PROJECT
BLUE BOOK - SPECIAL REPORT NO.14
May 5, 1955
Project
Blue Book Special Report #14 was the culmination of an
in-depth study of Unidentified Flying Objects done by
the Batelle Memorial Institute for the Air Technical Intelligence
Center (ATIC) which was located at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in Ohio, and is dated May 5, 1955.
The
bulk of the data (3,201 sightings) arrived at ATIC through
regular military channels, from June 1947 until the middle
of 1952.
Categories
of identification, established upon the basis of previous
experience, were as follows:
•
Balloon
• Astronomical
• Aircraft
• Light phenomenon
• Birds
• Clouds, dust, etc.
• Insufficient information
• Psychological manifestations
• Unknown
• Other
UNKNOWN
— This designation in the identification code was
assigned to those reports of sightings wherein the description
of the object and its maneuvers could not be fitted to
the pattern of any known object or phenomenon.
INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION — The identification category
was assigned to a report when upon final consideration
there was some essential item of information missing….
It is emphasized that this category was not used as a
convenient way to dispose of what might be called poor
unknowns.”
Here
is the quality distribution of the same 3201 sightings.
Note especially that the better the quality of the sighting,
the MORE likely to be listed as an UNKNOWN. A statistical
comparison between UNKNOWNS and KNOWNS showed that the
probability that the UNKNOWNS were just missed KNOWNS
was less than 1%.
QUALITY
DISTRIBUTION OF UFO REPORTS
In Blue Book Special Report # 14
| Sightings |
No. |
% |
Unknowns |
% |
Insufficient
Info |
% |
| EXCELLENT |
308 |
9.6 |
108 |
35.1 |
12 |
3.9 |
| Good |
1070 |
33.4 |
282 |
26.4 |
33 |
3.1 |
| Doubtful |
1298 |
40.5 |
203 |
15.6 |
150 |
11.6 |
| Poor |
525 |
16.4 |
96 |
18.3 |
103 |
19.6 |
It
should further be noted that the press release not only
didn’t mention the title (surely some reporter would
have asked what happened to the other thirteen reports)
but did not mention who did the work, namely Battelle
Memorial Institute (a very highly respected Research and
Development Organization) in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently
the press never asked about either the title or the organization.
Amazingly, the three-page summary that was released with
the press release gave none of the information in the
more than 240 charts, tables, graphs and maps that are
in the report. Here was a Cosmic Watergate totally ignored
by the media.
