers will have to be patient. I foresee this project being completed by 2025. 

Quelle: SUNlite 1/2022