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