Quanto avvenne a Fort Monmouth, nel New Jersey, segna un importante evento nella storia dell'ufologia. Fu la prima volta che, dopo la chiusura delle indagini sugli UFO, avvenuta nel 1949, il Pentagono decise di riaprire le indagini sui dischi volanti. Da li a poco sarebbe nato il leggendario Blue Book, chiusosi ufficialmente solo nel 1970. Il tutto iniziò proprio grazie a questo caso, dopo che i dischi volanti tornarono a scandalizzare tutti gli Stati Uniti.
Il caso
Lunedi 10 Settembre 1951, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, ore 11:10. Diversi oggetti non identificati furono captati dal radar della base di Fort Monmouth. Gli oggetti procedevano ad una velocità variabile da 0 a 700 mph, e ad altitudini altrettanto incostanti. Gli oggetti furono osservati su un radar AN/MPG-1. Alle ore 15:15 un oggetto fu osservato sul radar SCR584 . L'evento più bizzarro avvenne lo stesso giorno, quando un oggetto non convenzionale fu avvistato dall'equipaggio di un T-33 dell'Air Force, in volo a 20.000 piedi su Point Pleasant, diretti verso Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Erano le 11:35. L'oggetto scomparve poco dopo in mare, vcino a Asbury Parck, ad una velocità stimata di 1000 mph, dopo aver fatto una virata circolare di 120 gradi. Impossibile per qualunque velivolo dell'epoca. Quest'ultima segnalazione, è la più rilevante di tutto l'evento. I testimoni erano due piloti affidabili, un tenente e un maggiore, Wilbert S. Rogers ed Edward Ballard Jr, che non riuscirono in alcun modo ad identificare l'oggetto, che provarono, invano, a inseguire . L'UFO venne descritto come avere forma discoidale con cupola, e dal diametro di 30 o 50 metri. Il colore era di un argento opaco, ed era distante dai testi di 12.000 metri. I testimoni affermarono che l'oggetto aumentò velocità fino a raggiungere i 900 mph in meno di due minuti. Il velivolo più veloce dell'epoca, era un F-86 Sabre, e non superava i 735 mph. L'avvistamento del T-33, venne registrato da terra, tramite un microfono acceso. I testimoni quel giorno, incluso un esperto radar, affermarono di non aver visto mai niente del genere. Il secondo UFO, captato dal radar SCR584, procedeva ad una velocità molto più veloce di un jet, ed era diretto proprio verso dove si trovava il T-33. I radar, all'epoca, erano strutturati per seguire le rotte dei jet, ma quando si trovarono a captare quei segnali non identificati, lo strumento non riuscì neanche a stargli dietro, dato la velocità di molto più elevata dei soli velivoli esistenti all'epoca. L'avvistamento radar visuale durò circa tre minuti. Le apparecchiature erano perfettamente funzionanti. Riguardo all'avvistamento in volo dei due piloti, quando un giornalista chiese a Rogers cosa potesse essere il velivolo che lui e il suo collega videro quel giorno, lui strinse le spalle e affermò che non sapeva minimamente cosa fosse, ma era certo non trattarsi di un pallone. Continuò affermando che l'oggetto sembrava perfettamente discoidale, dove al centro, era leggermente rialzato.
L'avvistamento fece molto scalpore all'epoca, incluso nel Pentagono, tanto da, dopo questo evento, richiedere una nuova indagine governativa ufficiale, dopo che venne ufficialmente cessata nel 1949 dopo il Progetto Grudge. L'incidente ebbe anche forte rilevanza sulla politica di trasparenza del governo a proposito dell'informazione da rilasciare al pubblico in merito alla questione dischi volanti. Questo caso fu un trampolino di lancio per la nascita del Blue Book. Sia come sia, del caso ne parlò ampiamente anche Edward Ruppelt, che sarà poi primo direttore del Blue Book. Insieme a Ruppelt, del caso se ne occupò un suo solido collaboratore, Henry detto "Hank" Metscher, che, addetta sua, il caso era ad attribuirsi al lancio di alcuni palloni sonda. Metscher era un esperto di ingegneria, e Ruppelt richiese un suo rapporto tecnico sulla faccenda, da inviare al Pentagono il 30 novembre. Nel rapporto venne dichiarato quanto segue:
At approximately 11:12 EDST, 10 September 1951 two balloons were released from the Evans Signal Laboratory, New Jersey, . . . and would have moved into a position nearly in line with Point Pleasant."
