Sunday, 21 April 2019

UFO Report:
“1949 UFO Chronology and the Grudge Report”


Created: 20 December 2005
Updated: 12 November 2018
(NICAP.org)

Quote from the UFO report:
“This chronology is currently a 29-page report and a very important year in UFOlogy.  I want to thank all the members of the A-Team who made this possible.  To look at and/or print all the 1949 Blue Book monthly summaries, click here. Otherwise the monthly listings are inserted within this chronology by month. Note: There are 209 entries in the 38-page La Paz catalog, the ‘Summary of Sightings of Unknown Phenomena, 17th District OSI’.  But in the 1949 group there were 144 sightings and the only ones listed here are the reports with some important details to make them extraordinary. Also, brief case descriptions giving the category number, name of witness, and source in brackets (M=military), are NICAP UFO Evidence entries that haven't been located. Finally, I want thank Loren Gross for thoughtfully and diligently collecting data many years ago for his UFO Histories and supplemental notes, in particular here the year 1949. And a big thanks to CUFOS and Mary Castnor for housing them on the CUFOS site.

Francis Ridge
NICAP Site Coordinator

Jan. 13, 1949. Extraordinary US Army Memo
Col Eustis Poland, G-2 Intelligence, US Army, issues memo to the Director of Army Intelligence concerning the wild hypotheses that were spreading concerning the southwestern light phenomena. (Courtesy, Project 1947 and Joel Carpenter)

FBI Memo of  Jan 24, 1949
The memo documents speculation on Soviet nuclear-powered disc by USAF Col C. D. Gasser of the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Gasser reported rumors coming from Wright-Patterson AFB that nuclear-powered disc-shaped planes might be making incursions into US airspace and returning to the USSR over the North Pole. (Courtesy of Project 1947 site)

January 31, 1949 letter, FBI Memo
‘Protection of Vital Installations’ (three page pdf file)

Jan. 31, 1949 Army FOIA Document.
To AFOSI concerning the latest Green Fireball incident seen over several states on Jan 30, 1949. ‘All out investigation OK’ed by OSI’ says the handwritten notation of Feb 4, 1949. LaPaz investigated and determined the Green Fireball had a 140+ mile trajectory from near Amarillo to near Lamesa, Texas, at a multiply triangulated altitude of about 60,000 to 40,000 feet at a velocity of 25,000 to 50,000 mph -- an absolute physical impossibility for a meteor.  No traces were found despite LaPaz and AFOSI plowing through miles of Texas mud looking for fragments. (Brad Sparks)

Statement from Project SIGN
Possibility that some of the incidents may represent technical developments far in advance of knowledge available.

SECRET Project SIGN Report, Feb. 11, 1949 (72-page pdf file)
The order of February 11, 1949, that changed the name of Project Sign to Project Grudge had not directed any change in the operating policy of the project. It had, in fact, pointed out that the project was to continue to investigate and evaluate reports of sightings of unidentified flying objects. In doing this, standard intelligence procedures would be used. This normally means the unbiased evaluation of intelligence data. But it doesn’t take a great deal of study of the old UFO files to see that standard intelligence procedures were no longer being used by Project Grudge. Everything was being evaluated on the premise that UFO's couldn’t exist. No matter what you see or hear, don’t believe it. (Ruppelt) [Correction: The order changing SIGN to GRUDGE was dated Dec 16, 1948, by AF Dir of R&D Gen Donald Putt, not made effective until Feb 12, 1949, after SIGN's Final Report was issued Feb 11. We know the date of the change because it was commented on at the Los Alamos green fireballs conference of Feb 16, 1949, as having occurred the previous Saturday,’ Feb. 12. - Brad Sparks]

AFOIN_AIR_Memo_No.4_Feb.15, 1949
Found in the FBI files a copy of Air Intelligence Requirements Memo No. 4, ‘Unconventional Aircraft,’ of Feb 15, 1949. Copies were sent by Hoover to FBI offices worldwide in SAC (Special Agents in Charge) Letter No. 38 of March 25, 1949. (Brad Sparks)

Feb. 16, 1949, Los Alamos Conference on the Green Fireball Problem
Actual document
This offshoot of this conference was the Project TWINKLE, scheme to gain more accurate information on any more ‘peculiar meteors’ by establishing number of cinetheodolite stations to film anything unusual in the atmosphere, especially fast moving objects.

