Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/266

 together a group of scientists and let them spend a full week or two studying the UFO problem.

When I left ADC, Major Sadowski and crew were satisfied that we weren’t just sitting around twiddling our UFO reports.

During the fall of 1952 reports continued to drop off steadily. By December we were down to the normal average of thirty per month, with about 20 per cent of these falling into the “Unknown” category.

Our proposed trip to the Pacific to watch for UFO’s during the H-bomb test was canceled at the last minute because we couldn’t get space on an airplane. But the crews of Navy and Air Force security forces who did go out to the tests were thoroughly briefed to look for UFO’s, and they were given the procedures on how to track and report them. Back at Dayton we stood by to make quick analysis of any reports that might come in—none came. Nothing that fell into the UFO category was seen during the entire Project Ivy series of atomic shots.

By December work on the planning phase of our instrumentation program was completed. During the two months we had been working on it we had considered everything from giving Ground Observer Corps spotters simple wooden tracking devices to building special radars and cameras. We had talked over our problems with the people at Wright Field who knew about missile-tracking equipment, and we had consulted the camera technicians at the Air Force Aerial Reconnaissance Laboratory. Astronomers explained their equipment and the techniques to use, and we went to Rome, New York, and Boston to enlist the aid of the people who develop the Air Force’s electronic equipment.

Our final plan called for visual spotting stations to be established all over northern New Mexico. We’d picked this test location because northern New Mexico still consistently produced more reports than any other area in the U.S. These visual spotting stations would be equipped with a sighting device similar to a gun sight on a bomber. All the operator would have to do would be to follow the UFO with the tracking device, and the exact time and the UFO’s azimuth and elevation angles would be automatically recorded. The visual spotting stations would all be tied together with an interphone system, so that