I registri dell'Air Force confermarono che erano presenti dei palloni nello stesso momento in cui i piloti del T-33 videro l'oggetto, tuttavia le stime pongono la loro quota a circa 18.000 piedi, contro i 5.000 il quale si sarebbe mosso l'UFO seguito dai due piloti. I conti non tornavano.
Dalle parole dello stesso Ruppelt
The sighting by the two officers in the T-33 jet fell apart when Metscher learned that a balloon had been launched in the area of the sighting just a matter of minutes before the UFO was seen. Hank got out an aeronautical chart and plotted the path of the balloon, the path of the T-33, and the reported path of the UFO. The first thing that showed up was that the balloon was always along the line of sight between the T-33 and where the two officers thought the UFO had been. With a little more figuring Hank showed how every reported motion of the UFO could have been due to the relative motion between the balloon and the T-33, and the observer's inability to accurately estimate distances, since they didn't know how big their "UFO" really was.
Del caso se ne occuparono direttamente il colonnello N.R. Rosegarten e il tenente Cummings, che passarono tutta la giornata ad interrogare i testimoni. Durante l'interrogatorio, anche Rosegarten, pur rispettando l'esperienza di volo dei due piloti, affermò che l'evento poteva essere spiegabile con l'avvistamento di un pallone sonda in circostanze insolite. Egli fu convinto anche, che un pallone sonda, formato con riflettori di pellicola, potevano spiegare anche gli avvistamenti radar avvenuti precedentemente. Tuttavia, i piloti erano certi di quanto avevano visto, e affermavano che aveva un comportamento intelligente.
Un altro incidente si verificò nuovamente lo stesso pomeriggio del 10. Anche in questo caso, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, il centro radar captò la presenza di un oggetto non identificato. Questa volta si trovava a 18 miglia di distanza, volando ad una velocità modesta. Poco dopo venne confermata la presenza anche da alcuni osservatori a terra, anche se il massimo che videro era un puntino d'argento in cielo. Mentre Cummings, dimostrò definitivamente che l'avvistamento era attribuito in realtà al lancio di un palloncino, un altro avvistamento, questa volta più inspiegabile, avvenne il giorno seguente.
L'11 settembre, un breve riassunto dell'avvistamento del T-33, fu inviato all'ATIC dal 148° gruppo intercettore di Dover AFB, Delaware, dove si trovavano di base Rogers e Ballard. Il giorno stesso, segui un rapporto ancora più accurato in dettaglio da parte di Rogers, ma questa volta destinato direttamente al Generale dell'AMC. Lo stesso fecero gli operatori di Fort Monmouth, che inviarono un rapporto riguardo all'avvistamento radar.
I rapporti seguirono le disposizioni amministrative del tempo, riguardo le segnalazioni di oggetti volanti non identificati, seguendo l'Air Defense Command Letter 200-1, dell'11 aprile 1951. Stranamente questa prassi venne seguita meno in questo caso, dato che la stampa fu messa al corrente subito dell'avvistamento dei due piloti, e per questo iniziarono a trapelare articoli su articoli nelle più svariate testate giornalistiche, e così facendo l'USAF arrivò per ultima. Decisamente uno "snafu" militare, come si direbbe in gergo, soprattutto perché in fatto di UFO, ogni documento dovrebbe essere classificato. Due personaggi che si interessarono al caso, come anche agli UFO in genere, erano Robert Johnson e Mr Brewster della Republic Aviation, un industria molto influente. I dettagli non sono chiari, ma pare che, i file dell'AFOSI mostrino di come i due sapessero perfettamente cosa avvenne a Fort Monmouth, e chiesero il permesso dal Comando dell'Eastern Air Defence, di parlare con Rogers e Ballard, in data 20 settembre.
