Project Blue Book case review: July-December 1959

This is the latest edition of the Project Blue Book case review covering July through December of 1959. Like the previous evaluations, I tried to examine each case to see if the conclusion had merit. I added comments to help clarify the explanation or if I felt it was not correct or adequate. 

July 1959

Summary

The cases during this time period, while minimal in number, still contained some challenging events. The major UFOlogical case was in Redmond, California. There seems to have been confusion about what transpired and Major Friend’s telephone conversation with the principle witnesses seemed to confirm that Venus was the explanation. The radar contact was explained as a contact regularly seen by operators and the aircraft intercept reported nothing. As a result, I can find no reason to dismiss the Venus explanation.

The Ceresco, Nebraska sightings seem to have plenty of data available and one of the sightings may have been an aircraft. The other sighting by an amateur astronomer cannot be explained. It could have been a balloon but the report is somewhat confusing so I will list it as UNIDENTIFIED. In my opinion, it should never have been listed as “insufficient data”.

Another series of interesting, and possibly linked, sightings happened in the northeast on August 19, 1959. There were three sightings that suggested a possible object in orbit that was traveling northeast. The sequence indicated to me that it might have been a satellite. Since my efforts indicated no satellite in the area, I asked Ted Molczan to check my work. He agreed there was nothing in orbit that could produce the sighting. Blue Book listed them as insufficient data and I agreed with that classification for the New Foundland case, which just listed an easterly course. The New Jersey event, which lasted 25 minutes, was very confusing but based on the course, I suspect that these were all aircraft traveling towards New York in the evening that the witness merged into one sighting. The Connecticut case involved an object with erratic behavior and a relatively steady northeast course. These characteristics indicated it could have been a balloon. 

There were also quite a lot of rocket launches that produced UFO reports during this time period. I suspect that would have been the case since observers were probably not familiar with how a rocket launch appears from a distance at night. The late 50s and early 60s had a lot of rocket launches as Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg were testing a lot of booster rockets for use in space/weapons research. 

Quelle: SUNlite 3/2020