hen a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept
it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have
the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet
pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of
court-martial? Does this constitute proof?

The at times hotly debated answer to this question may be the answer
to the question, "Do the UFO's really exist?"

I'll give you the facts--all of the facts--you decide.

_July_ _1955_, E. J. RUPPELT

CHAPTER ONE

Project Blue Book and the UFO Story

In the summer of 1952 a United States Air Force F-86 jet interceptor
shot at a flying saucer.

This fact, like so many others that make up the full flying saucer
story, has never before been told.

I know the full story about flying saucers and I know that it has
never before been told because I organized and was chief of the Air
Force's Project Blue Book, the special project set up to investigate
and analyze unidentified flying object, or UFO, reports. (UFO is the
official term that I created to replace the words "flying saucers.")

There is a fighter base in the United States which I used to visit
frequently because, during 1951, 1952, and 1953, it got more than its
share of good UFO reports.

The commanding officer of the fighter group, a full colonel and
command pilot, believed that UFO's were real. The colonel believed in
UFO's because he had a lot of faith in his pilots--and they had
chased UFO's in their F-86's. He had seen UFO's on the scopes of his
radar sets, and he knew radar.

The colonel's intelligence officer, a captain, didn't exactly
believe that UFO's were real, but he did think that they warranted
careful investigation. The logic the intelligence officer used in
investigating UFO reports--and in getting answers to many of them--
made me wish many times that he worked for me on Project Blue Book.

One day the intelligence officer called me at my base in Dayton,
Ohio. He wanted to know if I was planning to make a trip his way
soon. When I told him I expected to be in his area in about a week,
he asked me to be sure to look him up. There was no special hurry, he
added, but he had something very interesting to show me.

When we got wind of a good story, Project Blue Book liked to start
working on it at once, so I asked the intelligence officer to tell me
what he had. But nothing doing. He didn't want to discuss it over the
phone