FOIA: Project Grudge Status Report 1

StatusReport1.pdf
Project Grudge Status Report 1
A staus report of Project Grudge for the period August 1951 to the end of Spetember 1951
Document date: 1951-11-30
Department: Air Technical Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson AFB
Author: Robert J. Friend
Document type: Report
pages: 27


Archivist's Notes: This document is generally clear and easy to follow. It gives an update on issues arising during investigations carried out as part of Project Grudge. It then goes on to list reported sightings and in the appendices gives more detail on the current status and details of these sightings and the subsequent investigation.

Project Grudge Status Report 1
27 pages

Pdf pg 4-5: Overall Status – discusses the project’s intention to index data on ufo sightings.
Two difficulties had been recognized, time element (events aren’t always reported straight away..if at all) and transportation.
Interesting comment: “It is believed that the general feeling in some instances is that the Air Force is not too interested in this project and reporting such incidents is unimportant.”

The issue of transportation is further explained that the sightings are often in remote areas and investigators have difficulty organizing vehicles..leading to financial burdens.
The question of informing the public of this project is raised: it would bring in more information of sightings but also it is feared that it would attract crank letters etc, therefore the internal memo system of re-circulating the directive to report all sightings was chosen first.

Reports of Specific Incidents: listed from pdf pg 7. Period covers Oct 1951 to Nov 1951.
Investigations were focused on high grade sources eg pilots, technically trained people, or a number of sightings occur in one area/one time.
pdf pages 7-10 are all part of the one spreadsheet…would be advisable to print them out to correlate information better.
pdf pages 11-14 are one spreadsheet also.

pdf pages 15-27 appendix I – X: has more details of some incidents worthy of more investigation.

pdf page 17: One incident was seen by more than 100 people in Texas, including a group of college professors who saw them on several occasions. There was groups of people saying they were birds and a photograph was taken of the objects in a V formation. However the professors never saw them in that formation and had other reasons why they couldn’t be birds. Appendix V was seen in the same area and time but the object was a single pear-shaped metallic one.
pdf page 21The observers claimed it had a port or aperture in the side.

pdf page 26: Objects were seen by two pilots while flying.
The first one was observed for 5 mins…it had high speed, had a halo of light with dark undersurface, changed speed, climbed in lazy circles, disappeared quickly.

pdf page 20 describes a bright orange light observed by a pilot while flying his plane. The object made circles around the town then went back the way it came. Other people saw it.

Frozen just preceded me in preparing the document. Nice timing

Anyway what I can add about this document and other two that carries Grudge Project name is what the Project Grudge it self is all about. Most of us know very well when it started and it dealt with but for the newbies and member who are not familiar with this name let me quote something from Wikipedia:

Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but actually continued on in a very minimal capacity until late 1951.

en.wikipedia.org...

And this other info is from ufocasebook, more detailed and easier to understand:

Project Grudge was formed when Project Sign was decommissioned officially on February 11, 1949. The name was about all that would change. Project Sign's final report was classified "Secret." At this time in history, there were a number of Air Force investigators who accepted the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence. How else were these unexplainable objects getting to Earth from distant planets? These were considered the "dreamers;" those who had vision, and could accept facts without seeing actual physical proof. Another group of disbelievers had no vision or imagination. They would only accept the possibility that UFOs were real when they saw a saucer land on the White House lawn.

One small change from Sign to Grudge was the desire to actually explain or put a tag on every single report; not only a difficult task but totally without precedent. This would look good in a report, yet offer no new scientific theory as to what UFOs were.

One item of interest to the student of UFOs would be an article written by Sidney Shalett of the Saturday Evening Post about the Government's research into UFOs. At the time, the name Project Grudge was not known to the public, and Shalett used the name "Project Saucer" instead. It has been said that Shalett penned the first public use of the term "UFO" in his article of April 30, 1949.

Grudge would fair no better than its predecessors, and closed down after about eight months. They issued a final report also, containing 273 UFO sighting reports. A whopping 23% of these were listed as "unidentified."

Little was done for a time, until on September 11, 1951. A last gasp effort was organized by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who took over as head of Grudge. Shortly a month later, a new short lived effort was begun. Usually tagged Grudge II, about all that was new was office forms. The Battelle Memorial Institute, actually a think tank, was asked by the Government to take over the job of explaining UFO reports. They were to review all reports to date. In March of 1952, enter Project Blue Book, which would be the official UFO study group for the United States. Blue Book lasted until 1969.

www.ufocasebook.com...

[edit on 2/19/2008 by JacKatMtn]