Project Blue Book case review: January - June 1961
This is the latest edition of the Project Blue Book case review covering January through June 1961. 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.
Summary
The cases during this time period, were very taxing to evaluate. Many did not contain specific information and several of them can be traced to the Echo Satellite. I have been using the Two Line Elements for all potential satellites visible for the time period and then running them in the program, Heavensat, and seeing what satellites were possibly visible and if they came close to match- ing the descriptions. The Echo satellite was easily visible and seemed to align well with all the cases I classified as such. Out of the cases evaluated, thirty-eight were traced to the Echo satellite. That is 14% of the total number of cases. Out of those reclassified, fourteen were identified as the Echo satellite. It seems that Blue Book did not always have the computer printouts for Echo readily available. It probably took valuable computer time to create these printouts in 1961 and that may have contributed to the lack of Echo Satellite confirmations.
There were five sightings from the same individual in Silver Grove, Kentucky. Most of them appear to be astronomical in nature with another sighting probably being an aircraft. It would have been nice if the UFO officer from a local air base had gone out to visit the individual and explain to them what they were seeing.
I reclassified one report as UNIDENTIFIED. That was the January 9th sighting from Naknek, Alaska. I could have listed this as an un- reliable report since the witness claimed to have seen UFOs in the past, which made me wonder if he misperceived planes, stars, and satellites as UFOs. However, his sighting seemed to contain enough information to draw a conclusion and I ignored the comment about past sightings. The course was from NE to SW but the real puzzler was it lasted 90 minutes! Had it been 10 minutes, or less, I would classify it as an aircraft. 90 minutes usually means something astronomical but astronomical objects do not go from NE to SW in 90 minutes. The end result was I could not find an explanation and had to classify it as UNIDENTIFIED. If anyone has a potential solution for this sighting, I would love to hear it.
Next issue, I will continue the review with the second half of 1961.
Quelle: SUNlite 6/2020