Durante il colloquio, Brewster mostrò ai due piloti alcuni schizzi di velivoli, probabilmente sperimentali. Tuttavia, entrambi i piloti, non riuscirono ad essere d'aiuto, dato che non videro alcun tipo di unità di scarico, motori, ali o la propulsione dell'UFO da loro avvistato. Sembra che Brewster speculò che l'UFO potesse avere una propulsione elettrica di qualche tipo. Quest'ultimo spiegò anche che aveva dei nomi di altri testimoni, che, presumibilmente hanno avuto avvistamenti analoghi a quello dei due piloti, e anche questi furono intervistati da lui e da Johnson.
Lo storico d'aviazione, Joel Carpenter, ha condiviso alcuni spunti di riflessioni sul motivi per cui la Republic poteva essere interessata alla questione UFO. Come in molti altri casi, sembra che la curiosità intorno ai dischi volanti, aveva meno a che fare con teorie astrofisiche, ma con ben altra realtà, quella della Guerra Fredda.
Carpenter:
Each of the airframe contractors in the 40s and 50s had a specialty, and Republic's was fighters. They had an ace designer named Alexander Kartveli who was very interested in supersonic aerodynamics and came up with some very radical concepts for early jet fighters. (The P-84 that was running up at Muroc when the first disc sighting was made there was one of his designs.) In those days, Air Defense Command (or maybe still CONAD then) Hq was located at Mitchel Field, Long Island, and since Republic was right down the road in Farmingdale, it had an ³in² with the fighter command. Republic did a lot of studies for CONAD on the problems of how to use fighters to intercept high-speed bombers. If a bomber is flying near the speed of sound, it is very hard to detect it with radar, scramble the fighter, get the fighter to the exact point where it can fire its weapons, and shoot at exactly the right instant to hit the target. . . You can see why the Ft. Monmouth incident would have had a bearing on this, if the radar operators were tracking UFOs that were going too fast to be jets, what could possibly be done about them? So I think that the Republic men might have been in the Cabell meeting [when Cabell was finally briefed on the Ft. Monmouth incidents in detail on November 1] as experts on the problems of intercepting high-speed targets. The other aspect of this is that just a couple of days before the Cabell meeting, Republic had been awarded a contract to build one of the most incredible aircraft ever designed, the XF-103. This was a true interceptor. . . projects like the XF-103 take years to develop and they probably thought that by the time it was operational, the Soviets might have supersonic bombers.
Ufficialmente il caso venne spiegato con l'avvistamento di un pallone sonda. Le incongruenze però sono molte, e un indagine condotta all'epoca da James McDonald fa capire meglio di come non era possibile che l'avvistamento del T-33 poteva essere riconducibile ad un pallone.
Evaluation of the Fort Monmouth Incident
Dr. James E. McDonald:
www.nicap.org/reports/monmouthan.htm
1. Case 31. Ft. Monmouth, N.J., September 10, 1951.
It is clear from Ruppelt' s discussions (Ref. 5) that a series of radar and visual sightings near Ft. Monmouth on 9/10/51 and the next day were of critical importance in affecting official handling of the UFO problem in the ensuing two-year period. Many details from the official file on these sightings are now available for scientific scrutiny (Ref. 7). Here, a sighting by two military airmen flying in a T-33 near Ft. Monmouth will be selected from that series of events because the sighting was eventually tagged as a weather balloon. As with any really significant UFO case, it would require far more space than can be used here to spell out adequately all relevant details, so a very truncated account must be employed. While flying at 20,000 ft from a Delaware to a Long Island airbase, the two men in the T-33 spotted an object "round and silver in color" which at one stage of the attempted intercept appeared flat. The T-33 was put into a descending turn to try to close on the object but the latter turned more tightly (the airmen stated) and passed rapidly eastward towards the coast of New Jersey and out to sea. A pair of weather balloons (probably radiosonde balloons but no information thereon given in the files) had been released from the Evans Signal Laboratory near Ft. Monmouth, and the official evaluation indicates that this is what the airmen saw.
