Conclusion: 1948 - La courte apogée de Sign

Home > Alfred Loedding et la grande vague de soucoupes volantes de 1947

The year following 1947 witnessed the formal activation of Project Sign. Unfortunately the heyday of Sign lasted but a brief period. Four specific case investigations during 1948 tell a great deal of the story of Alfred Loedding and his beloved Sign project. In fact, if ever there was a time in which a group of highly technical people sought answers to the complex UFO mystery, it was during that watershed period. In that year Loedding, Sneider, and other team members were literally looking for a sign to explain the events which had transpired during the past year?something to help explain the perplexing sightings of unusual aerial phenomena that were still occurring.

On January 7th, 1948, they thought they had one. On that day Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr. died when his F-51 fighter crashed southwest of Franklin, Kentucky, after intercepting a high flying UFO. Soon known as the Mantell Incident, the case is considered one of the most famous flying saucer stories of all time.

The fateful intercept began at 2:30 P.M. CST near Louisville after personnel of Fort Knox's Godman Air Field became concerned over the presence of a strange object overhead. It had been in sight since 1:45 P.M. when tower operator Sergeant Quinton Blackwell received a call alerting him to the UFO by the fort's security police. Tower commander Colonel Guy F. Hix later confirmed an unknown over the area along with Captain Gary Carter, also in the tower at the time. Carter, with the aid of 6 x 50 field glasses, described it as a round white object which appeared very high and at times seemed to hover. PFC Stanley Oliver, also in the tower, described the UFO more akin to a high altitude balloon, stating that it looked like "an ice cream cone topped with red." Others had a similar description, likening it to a "parachute with the bright sun shining on top of the silk" s1Project Blue Book Files, Roll No. 2, Case 136, listed as Incident 33a-f in 1948 era documents; and "Statements by PFC Stanley Oliver," Case 136.

Hix really didn't know what to think but decided he would try to find out. About that time just such a means came to his disposal when Mantell's flight of four F-51 fighters neared Louisville on a return ferry mission from Marietta Air Base in Georgia. Hix asked the group to pursue and identify, although, one of the planes was running low on fuel so continued on to the flight's planned destination at Standiford AFB in northern Kentucky. The remaining three F-5 Is then began climbing as Mantell took the lead. At 2:45 P.M. Mantell gained visual contact with the UFO?stating that it was "in sight above and [a]head of me, and it appears to be moving at about half my speed or approximately 180 miles per hour." Already over 10,000 feet, Mantell led his flight still higher despite the fact they had no oxygen on board. Even as they approached the danger level of 15,000 feet, where no pilot is advised to fly without oxygen, Mantell pursued the UFO. He then reported: "It appears to be a metallic object or possibly a reflection of sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size." Abruptly banking right, he continued his climb.

At 16,000 feet Mantell's right wingman, 1st Lieutenant Albert Clements,' tried to match the maneuver but started to fall behind. His other wingman, 2nd Lieutenant B.A. Hammond, also fell behind, becoming very concerned about their altitude. By that point they were over Bowling Green at 20,000 feet with Clements and Hammond quite a bit behind Mantell. The two wingmen had not yet seen the object nor were they even sure of what they were looking for. Mantell then radioed to them: "Look, there it is out there at 12 o'clock!" Clements could only "discern a bright-appearing object, very small, and so far away [that I was] unable to identify it as to size, shape, color ... Its position was slightly lower and to the left of the sun." Clements then urged his leader to level off and try to catch up with it from below. Mantell ignored the advice and radioed back that he wanted to follow it up to 25,000 feet for ten minutes and if he didn't get any closer, would then abandon the chase. Mantell then called Godman Tower around 3:15 P.M., stating: "I'm still climbing, the object is above and ahead of me moving at about my speed or faster. I'm going to close in for a better look."

Those were the last words ever heard from Mantell. The two other planes had broken off at 22,500 feet and headed for Standiford. All they could see as they left was their flight leader above them in the sun, still stubbornly climbing higher. At around 25,000 feet heading south, Mantell had pushed his luck still further but lost. He blacked out from oxygen deprivation at about 3:17 P.M. as his plane continued to climb to 30,000 feet. At that altitude the aircraft lumbered over and entered a circling descent. Soon the plane began an uncorrectable looping power dive, breaking up between 20,000 and 10,000 feet. Mantell must have regained consciousness sometime before the crash because throttle, mixture, and prop-pitch were all altered to slow the aircraft. Unfortunately that attempt only served to over-stress the aircraft and may have caused its actual breakup s2Philip J. Klass, UFOs Explained (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 34-37.

