Project Blue Book case review: September-December 1965

This is the latest edition of the Project Blue Book case review covering September through December 1965. Like the previous evaluations, I tried to examine each case to see if the conclusion had merit. I added comments to help clarify the explanation or if I felt it was not correct or adequate.

Summary

This time period was almost as trying as the July-August time frame. Like last review, Ellington AFB in Houston collected a mass of reports that had to be addressed separately. There was also the “Oklahoma case file” that did not exist the way the Ellington case file did. The file was apparently based on an October letter from a UFO group that listed a bunch of sightings from August of 1965. After trying to spend a significant amount of time figuring out these sightings, I chose to label them as insufficient information since the listing of sightings without specific details makes it hard to analyze them. At first glance, they appeared to be identifiable as stars, aircraft, satellites, meteors, and other known objects. However, there really was not enough information to identify them properly.

There were some interesting/puzzling cases. The most interesting was the St. George Minnesota case (21 October) but the witness’ description of the event is inadequate for evaluation. The photograph, while interesting, only shows a bright light source. You can’t tell much more than that. Had the witness filled out the sighting form, one could probably have made a proper evaluation. Unfortunately, they did not and I had to leave it as insufficient information. 

F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming produced another practically useless UFO report that contained multiple sightings and very little in the way of details. While I presented potential solutions for that entry, I believe that it could have been easier to analyze them if the base UFO officer did his job properly. No UFO sighting forms were completed (or at least not submitted to BB) and the only thing presented was a two page summary and some maps (all of which were poorly copied). 

Satellites continue to be a major contribution to the IFO list in all these cases. I counted sixty-four satellite explanations. That is almost 18% of the total number of cases evaluated. As usual, Echo and Echo 2 were the biggest contributors. 

Next review, I will be covering the first four months of 1966.

Quelle: SUNlite 4/2022