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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Media15 May 1952
United Artists released Red Planet Mars, a Cold War drama in which an American scientist makes radio contact with Mars and the replies upend world politics. It reached theaters during the record 1952 wave of U.S. saucer reports.
Government29 Apr 1952
Air Force Letter 200-5 told every Air Force base to wire UFO reports to the Air Technical Intelligence Center and the Pentagon, followed by fuller reports by mail. Edward Ruppelt wrote that it also let Project Blue Book contact any Air Force unit directly.
MediaApr 1952
A Life magazine article researched by Bob Ginna raised the possibility that saucers were interplanetary, quoting scientists who took the idea seriously. Ruppelt, then Blue Book chief, wrote that senior Pentagon officers had unofficially encouraged it.
GovernmentMar 1952
The Air Force reorganized its UFO investigations as Project Blue Book. By the time it closed in 1969, the Air Force programs had logged 12,618 reports, 701 of them still listed as unidentified.
Photo: US Governement, Public domain
MilitaryMar 1952
A CIA report translated a Vienna newspaper story that two fiery discs maneuvered over uranium mines near Elisabethville, Belgian Congo, and that a fighter pilot from the local airfield chased them without success. The CIA marked it unevaluated; it was never confirmed.
Photo: CIA, Public domain
Military1952
After the Air Force photo lab failed to identify the Tremonton, Utah film, Navy photo analysts at Anacostia spent about two months on it and told the Robertson Panel the lights were not aircraft or birds. The panel rejected this and concluded the images were sunlight on seagulls.
Close encounters1952
Coral Lorenzen founded the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization at the start of 1952; the Condon Report calls it the first civilian UFO study group to work on a national scale. Its first mimeographed bulletin went to 52 members that July, and by 1968 it claimed 8,000 members.
Government1952
Canada's Defence Research Board set up Project Second Storey, an advisory committee on flying saucer reports chaired by Dominion Observatory astronomer Peter Millman, which ran from 1952 to 1954. It did not investigate sightings itself but worked on a standard reporting form.
Photo: NRAO/AUI/NSF, photo by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, CC BY 4.0
Military1952
Project Blue Book planned cameras fitted with diffraction gratings to split UFO light into a spectrum and tell meteors, aircraft and balloons apart. Chief Edward Ruppelt later wrote that in tests they could not usefully photograph a bright flare at 450 yards, but were sent out anyway.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Media1952
Astrophysicist Donald Menzel became head of the Harvard College Observatory, acting director from 1952 and director from 1954 until 1966. A National Academy of Sciences memoir credits his analysis of UFO reports with helping debunk claims of extraterrestrial visits.
Photo: The original uploader was Fdavis99 at English Wikipedia ., CC BY-SA 3.0
Media1952
Republic Pictures released the 12-chapter serial Zombies of the Stratosphere, in which Martian invaders, one played by a young Leonard Nimoy, plan to blow Earth out of orbit with a super H-bomb and are stopped by a hero in a rocket suit. Despite the title, no zombies appear.
Photo: Republic, Public domain
GovernmentNov 1951
Starting in November 1951, the reactivated Project Grudge, renamed Blue Book in March 1952, issued a series of 12 classified status reports on its work. They were declassified in 1960 but, per the Condon Report, were hard to obtain until NICAP published them in 1968.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Military10 Sep 1951
Army Signal Corps radar at Fort Monmouth tracked fast and high targets over two days, and a T-33 crew reported an object near Sandy Hook. The reports reached Gen. Charles Cabell and led to a revived Project Grudge under Edward Ruppelt; investigators later blamed an airplane and balloons.
Photo: Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings25 Aug 1951
Texas Tech professors reported formations of soft glowing lights over Lubbock, and student Carl Hart Jr. photographed a formation days later. Blue Book's Edward Ruppelt investigated; birds reflecting new streetlights was the main lead, but he reached no firm conclusion on the photos.
GovernmentJun 1951
A small Ministry of Defence scientific intelligence working party set up in 1950 delivered a secret report concluding that saucer sightings were misidentified aircraft, balloons, astronomical objects, illusions or hoaxes, and advised against further study without material evidence.
Photo: Bernard Hailstone, Public domain
Media27 Apr 1951
United Artists released The Man from Planet X, an Edgar G. Ulmer film in which a visitor from an approaching planet lands its spaceship on the moor of a remote Scottish island. It was one of the earliest U.S. features about a landed alien craft.
Photo: film trailer screenshot (United Artists), Public domain
MediaApr 1951
RKO and Howard Hawks's Winchester Pictures released The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby. Air Force men find a saucer frozen in Arctic ice and a hostile creature that the military must destroy. Critics count it among the first films to merge science fiction and monster movies.
Photo: RKO Radio Pictures, Public domain
Sightings15 Mar 1951
A chief aircraft engineer at the Delhi Flying Club and about 20 others reported a long, bullet-shaped object trailing a white cloud that looped over the field and left at high speed. The case is in the Project Blue Book files, and NICAP says Blue Book listed it as unidentified.
Photo: Ashish Bhatnagar, CC BY-SA 3.0
Military10 Feb 1951
Crew of a Navy R5D flying from Keflavik to Argentia, including Lt. Graham Bethune, reported a glow that rose toward them and turned into a large circular object before leaving. Five aboard filed Air Force intelligence reports. The Air Force suggested the aurora or a meteor; Bethune disputed this.
Photo: USAAF, Public domain
Sightings20 Jan 1951
After Sioux City tower controllers reported a bright light, the pilots of a Mid-Continent Airlines DC-3 said a large wing-shaped object passed their nose and flew beside them briefly. The Air Force blamed a B-36; Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt later wrote that no B-36 could have done it.
Photo: Project Blue Book, Public domain
