e Air Force Cambridge
Research Laboratory had sifted the reports for UFO's that might have
been balloons. These two organizations had data on the flights of
both the regular weather balloons and the huge, high-flying skyhooks.
They wrote off 12 per cent of the 237 UFO reports under study as
balloons.

This left 56 per cent still unknown. By weeding out the hoaxes, the
reports that were too nebulous to evaluate, and reports that could
well be misidentified airplanes, Project Grudge disposed of another
33 per cent of the reports. This left 23 per cent that fell in the
"unknown" category.

There were more appendixes. The Rand Corporation, one of the most
unpublicized yet highly competent contractors to the Air Force,
looked over the reports and made the statement, "We have found
nothing which would seriously controvert simple rational explanations
of the various phenomena in terms of balloons, conventional aircraft,
planets, meteors, bits of paper, optical illusions, practical jokers,
psychopathological reporters, and the like." But Rand's comment
didn't help a great deal because they didn't come up with any
solutions to any of the 23 per cent unknown.

The Psychology Branch of the Air Force's Aeromedical Laboratory took
a pass at the psychological angles. They said, "there are sufficient
psychological explanations for the reports of unidentified objects to
provide plausible explanations for reports not otherwise
explainable." They pointed out that some people have "spots in front
of their eyes" due to minute solid particles that float about in the
fluids of the eye and cast shadows on the retina. Then they pointed
out that some people are just plain nuts. Many people who read the
Grudge Report took these two points to mean that all UFO observers
either had spots in front of their eyes or were nuts. They broke the
reports down statistically. The people who wrote the report found
that over 70 per cent of the people making sightings reported a light-
colored object. (This I doubt, but that's what the report said.) They
said a big point of these reports of light-colored objects was that
any high-flying object will appear to be dark against the sky. For
this reason the UFO's couldn't be real.

I suggest that the next time you are outdoors and see a bomber go
over at high altitude you look at it closely. Unless it's painted a
dark color it won't look dark.

The U.S. Weather Bureau wrote an extremely comprehensive and
in