The aircraft crashed on the William J. Phillips farm outside Franklin, Kentucky, just 750 feet from the owner's house. Mantell's body was partially decapitated yet still inside the aircraft. It was not burned, radioactive, nor riddled with bullets as later sensationalized accounts claimed s3"Mantell Accident Report," Project Blue Book Files, Roll No. 2, Case 136. His watch, however, had stopped at 3:18 P.M., a minute or so before the aircraft had hit the ground. Godman Tower did not observe Mantell's crash, but kept sight of the UFO until 3:50 P.M., more than two hours since the sighting began. By that time Clements had refueled at Standiford and returned to the area but did not see anything unusual.

This now famous UFO case had actually begun earlier that day at 1:15 P.M. when state police received civilian reports of an odd flying object over Maysville, Kentucky (80 miles to the east of Louisville). Their report initially put Fort Knox police on alert which in turn placed Godman Tower on the lookout for a UFO. But unexplainably another sighting came at 1:35 P.M. west of Louisville and Godman Tower near Owensboro and Irvington. This report described a circular object about 250 to 300 feet in diameter. If correct, the UFO should have already passed the north edge of Godman field prior to their first sighting at 1:45 P.M. s4Case 136.

That night more than a dozen AFB control towers around the Midwest reported UFOs "low on the horizon." The first sighting came from the Clinton County Air Base near Wilmington, Ohio, at 7:35 P.M. EST. There, officers described seeing a light that seemed to be "dancing" up and down as it changed color from red to green. It then abruptly left to the southwest with a trailing exhaust. Then, just to the southwest of Clinton near Columbus's Lockbourne Air Base, tower operators saw a brilliant light descend as it trailed an amber-colored exhaust. Appearing perfectly spherical or orb-like, the object proceeded to make three tight circling maneuvers as it passed over the entire base. The light next streaked up at tremendous velocity to abruptly stop at a stationary position below an overcast sky. Yet, it soon rapidly descended straight back down. Coming much closer to the ground, the orb hovered for ten seconds?only to rise straight back up once again. The mysterious light returned to a spot just below the clouds before it sped off to the northwest s5Loren E. Gross, UFOs: A History 1948 (Fremont, CA: By the Author, 1992), p. 6.

The Air Force publicly blamed the planet Venus as the cause for all of the series of sightings, including the daylight incident in Kentucky. In actuality, however, many of the intelligence officers in TID's Sign project were slowly becoming convinced UFOs were extraterrestrial in origin during the course of the long accident investigation that continued through April. Loedding and Sneider got the Venus idea from Dr. Hynek who had only offhandedly suggested the planet as one possible explanation. They, however, used it as a cover or a quick fix to explain away what, at the time, became a very widely publicized incident in the midst of what was obviously going to be a long investigation. Sign team members thought they might have to suggest a far more shocking conclusion, but not before they had the time to develop the theory.

Edward Ruppelt, head of a later UFO investigation named Project Blue Book, confirmed as much in his memoirs. He stated that many at TID had adopted the "interplanetary" option by the end of the investigation because all others were exhausted. For that reason the Sign staff, in Ruppelt's opinion, looked only for evidence suggesting "spaceships" and nothing else in the Mantell case. Not finding any, they stuck to the Venus excuse to keep it under wraps. A sighting of the planet Venus would serve that purpose as well as any, but in their haste they did not even bother to check to see if Venus would have been bright enough to have been visible by Mantell or Godman Tower.

