Few government employees in recent times have been subjected to more criticism than the men in the Aerial Phenomena Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. This agency (usually referred to in this book as ATIC) has the responsibility of investigating all official reports of unidentified objects in our skies. Of the thousands of such incidents studied so far, none suggests that the UFO in question came from outer space. In fact, the term UFO has proven to be one of the worst misnomers of history. In the most perplexing cases, the phenomena reported are seldom material Objects, very few of them are Flying and, when fully analyzed, almost none remain Unidentified.
Identifying strange objects in the air over the United States is vital to the country’s security. That military officers should be guilty of carelessness or casual guesswork in this serious business is unthinkable. Yet ATIC investigators, and through them the United States Air Force, of which they are members, for more than a decade have been the target of vicious attacks by civilian enthusiasts devoted to the cult of flying saucers.
Banded together in various “research” organizations and operating on the premise that UFOs are interplanetary in origin, most of these enthusiasts flatly reject the normal explanations—planets, meteors, satellites, balloons, reflections, birds, radar phantoms, hoaxes, or delusions. Flying saucers obviously cruise in our skies, the believers argue, and the Air Force failure to admit the obvious proves that its investigators are incompetent or dishonest or both, and that they are involved in a giant conspiracy to conceal the truth from the American public[XIII-1].
In the view of the saucer groups, the Air Force can do no right. If, after receiving a UFO report, the investigators require some time to collect all the relevant facts and to reach a sound conclusion, they are berated for the delay and accused of cover-up tactics, as in the Killian case ([p. 52]). On the other hand, when the answer is found quickly and released to the newspapers, UFO addicts deny its truth and assert that the explanation was hurriedly rushed into print in order to deceive the public, as in the Pacific sighting on July 11, 1959 ([p. 106])[[XIII-1a], p. 8]. Some of these peculiar beliefs may rest on an imperfect understanding of the actual aims, methods, and resources of Air Force investigators.
Official Study of UFOs
The report of an unidentified flying object, in about 90 per cent of the cases, comes first from an ordinary private citizen, who often notifies the local newspaper or radio station. Not until he reports the incident to a military official, however, is ATIC empowered to start investigation. The commanding officer at the Air Force base nearest the place of the sighting then makes a preliminary investigation and, if the facts seem to warrant further study, forwards the information to Dayton for evaluation.
With years of experience to draw on, the Aerial Phenomena Group can often identify the unknown after a brief study of the report. If not, they try to determine whether the report contains all the facts necessary for an explanation and whether the unknown may be of interest to Intelligence officers. Does it represent a possible danger to the nation? Does it have possible military significance? Does it have possible scientific or technical significance? If, after this review, the investigators conclude that the unknown might be of some importance, they carry out an intensive study in which they may have the help of an organization directly connected with the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence or of allied Intelligence agencies. When all the relevant facts are collected, a survey usually shows that the unknown fits a particular class of sighting. To complete the identification, ATIC can call on the expert knowledge of a specialist in the type of phenomenon involved.
Expert help is available from a large variety of sources:
1. Official consultant to the Air Force, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Director of the Dearborn Observatory and Professor of Astronomy at Northwestern University, formerly Assistant Director, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
2. Members of the Air Force with special scientific and technical training, whose full duty is the study, investigation, and analysis of UFO reports.