Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/52

 that would match the reported maneuvers of the UFO’s.” The Air Force’s Aeromedical Laboratory concurred. If the aircraft could be built, the human body couldn’t stand the violent maneuvers that were reported. The aircraft-structures people seconded this, no material known could stand the loads of the reported maneuvers and heat of the high speeds.

Still convinced that the UFO’s were real objects, the people at ATIC began to change their thinking. Those who were convinced that the UFO’s were of Soviet origin now began to eye outer space, not because there was any evidence that the UFO’s did come from outer space but because they were convinced that UFO’s existed and only some unknown race with a highly developed state of technology could build such vehicles. As far as the effect on the human body was concerned, why couldn’t these people, whoever they might be, stand these horrible maneuver forces? Why judge them by earthly standards? I found a memo to this effect was in the old Project Sign files.

Project Sign ended 1947 with a new problem. How do you collect interplanetary intelligence? During World War II the organization that was ATIC’s forerunner, the Air Materiel Command’s secret “T-2,” had developed highly effective means of wringing out every possible bit of information about the technical aspects of enemy aircraft. ATIC knew these methods, but how could this be applied to spaceships? The problem was tackled with organized confusion.

If the confusion in the minds of Air Force people was organized, the confusion in the minds of the public was not. Publicized statements regarding the UFO were conflicting.

A widely printed newspaper release, quoting an unnamed Air Force official in the Pentagon, said:

The “flying saucers” are one of three things:

1.	Solar reflections on low-hanging clouds.

2.	Small meteors that break up, their crystals catching the rays of the sun.

3.	Icing conditions could have formed large hailstones and they might have flattened out and glided.

A follow-up, which quoted several scientists, said in essence that the unnamed Air Force official was crazy. Nobody even