Asking that question to Dr. Hynek in 1951 when Edward Ruppelt headed a reinvestigation of the case, they discovered that Venus would have been too dim to have been seen on the afternoon of January 7th. Ruppelt then discovered evidence suggesting that some or all of the Kentucky sightings could have been caused by a 100 foot diameter Navy "skyhook" research balloon released that morning at the Clinton County AFB in Ohio. Skyhooks were used for high altitude cosmic-ray research and were very secret at the time. He also discovered that the wind currents that day were right to take a skyhook over Kentucky, yet the best evidence was still to come. In the files, he read about two observers who just hours after the Louisville incident sighted a balloon. Both individuals, one in Kentucky and the other in Tennessee, had initially had their attention drawn skyward to what appeared to be a very unusual object to the naked eye, but then they easily identified it through their telescopes as a balloon s6Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, p. 38. It seemed the final proof, but despite Ruppelt's discovery, the Air Force never officially backed down from its unplausible celestial explanation and has thus caused newspapers and magazines to continually sensationalize the story. To this day the case's details are so distorted that it remains not only the most talked about of the "Classic cases," but the most confusing as well.

Yet Ruppelt's theory, although quite plausible, does leave serious questions unanswered. Mantell's last radio transmission clearly indicated the UFO was out-pacing his 400 mile per hour F-51. Skyhook balloons, even when caught in the jet stream cannot travel that fast. Of course if it was a skyhook, it could have been as high as 60,000 feet causing Mantell to only think it outperformed his fast plane when in actuality he was seeing something much higher and further away. That might explain why the object remained in view from Godman for over two hours. But Mantell did have 2,867 flying hours, 67 of them in the F-51. He was a very experienced flyer and a veteran of the Normandy Invasion?having also won a Distinguished Flying Medal. He was also then operating his own flying school. At 22,000 feet or higher could he not have recognized a high altitude balloon that should have resembled a cone-shaped object, much like ground observer PFC Oliver described?

Thomas Mantell
Thomas Mantell

A close friend of Mantell went on record indicating that his friend had been a very cautious pilot and could not understand what would make him exceed the dangerous limit of 15,000 feet without oxygen. Even a flying cadet has the knowledge hammered into him at an early point that no one under any circumstances endangers himself or his aircraft by going above 15,000 feet without oxygen. Mantell's fellow pilot stated: "The only thing I can think was that he was after something that he believed to be more important than his life or family" s7Ibid., p.37.

Two other amazing but less well known cases came into TID during the long Mantell investigation that further influenced the Sign team's opinion. One concerned a "flying wing" report from the Central Philippines. Filed by 1st Lieutenant Robert W. Meyers, the sighting took place on April 1st 1948 at 9:55 A.M. local time on a clear day with unlimited visibility as the experienced aviator led a flight of three P-47s of the 67th Fighter Group. Meyers was at 1,500 feet when he noticed the unusual craft three miles east of his position. Shaped like a flying wing or "half-moon" with a "turtle back," the object resembled nothing then in the Pacific. The strange craft flew below him at about 1,000 feet and traveled around 200 miles per hour. He estimated its span to be 30 feet by 20 feet long, with an overall silver color. Meyers attempted to contact the other three aircraft in his group, but his radio went out.

Finally, curiosity got the best of him, and Meyers decided to try to get a better look. He made a 240 degree left turn, but as he did the UFO made a 90 degree left turn and leveled out to accelerate away at great speed in a matter of only seconds. No sound, power units, landing gear, cockpit, or exhaust trails were detectable, but he did notice that the craft had a small dorsal fin s8Project Blue Book Files, Roll No. 2, Case 122, no Incident # listed in 1948 era documents for this case.

Loedding, with his knowledge and expertise of flying wing designs must have took a special interest in this case. He also had reports of Meyers reputation as a pilot. By all accounts Meyers was a "reliable, non-excitable individual who appeared quite positive about his statements." This, coupled with the fact that the Northrop Flying Wing (the XB-35 and YB-49 models) were the only aircraft anywhere in the world that met the characteristics of the craft he saw, made this a truly remarkable sighting s9USAF Museum Files, Wright-Patterson US AFB. Because those aircraft never left the United States, the Sign team knew Meyers saw something of "foreign origin." But by then even the diehards in the project were becoming doubtful that such aircraft could be of Soviet construction. Loedding and a majority of the team therefore theorized by that spring that many of the UFO incidents could possibly represent something from outside this world n1Opinion of the authors.

A report that strengthened their position came just four days later. It involved three trained balloon observers from the Geophysics Lab Section at Holloman AFB, New Mexico. On April 5th they and project leader J.W. Peoples, were working on a secret project connected with the Air Force's Watson Laboratory field studies. In the middle of their tests they noticed a round white object with a golden hue fly very high over the base at "tremendous speed." The third man then briefly caught sight of a second UFO. One of the men described what he saw as an irregularly rounded craft, slightly concave on top. The duration of the incident only spanned 30 seconds, but in that time the unknown made at least one vertical loop and then disappeared westward.

