17.02.2025

Project Blue Book case review: August-September 1952

This is the latest edition of the Project Blue Book case review covering the months of August to September 1952. 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. Items marked with red highlighting had photographs in the case file.

Summary

I thought that the July 1952 collection of UFO reports was difficult but I discovered that the August 1952 collection was worse. I did a lot of reclassifications. Blue Book seemed to think just about everything was a balloon. Some of them were correct but others were not. A lot of them turned out to be stars/planets. There were also a lot of Ground observer corps (GOC) reports. Many of them were not very good. One would think these individuals would be better at doing their tasks. However, when you look at the occupations of some of them, you discover their backgrounds were not that impressive (quite a few were housewives). It is no surprise that they were not that good at accurately reporting the details of their sighting. I suspect the increased number of reports from the GOC had a lot to do with the increased interested in UFO reports by the USAF.

There were also some very challenging reports. The most interesting was the August 3 Hamilton AFB report. However, it was confusing. Blue Book classified it as “Stars/Planets”. I am not sure where they got that idea since it was daytime. At first, I thought that Blue Book was describing a completely different case but there was only one event in the file. As best I can tell, the observers saw the circular UFOs near the sun and saw them for more than an hour as they drifted across the sky from East to West along with the sun. Menzel listed these as balloons. I had a hard time accepting that interpretation because there were quite a few. After looking at the description, I came to the conclusion they were looking at dust specs/pollen that was airborne or airborne insects. They seemed to see all of the objects in the vicinity of the sun and they were using binoculars. That would be a no-no for astronomers. Looking near the sun with any unfiltered optical aid requires some careful use and could result in eye damage. Recently, I was trying to photograph comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS when it was close to the sun. I took a lot of pictures of the sky near the sun and there were a lot of dust and debris floating about that showed up in the images that gave me the false impression of seeing the comet. Luckily, I produced multiple images and the “false comets” would move with the wind. With that in mind, I considered airborne dust swirling bout and illuminated by the nearby sun to be a possible explanation that was acceptable to me. Airborne insects could also have produced the observations. What disappointed me about the sighting is that they were visible for over an hour and nobody bothered to take some good photographs of the objects. Certainly, during the hour of observation somebody would have produced a camera that could have recorded these unusual objects.

As always, I could not locate certain case files. It is not surprising that with such a large number of cases in a short period of time, some would be missing. Almost 7% were missing (25 out of 358), which is a bit excessive. It does not say much for Blue Book’s file system. I suspect that some of these case files “disappeared” because of outside individuals not returning the files after they had “borrowed” them. Hynek and McDonald were often perusing through the files in the mid-1960s. Others, like members of the Condon committee, had access to the files for examination as well. 

I am not accusing them of stealing them. I am just pointing out that they probably borrowed them but forgot to return them or they were never refiled for some reason. 

I will complete my review for the remainder of 1952 in the next issue of SUNlite. That will complete my Blue Book review column. As I previously noted, I will then create one issue of SUNlite that will cover a review of all the data I collected.

Quelle: SUNlite 1/2025

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