However, it is stated that the balloons were released at 1112 EDST, and the sighting began at about 1135 EDST with the T-33 over Point Pleasant, N.J. In that elapsed time, a radiosonde balloon, inflated to rise at the 800-900 ft/min rate used for such devices, would have attained an altitude of about 17-18,000 ft, the analysis notes. From this point on, the official analysis seems to be built on erroneous inferences. The airmen said that, as they tried to turn on the object, it appeared to execute a 120-degree turn over Freehold, N.J., before speeding out over the Atlantic. But from the upper winds for that day, it is clear that the Ft. Monmouth balloon trajectory would have taken it to the northeast, and by 1135, it would have been about over the coast in the vicinity of Sea Bright. Hence, at no time in the interval involved could the line of sight from T-33 to balloon have intersected Freehold, which lies about 15 miles WSW of the balloon release- point. Instead, had the airmen somehow seen the radiosonde balloon from Pt. Pleasant, it would have lain to about their N or NNE and would have stayed in about that sector until they passed it. Furthermore, the size of the balloon poses a serious difficulty for the official analysis. Assuming that it had expanded to a diameter of about 15 feet as it ascended to about the 18,000-ft level, it would have subtended an arc of only 0.6 min, as seen from the T-33 when the latter passed over Pt. Pleasant. This angular size is, for an unaided eye, much too small to fit the airmen's descriptions of what they tried to intercept. In a press interview (Ref. 40), the pilot, Wilbert S. Rogers of Columbia, Pa., said the object was "perfectly round and flat" and that the center of the disc was raised "about six feet" and that it appeared to be moving at an airspeed of the order of 900 mph. The entire reasoning on which the balloon evaluation is elaborated fails to fit readily established points in the official case-summary.
Discussion.
The possibility that a pilot can be misled by depth perception errors and coordinate-reference errors to misconstrue a weather balloon as a fast-maneuvering object must always be kept in mind. But in the Ft. Monmouth instance, as in many others that could be discussed in detail, there is a very large gap between the balloon hypothesis and the facts. The basic sighting-report here is quite similar to many other daytime sightings by airborne observers who have seen unconventional disc-like objects pass near their aircraft.
Qui è possibile reperire tutta la documentazione sul caso
www.nicap.org/510910monmouth_dir.htm
All'epoca uscirono molti articoli che trattarono l'evento
Il precursore del Blue Book
Il Generale Cabell era un ufficiale che manteneva un vivido e sincero interesse per il mistero UFO, da quando divenne direttore dell'AFOIN, nel maggio del 1948, ma, per qualche motivo, aveva delegato gran parte della responsabilità ai suoi collaboratori. Nel 1949, dopo l'articolo di Sidney Shallet, i dischi volanti furono de-enfatizzati, e le acquisizioni sugli avvistamenti UFO e successive informazioni furono annullate. Grudge chiuse ufficialmente nel dicembre dello stesso anno, anche se il lavoro continuava all'interno dell'ATIC, dato che i rapporti continuavano ad arrivare tramite i consueti canali di informazione. Cabell, che fu famoso per non aver digerito l'aborto della relazione finale e successiva chiusura del Project Grudge, sembrava pronto entro fine 1950, inizio 1951, per un approccio più attivo nello studio del fenomeno. Non siamo a conoscenza del perché questo ufficiale abbia rincominciato ad occuparsi attivamente della questione UFO, forse aveva semplicemente più tempo per occuparsene, o forse era il periodo, molto caldo all'epoca, soprattutto contro i sovietici. Gli USA a quei tempi, erano preoccupati dei possibili avanzamenti tecnologici da parte dei russi in merito a ipotetici bombardieri ad alta velocità. Cabell finalmente riesamina i rapporti sui dischi volanti dal giugno del 1950. A quei tempi, gli altri responsabili come il colonnello Watson dell'ATIC o quelli dell'AFOIN, avevano in mano compiti ben più importanti rispetto ad avere a che fare con rapporti di dischi volanti. Entro la fine del 1950, Cabell fu preoccupato riguardo ai nuovi rapporti che provenivano in quel periodo. Il colonnello Watson e il suo vice comandante, il colonnello Fran Dunn, erano consapevoli della problematica. Purtroppo Watson non era un Pro-UFO e la questione a quei tempi, nei canali ufficiali, era, almeno in parte, snobbata. Watson aggrottava le sopracciglia quando sentiva parlare di avvistamenti di dischi volanti. Il suo scetticismo lo precedeva. Durante i fatti di Fort Monmouth, pare che Dunn lo abbia rimpiazzato per qualche tempo, prendendo il suo posto.