Although the knowledgeable balloon men said the object looked a lot like a balloon, they were certain that it was not because three facts discounted the possibility of a lighter-than-air object. First, its violent maneuvers surpassed the stress limits of any known balloon design then in use. Secondly, the high level winds up to 65,000 feet were measured that day as coming from the west at only ten to fifteen miles per hour and no balloon flies against the wind. Finally, if high velocity winds were present, and they had blown from the east, a balloon could not attain such speeds even if caught in strong winds. The only fact that likened it to a balloon was that at no time could sound be detected nor could their sensitive 400-meter atmospheric noise receiver, then in operation, record any signal s10Project Blue Book Files, Roll No. 2, Case 139, listed as Incident 122 in 1948 era documents.

Highly trained aerial observers such as these carry a lot of weight in a UFO investigation. Alfred Loedding and an assistant from Clingerman's office, Lieutenant Colonel J.C. Beam, went out to New Mexico to investigate the case in person. Unfortunately, when they arrived Peoples and the other witnesses were away on other duty, but they were interviewed later at Watson Labs in New Jersey.

Loedding and Beam did talk to a Lieutenant Markley while at Holloman. Markley indicated that unusual radar returns had been noted at the base. He also told them of a sighting he had in August of 1947 and observations of "flat, round aeroforms"on two other occasions. (See page 109.) Loedding and Beam took advantage of their trip to investigate another older case. They traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, and interviewed William A. Rhodes who had captured a heel-shaped flying disc on film on July 7th, 1947.

After Peoples and the original observers in the Holloman incident were later interviewed at Watson Labs, investigators became personally convinced that they had seen something that flew "faster than any known object." Sign logged this case as the first of only seven unidentified sightings for 1948. Still very conservative with that designation, even incidents like the flying wing report from the Philippines did not make the unidentified list. This shows that even the biased Sign team gave out unidentified ratings very sparingly and despite modern day claims were not so obsessed by the extraterrestrial hypothesis as to have it affect their objectivity.

Le 4ème et plus important des événements qui formèrent la position de Sign arriva le 24 juillet lorsque le vol 576 DC-3 des Eastern Airlines fit une man?uvre d'évitement à 2 h 45 A.M. (EST) pour ne pas entrer en collision aérienne avec un ovni ! L'équipage effrayé était à 5000 pieds et à 20 miles au sud-ouest de Montgomery, en Alabama, lorsque l'objet inconnu arriva en trombe du nord-est. Il arriva aussi près que 700 pieds sur la droite de leur appareil à une vitesse d'au moins 800 miles/h mais ne produisit pas de propwash comme on pourrait s'attendre à ce qu'en cause un météore. L'objet then pulled up et vola dans des nuages légers et épars à 6000 pieds. Mais à part ces nuages patchy, c'était une nuit illuminée par la Lune. En fait, il faisait si clair que les pilotes, le capitaine Clarence S. Chiles et le 1er officier John B. Whitted, eurent une vue exceptionellement claire de l'ovni. Ils le décrivirent comme un objet de 100 pieds de long, sans ailes et en forme de cylindre. L'appareil semblait avoir une lueur bleu profond sur sa face inférieure, avec 2 rangées de fenêtres d'où émanaient des lumières brillantes et une traînée de 50 pieds de flamme rouge-orangée sortant de l'arrière. 1 passager à bord, Clarence L. McKelvie, vit l'objet et le décrivit comme une étrange, mystérieuse strie de lumière, très intenses11 "Supplement to Trip Report to Atlanta 25-28 July Inclusive and Statement of Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted," Project Blue Book Files, Roll No. 2, Case 179, listed as Incident 144 in 1948 era documents.

