ite often and a part of his letters
were always devoted to the latest about the UFO's.

Then I make frequent business trips to ATIC, and I always stop in to
see Captain Charles Hardin, who is now in charge of Blue Book, for a
"What's new?" I always go to ATIC with the proper security clearances
so I'm sure I get a straight answer to my question.

Since I left ATIC, the UFO's haven't gone away and neither has the
interest. There hasn't been too much about them in the newspapers
because of the present Air Force policy of silence, but they're with
us. That the interest is still with us is attested to by the fact
that in late 1953 Donald Keyhoe's book about UFO's, _Flying_
_Saucers_ _from_ _Outer_ _Space_, immediately appeared on best seller
lists. The book was based on a few of our good UFO reports that were
released to the press. To say that the book is factual depends
entirely upon how one uses the word. The details of the specific UFO
sightings that he credits to the Air Force are factual, but in his
interpretations of the incidents he blasts way out into the wild blue
yonder.

During the past two years the bulk of the UFO activity has taken
place in Europe. I might add here that I have never seen any recent
official UFO reports or studies from other countries; all of my
information about the European Flap came from friends. But when these
friends are in the intelligence branches of the U.S. Air Force, the
RAF, and the Royal Netherlands Air Force, the data can be considered
at least good.

The European Flap started in the summer of 1953, when reports began
to pop up in England and France. Quality-wise these first reports
weren't too good, however. But then, like a few reports that occurred
early in the stateside Big Flap of 1952, sightings began to drift in
that packed a bit of a jolt. Reports came in that had been made by
personal friends of the brass in the British and French Air Forces.
Then some of the brass saw them. Corners of mouths started down.

In September several radar sites in the London area picked up
unidentified targets streaking across the city at altitudes of from
44,000 to 68,000 feet. The crews who saw the targets said, "Not
weather," and some of these crews had been through the bloody Battle
of Britain. They knew their radar.

In October the crew of a British European Airways airliner reported
that a "strange aerial object" had paced their twin-engined
Elizabethan for thirty minutes. Then on