Place

Wright-Patterson AFB, OH

United States

39.82 N, 84.05 WView on OpenStreetMap (opens in a new tab)

6 entries here, 1947 to 1969, in date order.

  1. Government

    Twining memo calls flying discs 'something real'

    Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining, head of Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, wrote to Army Air Forces headquarters that the disc reports described something real, not imagined, and urged a classified, prioritized study. That study began months later as Project Sign.

  2. Government

    Project Sign begins

    The Air Force's first formal study of flying-saucer reports, run by Air Materiel Command at Wright Field. It ran until early 1949, when Project Grudge replaced it.

  3. Government

    Project Grudge replaces Project Sign

    The Air Force renamed Project Sign as Project Grudge, a scaled-down successor that treated most reports as misidentifications. Its 1949 report concluded sightings came from misread natural objects, hoaxes or psychological causes.

  4. Government

    Project Blue Book begins

    The Air Force reorganized its UFO investigations as Project Blue Book. By the time it closed in 1969, the Air Force programs had logged 12,618 reports, 701 of them still listed as unidentified.

  5. Government

    Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14

    Blue Book Special Report No. 14, a statistical analysis of about 3,200 reports through 1952 carried out with Battelle Memorial Institute, judged it highly improbable that the unidentified cases reflected technology beyond known science. The Air Force made it public in October 1955.

  6. Government

    Blue Book shuts down

    Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans Jr. announced the end of Project Blue Book, citing the Condon study and its review by the National Academy of Sciences. The Air Force said no case it had studied showed a threat to national security or evidence of extraterrestrial vehicles.