Nelle carte private di Ruppelt, sappiamo che Cabell provò più volte di scavalcare i poteri di Watson, che per lui intralciavano la ricerca UFO, che anzi, la stava facendo morire. Come Watson, c'erano altri saucers killers, come il colonnello Porter e altri uomini del Pentagono. Questo accadeva sempre nel 1951. Amico di Watson, era Albert Deyarmond, rimasto a lavorare all'ATIC, dopo che il colonnello aveva accettato un incarico di comando in Europa. Così Deyarmond rimase un uomo chiave nella gerarchia dell'ATIC. Certamente Deyarmond continuò a far applicare seriamente quella politica "anti-saucer", ma in realtà Deyarmond era segretamente interessato all'argomento, ed era un forte sostenitore di uno studio oggettivo e sincero del fenomeno, almeno quando era membro del Project Sign, nel 1948. Ruppelt, nelle sue carte, disse anche che Deyarmond era un fermo sostenitore dell'ipotesi extraterrestre. Ovviamente questi dovette starsene sulle sue, dato che quando il Sign venne chiuso e la maggior parte dei pro-UFO vennero cacciati e sostituiti dagli Anti-UFO, questi fece finta di niente, per non perdere probabilmente il posto.
Tuttavia, la politica anti-saucer doveva essere sempre presente, e con essa, l'influenza che aveva ancora Watson nell'ambiente, infatti, quando arrivò segnalazione dei fatti incredibili di Fort Monmouth all'ATIC, questi vennero completamente snobbati e rinviati, senza essere visionati. Il colonnello Dunn tuttavia, era perfettamente a conoscenza degli eventi che accadderò, almeno già dal giorno seguente. Quando i fatti accaduti a Monmouth iniziarono ad essere pubblicati dai giornali, anche tra le testate più importanti come il New York Times e il Washington Daily News, già a partire dal 12 settembre, Cabell non era ancora a conoscenza dell'evento, segno che c'era ancora un forte silenzio sulla questione UFO. Cabell provò a farsi sentire nell'ambiente militare, ma non fu ascoltato. Alla fine seppe dell'evento solamente 18 giorni dopo, leggendo casualmente un giornale sulla propria scrivania.
Solo dopo che la notizia del caso fece molto scalpore, l'Air Defense Command, decise di prendere la situazione in mano e volere altre informazioni. L'ADC voleva il Grudge riguardo questo evento, ma non si erano neanche accorti che ormai il progetto era finito da tempo, e si era a corto di personale. Ora occorreva di nuovo un team che si occupasse delle indagini sugli UFO. Un nuovo team Grudge.
Poiché il colonnello Rosengarten era a capo della sezione tecnico-scientifica che si occupava dei velivoli, in particolare delle propulsioni dei jet, alla divisione analisi dell'ATIC, ebbe il comando del team Grudge. Il primo passo di Rosengarten era quello di di scegliere i collaboratori per il team, e alla fine, notò Ed Ruppelt, che si trovava seduto proprio nella scrivania dove prima c'era un eccellente membro del Sign, Alfred Loedding, che lasciò l'ATIC otto mesi prima per lavorare in Pennsylvania. Loedding era un altro Pro-UFO esplicitamente cacciato via perché possibilità all'ipotesi extraterrestre sui dischi volanti. Sia come sia, Ruppelt fu subito scelto come membro del nuovo gruppo di studio. L'altro uomo scelto fu Jerry Cummings. Cummings era un ottimo elemento, fece parte del vecchio T-2, l'Intelligence Group distante a Dayton, durante la parte finale della seconda guerra mondiale. Era ovviamente un uomo affidabile, con una certa esperienza tecnico-scientifica, e a quanto pare aveva ottime qualità come ingegnere aeronautico.
I due, Rosengarten e Cummings, come già detto all'inizio, furono i primi inviati a Fort Monmouth per indagare sugli avvistamenti. Fino a notte tarda di domenica 30 settembre, e fino a lunedi mattina del 1 ottobre, Cummings e Rosengarten lavorarono a lungo, 24 ore su 24 quasi senza sosta, per completare la loro indagine in tempo, per incontrare poi Cabell, lunedi alle 16:00, dove gli aspettava un incontro al Pentagono. I due volarono successivamente a Washington, con un aereo da loro noleggiato. Quando raggiunsero il Pentagono, si trovarono insieme a Cabell, e ad altri membri top dell'AFOIN, per un briefing, riguardo al caso. Ruppelt, nei suoi scritti, fornisce una descrizione provocatoria di questa riunione top-secret.
