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Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It was the second revival of such study, started in 1952, and was active up to January 1970, as it had been ordered for termination in December 1969.
Previous Projects
The UFO study was initiated under Project Sign in 1947 during the flying saucer craze. Project Sign was officially inconclusive regarding the cause of the sightings. It was succeeded by Project Grudge, which concluded that all UFOs were natural phenomena or other misinterpretations, although it also stated that 23 percent of the reports were inexplicable.
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, et cetera) or conventional aircraft. A few were considered hoaxes. 701 of the reports--about six percent--were classified as unknown. The reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been blacked out.
The first head of the project was captain Edward J. Ruppelt. By his order, a standard reporting form for UFOs was developed. He was also the one who officially coined the term UFO, to replace the inaccurate and suggestive flying saucer, which had been used to that point. He resigned from the air force some years later, and wrote the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, which described the study of UFOs by United States Air Force from 1947 to 1955.
Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant of the project. He worked for the project up to its termination and initially created the categorization which has been extended and is known today as Close encounters. He was a pronounced skeptic when he started, but said that his feelings changed to a more waverly skeptism during the research. In the 1970s he was somewhat of an authority among UFO researchers due to his experience. He spoke at a United Nations General Assembly on the subject, and was a technical advisor for the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
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