own" UFO reports, there are as many opinions as
to what the bright blob of light could have been as there are people
who've seen the photo. "Some kind of light phenomenon" is the
frequent opinion of those who don't believe. They point out that
there is no shadow of any kind of a circular object showing on the
ground--no shadow, nothing "solid." But if you care to take the time
you can show that if the object, assuming that this is what it was,
was above 4,000 feet the shadow would fall out of the picture.

Then all you get is a blank look from the light phenomenon theorists.

With the sighting from the RB-29 and the photograph, all of the
other UFO reports that Blue Book has collected and all of those that
came out of the European Flap, the big question--the key question--
is: What have the last two years of UFO activity brought out? Have
there been any important developments?

Some good reports have come in and the Air Force is sitting on them.
During 1954 they received some 450 reports, and once again July was
the peak month. In the first half of 1955 they had 189. But I can
assure you that these reports add nothing more as far as proof is
concerned. The quality of the reports has improved, but they still
offer nothing more than the same circumstantial evidence that we
presented to the panel of scientists in early 1953. There have been
no reports in which the speed or altitude of a UFO has been measured,
there have been no reliable photographs that show any details of a
UFO, and there is no hardware. There is still no real proof.

So a public statement that was made in 1952 still holds true: "The
_possibility_ of the existence of interplanetary craft has never been
denied by the Air Force, _but_ UFO reports offer absolutely no
authentic evidence that such interplanetary spacecraft do exist."

But with the UFO, what is lacking in proof is always made up for in
opinions. To get a qualified opinion, I wrote to a friend, Frederick
C. Durant. Mr. Durant, who is presently the director of a large Army
Ordnance test station, is also a past president of the American
Rocket Society and president of the International Astronautical
Federation. For those who are not familiar with these organizations,
the American Rocket Society is an organization established to promote
interest and research in space flight and lists as its members
practically every prominent scientist and engineer in the
professional fields allied to aeronaut