Ruppert:
[Major] General Cabell presided over the meeting, and it was attended by his entire staff plus Lieutenant Cummings, Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten, and a special representative from Republic Aircraft Corporation. The man from Republic supposedly represented a group of top U.S. industrialists and scientists who thought that there should be a lot more sensible answers coming from the Air Force regarding the UFOs. The man was at the meeting at the personal request of a general officer.
Every word of the two-hour meeting was recorded on a wire recorder. The recording was so hot that it was later destroyed, but not before I had heard it several times. I can¹t tell everything that was said but, to be conservative, it didn¹t exactly follow the tone of the official Air Force releases, many of the people present at the meeting weren't as convinced that the 'hoax, hallucination, and misidentification' answer was quite as positive as the Grudge Report and subsequent press releases made out.
Toward the end of the two-hour conference a general asked Lieutenant Cummings to review the activity of the UFO investigation for the past year and a half. Maybe it was just a lack of sleep, or maybe it was just Cummings, but the general got the straight answer, for all practical purposes the project was dead. Then Cummings proceeded to elaborate on the details, the attitude at ATIC, the opposition to his reorganizing the project, and the methods of processing reports. Lieutenant Cummings didn't miss a point. He later told me that all of the generals and about three fourths of the full colonels present at the meeting turned the shade of purple normally associated with rage while a sort of sickly grin graced the faces of the remaining few. Then one of the generals on the purple-faced team glared at the sickly-grin team and cut loose.
The first thing the general wanted to know was, 'Who in the hell has been giving me these reports that every decent flying saucer sighting is being investigated?'
Then others picked up the questioning.
'What happened to those two reports that General __ sent in from Saudi Arabia? He saw those two flying saucers himself.' [That case actually occurred after this meeting took place during the next year of 1952 to a General E.M. Day, apparently the case that was so discussed at that meeting was the Mantell Incident. Because Ruppelt made such an effective argument in his book that the Mantell Incident was not UFO related, he probably substituted the Saudi Arabia sighting so as not to bring the issue of Mantell up again.] 'And who released this big report, anyway?' another person [we now know this was Major General Cabell] added, picking up a copy of the Grudge Report and slamming it back down on the table.
Questo è un altro scritto molto importante, sempre di Ruppelt. E' ricordo di una conversazione avvenuta tra Ruppelt e Cummings il 14 gennaio 1955.
[Edward Ruppelt writes:] On 14 January 1955, I had lunch with Jerry Cummings who was then working for Radioplane Corporation in Van Nuys. Since Jerry had been in charge of Blue Book in September 1951, he had the story on how the project got a shot of added emphasis from the sightings at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey. (Jerry got out of the Air Force shortly after this and went back to work at Cal Tec.)
Jerry said that on the afternoon of September 1951 [no exact date given but his story apparently begins in mid month] he was in the office when he got a call from Lt. Col. Rosengarten, who was chief of the Aircraft and Propulsion Section at ATIC. [sic, Performance and Characteristics Branch of the Aircraft and Propulsion Section.] Rosy [sic, his nickname was spelled Rosie] was out [sic] boss. Rosy had a wire that had come in from Ft. Monmouth telling about the sightings there of the past few days. The wire was about 4' long and very detailed. It was obvious from the tone of the wire that it had created quite a stir at Ft. Monmouth.
When the wire had come into Feiling¹s office (Col. Bruno[w] Feiling, Chief of the Analysis Division) about 1300 he had sent it on to Capt Roy James in the Electronics Branch since the sighting involved radar. Somehow Jim [James] Rodgers, ex-chief of Blue Book (at the time it was Grudge and there is no evidence Roy James ever headed Grudge) had gotten into the act. Rodgers and [Roy] James were laughing about the whole thing when Cummings first heard about it. He was a bit hacked because he was supposed to have the Project but there was nothing that he could do.