Quickly becoming well-publicized, the now famous Chiles-Whitted Sighting remains one of the most notable of all UFO cases. In fact, right after the Eastern flight landed, the pilots reported their incident to the airline manager. Eastern then released the details of the spectacular event to newspapers that day. From there the story hit the national news, generating sensational headlines. These news accounts also reached the Pentagon and the new Intelligence Chief Major General Charles P. Cabell. Cabell had Dayton on the phone immediately, ordering Colonel McCoy to initiate a prompt investigation. By the afternoon of the 25th McCoy had Alfred Loedding, Albert Deyarmond, and Major Raymond Llewellyn on an Air Force plane headed to Atlanta. Losing no time, the Sign team quickly had Chiles and Whitted under interrogation on the 26th at the Henry Grudy Hotel. Loedding and Deyarmond questioned the pilots over and over and became impressed by the consistency of their accounts. Loedding and Deyarmond also became impressed by the military service of Chiles and Whitted and in particular Chiles' outstanding record in commercial aviation. In the meantime Llewellyn tracked down the lone passenger who had also seen the object. He had not actually been able to observe much, only commenting on the object's bright red-orange exhaust. A preliminary report was then sent to the Pentagon, and the team returned to Dayton more convinced than ever that something beyond human origin had been responsible for this and other incidents.

Ces dessins dépeignent l'ovni vu par Chiles et Whitted. Il est significatif de noter qu'au fil des années l'observation de Chiles-Whitted est restée un cas impressionnant aux yeux des chercheurs. Un des enquêteurs sur les ovnis les plus proéminents de tous les temps, le Dr. James McDonald, interrogea les 2 pilotes dans les années 1960s et déclara être convaincu du fait qu'ils avaient vu des ouvertures ou fenêtres clairement définies sur l'appareil qui buzzed leur avion cette nuit-là. Personne en fait ne douta jamais de la crédibilité de Chiles ou de Whitted. Les 2 hommes, par exemple, furent décrits comme "tout à fait fiables" par le fameux pilote et président des Eastern Airlines, le capitaine Eddie Rickenbacker

That is somewhat ironic because for whatever reason, the "pro-saucer" Sign staff told the pilots that the incident resulted from a rare astronomical event known as a fireball. Chiles and Whitted, however, refused to accept the explanation and both pilots went public, maintaining that they had seen a manufactured craft of some sort.

Chiles et Whitted après leur fameuse observation d'ovni
Chiles et Whitted après leur fameuse observation d'ovni

Edward Ruppelt indique dans ses mémoires qu'indépendamment de ce que l'équipage avait vu, les officiers de Sign devenaient convaincus que les ovnis étaient d'origine "interplanétaire". Le capitaine Sneider sembla être un autre défenseur-clé de cette proposition. Sneider ajouta même un rapport de 1 page au dossier Chiles-Whitted dans lequel il défendait la faisabilité aérodynamique d'un objet sans aile en forme de fusée. Sneider indiqua que le fait que ce développement soit peut-être d'origine étrangère semblerait une supposition logique. Cela semble être the real significance of the Chiles-Whitted case because by "foreign origin," Sneider meant outer space! His influence would soon lead to the drafting of a dramatic and formal report by Sign staff that would force the Pentagon to take a stand on the subject one way or the other s12Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, pp. 40-41.

After the Chiles-Whitted Sighting, TID's Sign team sponsored, apparently under Loedding's sole authorship, a classified top secret document for inter-service distribution which traced the history of UFO investigations all the way back to the ghost rocket sightings of 1946. Like all such military evaluations involving a study up to a specific point in time, it received the term "estimate of the situation." The document has now become famous for the term. According to Ruppelt, this Estimate of the Situation reached a dramatic conclusion, stating that many of the UFO sightings investigated by Project Sign may be "interplanetary" in origin. Although the most startling part of the report advocated that the military should be put on an "alert footing" in the wake of the unexplainable sightings s13J. Alien Hynek, The UFO Report (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997), p. 4 (That UFO alert was actually issued that fall by the Pentagon) s14FOIA request I-NAIC-97-053, Project Sign and Grudge documents 1948-1949, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, states: "This Headquarters has instructed all major Air Commands, both in the ZI and Overseas, to be particularly alerted at this time for sightings of unidentified aerial objects and to generally comply with the requests contained in subject TWX. This Headquarters has also requested the cooperation of the Departments of the Army and the Navy, and the Coast Guard, in instructing their installations along the same lines.".

Needless to say the report drew considerable attention as it went up through the chain of command and passed by Air Force scientific advisors?all the way to Chief of Staff, General Hoyt Vandenberg.

