10 articles
A hitchhiking teenager and two Exeter patrolmen reported a barn-sized shape with pulsing red lights, silent and low. Project Blue Book tried aircraft, refueling flights and 'stars and planets' - then logged the case as unidentified.
Captain Thomas Mantell radioed that a 'metallic object of tremendous size' hung above his fighter, then blacked out from lack of oxygen and crashed. The Air Force first blamed the planet Venus, then a classified Navy balloon he had no way of knowing existed.
The phrase came from a Hollywood blockbuster, but the system behind it was built by J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer the Air Force hired to explain UFOs away. His six rungs still shape how sightings get sorted, and show what the Pentagon's new files leave behind.
Sergeant Lonnie Zamora reported an egg-shaped object, two figures and a roaring flame near Socorro. Then investigators photographed four fresh landing marks and scorched brush - and the Air Force's own study left the case among its rare 'unknowns.'
The astronomer who became science's most famous skeptic was one of six members of the 1966 O'Brien Committee, which judged Project Blue Book scientifically hollow and urged universities to investigate. The study it set off ended official UFO research instead.
Over two hours near Levelland, Texas, farmhands, a college student and the county sheriff independently reported the same thing: an egg-shaped light that killed their engines, then let them restart. The official explanation did not hold up.
Seventy-four years ago this week, multiple radars tracked unknown objects over Washington's restricted airspace on two consecutive weekends. The Air Force scrambled jets twice. The official explanation was disputed by its own experts - and rejected by a scientific review.
From 1947 to 1969, the US Air Force ran its longest official inquiry into unidentified flying objects. It reviewed thousands of sightings, explained most - and quietly classified 701 as things it simply could not resolve.
For decades, any scientist who took UFOs seriously risked their career. A former NASA senior official says the agency didn't mean to build that wall - but helped build it anyway. Here's the history, and what's changing.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory has agreed to hand over a 74-year-old reel-to-reel recording of a military UFO briefing - identified by catalogue number - to congressional investigators within 30 days.
