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Friday, April 09, 2010 - 4:43 PM
Francis Ridge:
This is a 54-page comprehensive and
qualitative effort and it will take many months, if not years, to get
active links to cases all in place. Sixty additional case links were
added on July 7. With the help of William Wise
(Project Blue Book
Archive), and Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire (digging out the cases from my checklist), the
task was much easier. But
without Brad Sparks' Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book
Unknowns, the entire project
would have been impossible. Sparks also provided several historic
entries. And
our thanks go to Jean Waskiewicz who created the online NICAP DBase
(NSID) that helped make it possible to link from the cases to the
reports themselves. Others who provided information are also noted with
their contributions. (Items on the Chop
clearance list are coded "CCL"). But
none of this would be complete without the story behind the wave of
1952, as told by none other than Richard Hall.
On March 2, 1950, a Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire (JCS) meeting
focused on establishing goals for a minimum air defense by 1952. The
followoing month at a USAF Commanders Conference at Ramey AFB, Puerto
Rico, planners familiarized commanders with the thinking behind
the plan of minimum defense as welll as with its contents. Referred to
as the Blue Book Plan, it stipulated that a minimum air defense could
be in place by mid-1952. It was estimated that July 1, 1952, as the
critical date when the Soviets would pose a dangerous threat. General
Charles Cabell expected the Soviets to have between 45 and 90 atom
bombs and 70 to 135 Tu-4 bombers (copied B-29s) by that time. Was there
a nuclear connection between this threat and the massive UFO sighting
wave of 1952 and the events over Washington in July?
Richard Hall:
The summer 1952 UFO sighting wave was
one of the largest of all
time, and arguably the most significant of all time in terms of the
credible reports and hardcore scientific data obtained. Electromagnetic
(EM) effects and physical trace evidence were more prominent in
other waves, but 1952 (and 1953) featured recurring radar detection of
UFOs, often from both ground and airborne radar, visual sightings by
jet interceptor pilots sent up to pursue the mysterious objects, and
cat-and-mouse chases in which the UFOs seemed to toy with the
interceptors. Further, Air Force investigators who plotted the
sightings noticed that
they were concentrated around strategic military bases, and this
clearly posed a threat to national security since their origin was
unknown. Senior generals in the Air Force concluded that UFOs
were interplanetary in origin, and broadly hinted this belief in LIFE
magazine for April 1952.
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