Vandenberg, however, refused to have it distributed due to what he saw as a lack of any physical evidence to support their conclusion. He and other top brass were just not ready to go on record with such a fantastic position without hard proof?physical proof. And that was the one thing no Sign officer could provide no matter how hard he wished he could. Correspondence of this time shows Pentagon officials were also mindful of the panic caused by the radio broadcast The War of the Worlds on October 30, 1938 n2It is interesting to note that at the height of the UFO wave in the summer of 1947, Welles made a very amusing statement to the press: Orson Welles said today he'd bet 10 to one that the "flying saucers" will fizzle into fancy just like his "invasion from Mars" broadcast that fooled the nation in 1938. "I want everybody to know that I didn't have anything to do with this saucer hoax," though. He added, "I scared the shirts off Americans once. That was enough." The actor-producer-director-writer, currently filming 'Macbeth,' pointed out that during his famed radio dramatization many Americans reported seeing space ships landing. Others claimed they saw armies of Martians. "People are imaginative and gullible," said Welles. "Nine years ago they believed they saw Martians and now they see strange objects in the sky and think they're flying saucers." "But in case they do turn out to be from Mars," he grinned, "I've been predicting that sort of thing for a long time."?Toronto, Canada, Daily Tribune, 8 July 1947.

Because of the panic generated from that incident, no general would have wanted to answer to the President if an Air Force press release about UFOs had led to a similar disaster. Vandenberg, a decorated commander from WW II and a career military officer, intended to focus all of his efforts on organizing and building up the image of the new USAF. Even if UFOs were from another planet, Estimate conceded that they could not prove a direct threat to national security, and thus the Pentagon chose a wait and see attitude s15Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, pp. 41-46; and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy In America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1975), pp. 57, 95, 103, 212.

Unfortunately, Vandenberg's official lack of interest in TID's Estimate led to low morale among Project Sign staff. Despite a trip to the Pentagon by Sign team members Lawrence Truettner, Albert Deyarmond, and Alfred Loedding to lobby for Estimate, the Pentagon refused to be swayed into sanctioning the document s16Correspondence with Professor Michael Swords. No matter the significance of their conclusion, Sign could not share their opinions outside TID s17Interview with Professor Michael Swords.

Only a handful of the thick, black-covered, legal-sized Estimate reports were ever reproduced, and those were soon ordered burned. A few copies apparently survived up until 1951 when Ruppelt reviewed the intelligence files. He claimed that by that time the report had been declassified, but this is unlikely when one considers its conclusions and the fact that no copy of Estimate has ever surfaced. But, Ruppelt did claim to see the document with his own eyes. If any copies of Estimate survived beyond that point, they probably were taken as souvenirs along with some other early files known to have met that fate. Today they may very well be collecting dust in someone's attic. Some researchers erroneously claim that Air Intelligence Report Number 100-203-79, "Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States," a joint study by the USAF Directorate of Intelligence (DI) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) approved on December 10, 1948, and declassified in March 5, 1985, is a modified version of Estimate s18"Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79, Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the US, Air Intelligence Division Study No. 203, 10 December 1948, Directorate of Intelligence and Office of Naval Intelligence," USAF Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Files: Top Secret Control #2-7341, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland. Although the Navy sent a letter to the USAF in January of 1948 desiring to assist in the analysis of UFOs, their subsequent joint study superseded Estimate which was only an estimate of the situation up to the time that Sign submitted it s19Thanks here goes to Jan L. Aldrich's expertise in the analysis of declassified documents. He convincingly suggests that because the USAF Directorate of Intelligence is superior in authority to TID and Sign, that their jointly sponsored study with the Navy simply superseded Estimate. Thus Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79, is not a "ghost version of Estimate" as suggested by other researchers but a uniquely different document. .

Nevertheless, Air Intelligence Report Number 100-203-79 is an amazing document in its own right. It is so notable because its main conclusion suggested that a number of UFO events had a high probability of being the result of Soviet activity. In fact, a later Blue Book officer, Dewey Fournet, urged that this document be kept classified because even in 1952 he and others (although open-minded to an extraterrestrial explanation) still felt that the Soviets may be responsible for many of the incidents s20Bruce Maccabee, "Notes on Air Intelligence Report 100-203-79:10 December 48, Top Secret, Declassified 5 March 1955 by Mr. Thompson (1), head of declassification," (Silver Springs, Maryland: Privately published, 26 March 85), p. 1. . This is of such significance because today, with the opening-up of former Soviet records, historians now know that the USSR never flew spy missions over the United States with aircraft or guided missiles.