March 22, 1949 Letter
Air Force letter to Director, FBI

March 25, 1949 Letter
FBI letter to Air Force who was seeking help from FBI. Includes  attachment below.

April 27, 1949 Joint Intelligence Committee Report (retyped copy) 
The USAF Directorate of Intelligence personnel briefed the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Lt. Gen. Lauris Norstad, and his staff on UFOs in a TOP SECRET ‘Air Brief.’
Actual copy
  
April 27, 1949
The Air Force sends Top Secret ‘Unidentified Aerial Objects’ presentation with Appendix A, a summary of Air Force actions to the Joint Committee on Intelligence (JIC).  Committee is composed of representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force intelligence divisions.

April 27, 1949, Project Saucer Report
‘Memorandum to the Press’ No. M 26-49, released to the press from the Pentagon.
 Based on Project Sign / Grudge (classified codenames for Project ‘Saucer’) info from AMC Technical Intelligence Division, Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio, the last gasp of the pro-UFO faction.

April 28, 1949
Printed copies of the Top Secret ‘Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States’ (Air Intelligence Division Study 203) disseminated to restricted list. Originally prepared by the USAF Directorate of Intelligence, Air Intelligence Division, and the Office of Naval Intelligence on 10 December 1948, this was a followup to the AF presentations to the JIC and the AF DCS/O the day before.

May 5, 1949 Letter to CO, Kirtland AFB
The Inspector General USAF, 17th District Office of Special Investigations, Kirtland AFB, New Mexico.
Letter to Commanding Officer Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, 5 May 1949

May 12, 1949 Letter concerning conference at Sandia Base, New Mexico, 27 April
To Director of Special Investigations, Office of the Inspector General USAF, Washington 25, D.C. Page 4 -- Dr. Kaplan expressed a great concern, as these occurrences relate to the National Defense of the United States.

May 12, 1949 Memo (front page unredacted)...Both pages (lower quality, redacted)
SECRET memo from IG USAF to Dir. Special Investigations about Kaplan visiting the district office to review reports.

490512mclaughlin_Van-Allen.pdf
Letter to Dr. J.A. Van Allen from Cmdr R.B. McLaughlin about tracking flying saucer ‘a few weeks ago’.

August, 1949; SECRET Project Grudge Report
The GRUDGE Final Report (but not publicly released). It was still classified SECRET until Aug 1, 1952.

September 14, 1949 letter to Director of R&D, HQ, USAF
Concerning/including ‘Light Phenomena.’

Detection of UFOs by Geiger Counters - BB Archive Correspondence
In regard to the 14 & 17 & 21 Oct 1949 sightings at Mt. Palomar Observatory in the NICAP chronology and Sparks’ ‘BB Unknowns’ list, the 25 Nov 1949 ‘case’ in the Blue Book Archive is not a ‘case’ occurring on 25 Nov 1949 but the date the document was written and it contains some material on this incident. It is not actually a case file, but a collection of correspondence (47 documents) related to the potential detection of atomic powered UFOs by Geiger counter equipment, which was put together in 1952. There are several pages about the events and witnesses at Mt. Palomar.

Secret (1952) Document Mentions Correlation Between Sightings and Rise in Radiation
It was found that in October 1949 such an incident occurred at the Mt. Palomar Observatory and that the Navy had investigated them (21 incidents). (NARA-PBB85 762, 766 - Fran Ridge)

Nov. 25, 1949; Mt. Palomar, California
Nonexistent case date invented by BB to cover the real events on various dates in Oct-Nov 1949. is merely the date of an ONR-Pasadena report on these radiation/UFO incidents.

Project Twinkle Letter of December 9, 1949, Re: ‘Light Phenomena’
To Director of R&D, HQ, USAF, from AMC, Dayton. More on conference.

December 27, 1949
This was both the GRUDGE codename AND final report (Technical Report) that were not released and remained classified SECRET until Aug 1, 1952, and even then no one knew it was declassified except possibly Donald Keyhoe and Leon Davidson.”

As can be seen in this report, Killeen Base (designated as West Fort Hood in October 1969), Texas, was totally inundated with UFO sightings during March-July 1949.


Wikipedia article: “Fort Hood”:


Wikipedia article: “West Fort Hood”:


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realtvufos.blogspot.com/search?q=Anthony+O.+Mirarchi


















The Atomic Energy Commission’s Killeen Base, Texas
(U.S. Geological Survey/nicap.org photo)













Satellite photo of Killeen, Texas (tageo.com)
(tageo.com photo)