Dewey Fournet also made the statement that somewhere in the files awaiting declassification is a copy of Sign's Estimate. (He actually had a chance to see it as he did 100-203-79) s21Letters to Jim Melesciuc from Dewey Fournet, 23 May, 27 July, 1992, CUFOS files. . It could be true. The National Archives has a nightmarish amount of former military files, some of which are no longer classified, but whose content has literally been lost because they are buried in virtual mountains of document clutter. Anyone who has ever waited at any one of the National Archives' facilities will attest that it can take hours just to have the material in the catalog tracked down.

Who knows what is lost in that vast government paper shuffle not to mention the material still classified? So many government documents have accumulated that some 100 million are still awaiting declassification from WWI alone. Others predating just 1960 number over a billion pages of material. Even making a brief study of these could take teams of researchers a lifetime.

Although Dr. Hynek confirmed in the 1970s that Estimate did exist as Ruppelt and Fournet claimed, Ruppelt's book is the only first hand account we have of the draft and merely teases us with a few of its points n3This author has had the opportunity to view Ruppelt's unedited manuscript of Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, and it does list additional cases discussed in Estimate, but gives no further information on the document. One interesting passage suggests that the Air Force had an interest in UFOs before 1947 and that the English had actually tracked some of the "Ghost Rockets" in 1946 on radar. 25 If so, this would contradict the Air Force's consistent refusal to this very day to recognize the phenomena's existence before June 24, 1947.

Donald Loedding clearly remembers the controversy surrounding the rejection of his father's "Estimate of the Situation" draft to General Vandenberg and the resulting deep disappointment by his father. Donald had the impression that Alfred Loedding, who had been a rising star at Wright Field, officially fell from favor as a result of his personal belief that many of the flying disc sightings could represent craft of extraterrestrial origin. When he personally authored that carefully reached conclusion in the "Estimate" draft, Loedding severely hurt his career.

Researchers know that with the end of 1948 a drastic change took place in Project Sign. The great sense of importance that the Pentagon had previously bestowed on the project suddenly ceased. Dropped almost overnight, it happened in the midst of one of the most unsettling series of UFO sightings over American military bases then to date. By mid-1949 the leaders of the project like Sneider and Loedding would be ousted and, barring a period in the early 1950s, the AMC staff would never again openly talk about the origin of UFOs. Perhaps the extreme conclusions of the Estimate draft and the summary of the Project Sign final report (drawn up in late 1948 by Truettner and Deyarmond, and finished in February 1949) became just too much for the Pentagon to handle. Titled Unidentified Aerial Objects?Project Sign, a great deal can be interpreted by reading between the lines of the passages of that final report.

Even the introductory passages are important because they use some very interesting phrases. In the Foreword, for example, the Rand study is mentioned along with the intent to explore the possibility that some observed objects may represent "spaceships" or "satellite vehicles." (On July 21st the Pentagon had ordered a study to be made by the Rand Corporation to evaluate that possibility) s22Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, p. 40. This is stunning terminology regarding the Rand study because everyone who would have then read that report knew full well that not only did the United States not possess anything that could attain earth orbit, neither did the Soviets. In fact, it would be nine years before such an event occurred with Sputnik?considered much ahead of its time then.

The Introduction of the Sign final report has another intriguing passage. In the second paragraph it clearly states that this report is not a final estimate of the situation. This may very well have been a way of stating that the Sign report was not able to draw the conclusions it did in Loedding's Estimate of the situation.

Another sentence in the final report also seems to draw something from the earlier Estimate report when it speaks of assessing the possibility of a threat to national security presented by "such large numbers of unidentified flying objects." In the original Estimate report, Dr. Hynek confirmed that the Sign team called for an official UFO alert to be proclaimed?somewhat as was actually issued late that fall. Therefore, although the Pentagon always outwardly ignored the UFO situation by stating that no threat was presented to national security?the fear was clearly there.

Aside from that, the sentence is also of note because for the first time the term unidentified flying object is used. The summary again uses that phrase and speaks of The Books of Charles Fort, which was one of the first works detailing unusual aerial phenomena in earlier times. This is significant because officially the Air Force has always refused to recognize the UFO phenomenon before June of 1947. One wonders how much discussion of this was present in the Estimate draft.

Many more pages follow the introductory pages, including an appendix by James E. Lipp of the Rand Corporation that contained the conclusions of their contracted study. It actually considered the possibility that UFOs could originate from either Venus or Mars. (Prior to NASA's planetary probes in the 1960s and '70s even reputable scientists openly considered without ridicule the possibility that civilizations could exist in our own solar system.) Travel from other star systems, however, was considered improbable even then because Lipp's report stated that "the actions attributed to the 'flying objects' reported during 1947 and 1948 seem inconsistent with space travel [because of the vast distances between stars]."

The report was released only to specific government and military offices as the ominous end of Sign came when the Air Force changed the name of Project Sign to Project Grudge at the request of the Director of Research and Development. Officially indexed as the "Detailed Study of Flying Discs," Grudge marked a sudden attitude change in UFO investigations. That revised project began in 1949 by building a public relations campaign to downplay UFO sightings s23David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy In America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 50.

At the same time the elite of the TID intelligence officers, almost all of which had gravitated to Project Sign, were on their way out. Ruppelt wrote that many in intelligence "drastically and hurriedly changed their minds about UFOs when they thought the Pentagon was no longer sympathetic to the UFO cause." He stated that others who had not changed their minds were "purged." Other officers who had even briefly considered the extraterrestrial hypothesis eventually found themselves replaced by new personnel. The Pentagon used Grudge to "put an end to UFO reports" by explaining every sighting and telling the public just how the Air Force used expert investigation methods to reach their conclusions. This sudden change in policy was so pronounced that Ruppelt wondered if there was not some hidden reason behind it. He wrote of an underlying feeling he had when taking over UFO investigations in 1951:

This period of mind changing bothered me. Here were people deciding that there was nothing to this UFO business right at a time when the reports seemed to be getting better?maybe I was just playing the front man to a big cover-up. I didn't like it because if somebody above me knew that UFOs were really spacecraft, I could make a big fool out of myself if the truth came out" s24Ruppelt, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, pp. 58-60.

Dr. Hynek also spoke of that period in his writings. He described this change at TID as occurring virtually overnight. Donald Loedding confirms that Alfred Loedding was "fired" from Project Sign by 1949 as a result of his position. Although he did remain in Dayton doing work for the Air Force until 1951, the pressure continued.

Donald feels that officials at AMC attempted to "phase his father out" as is often done in the corporate world. Records do show, in fact, that Alfred Loedding's efficiency rating reports went from excellent in 1948 to lower and lower grades until he resigned on February 16th, 1951. At that time Loedding secured a job as director of jet research at Unexcelled Chemical Corporation in Cranbury, New Jersey. After Vandenberg's death in 1954, Alfred Loedding once again found the Air Force interested in his skills. In 1955 Loedding returned to Dayton and Wright-Patterson AFB. By 1960 he was working out of Langley AFB in Virginia as the Air Force's liaison officer to NASA. The records indicate that he served only as a civilian consultant in that role, but the implication posed by his family is that there may have been a connection with CIA headquarters at Langley. But from 1951 until his death in 1963, Loedding, according to Donald, never again worked on or talked about UFOs?so deep was his disappointment and disgust with being "fired" from Project Sign for his views.

Alfred C. Loedding was of strong German descent, ingrained with a high moral work ethic and dedication to family and country?the United States of America. When Loedding helped draft the Sign position on the extraterrestrial thesis, he did so with great thought and devotion. Vandenberg's rebuff severely hurt Loedding's pride. Also professionally injured at the time by his views, Loedding never again became involved in UFO research. Another man may have compromised his stand, especially when it clearly affected his career for the worse. But Loedding was too dedicated and true to himself to be a "yes man." Thus, the worst that can be said about Alfred Loedding is that he was not a diplomat as later Blue Book notables Edward Ruppelt and Robert Friend were. As a result, Loedding's time in ufology was brief but very notable s25Great thanks goes to Donald and Fred Loedding for the time that they devoted to the authors' research.

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