The reason for the interest by Rodgers and James, supposedly the first team, was that there had been a rumble that someone in Washington was interested and a quick answer was needed. Cummings was 'too slow.' After they messed around with the report for awhile, [the ATIC records show a number of days] speculating on what they could use for an answer, Rosy had gotten wind of the report and he went into Feiling's office to complain that if he was responsible for the UFO reports he should be the first one to get them. Rodgers was called in and he gave the report to Rosy. Rodgers already had an answer, 'the whole outfit were a bunch of young impressionable kids and the T-33 crew had seen a reflection.' Rodgers had supposedly reported these findings to Col. Watson, the Chief of ATIC, and Watson had supposedly bought the idea. Rosy didn¹t like this answer and Cummings like[d] it less, when he saw the wire in Rosy's office.
They decided not to call in James again because neither one of them trusted his judgment. Cummings was just getting ready to go over to Wright Field to get someone from the Radiation Lab to take a look at the report when a wire came in from Washington. [Apparently now Cummings is referring to Friday, September 28th.] The time was now about 1600. The wire indicated that [Major] General Cabell had seen a copy of the wire from Ft. Monmouth [heard of it via the news leak on the sighting] and that he wanted to know what ATIC thought. Rodgers put the pressure on to send his answer back to the Pentagon and 'get them off our backs.' He claimed that Watson was in agreement with him. [Ruppelt adds here:] (Possible Watson wasn't there. If Watson wasn't there it was Dunn, but this doesn¹t sound like Dunn. Jerry kept saying Watson.)
Both Rosy and Cummings were against this and when it looked as if Rodgers might be going to win out when someone (I didn¹t get who) called the Pentagon and talked to Gen Cabell¹s assistant, a colonel [John Schweizer]. This colonel was very surprised to hear that there was even any question at all as to whether or not anyone would go out and investigate the report so whoever it was from ATIC that was on the phone weaseled around to make it sound as if they were going to go to Monmouth and had planned to do it all of the time. [This may have been Albert Deyarmond.] The Colonel, Cabell's assistant, added that the General had said that he wanted this report fully investigated and that if they weren't getting the proper cooperation they should call him or the General and get him out of bed, if necessary.
With this it was decided that a trip should be made and Rosy and Cummings got a hurried set of orders [we now know from Cabell himself but approved by the new ATIC Analysis chief by the 28th, Colonel S.H. Kirkland] and were on their way. When they got to New Jersey [on the 29th] they called the Pentagon and found Cabell had left word that he was to be briefed at the earliest possible moment. The General said that he wanted to be briefed on Monday (??) [October 1] at the latest. [It seems this order for a prompt investigation and a follow-up Pentagon meeting on Monday October 1st was already part of the Operational Immediate message received by ATIC on September 28th which initiated the whole trip.]
When they got to Monmouth, Cummings and Rosy got in touch with the OD and the OD got them transportation. The Signal Corps was very cooperative. They talked to all concerned and got their story. [This is all confirmed by Colonel Rosengarten.]
The pilot and passenger of the T-33 flew up to Mitchel (??) [the next day, Sunday September 29th] and Rosy and Cummings went over there to talk to them [and was still working with them on Monday morning the 1st of October]. They [the pilots] were both completely sold that the UFO was real. They didn't have any idea what it was but they were convinced that it was something 'intelligently controlled.'
[Ruppelt¹s reflections again:] (It is interesting to note that weeks later, when we proved, at least to my satisfaction, that the UFO was a balloon, the two officers said that we were nuts. They found several holes in our analysis.)
[Colonel Rosengarten confirmed this to the authors. He said, 'those pilots would have reached out and slugged us when we interviewed them if we suggested that the facts which we were uncovering actually indicated a balloon as the culprit.']
Rosy and Jerry found out that the press had gotten a hold of the story and they didn¹t like it one bit. At this time the UFO project was a fairly well guarded secret for two reasons:
(1) Many people believed that these UFO¹s were from outer space and they didn¹t want to cause any alarm, and
(2) the other faction, led by Watson, and obediently followed by Rodgers and James, believed that if you stuck your head deep enough into the sand that they would go away. [Interviews with Colonel Rosengarten indicate that radar expert Roy James was not as skeptical of UFOs as he was doubtful of the capabilities of the primitive state of current radar technology at that time.]
[Ruppelt continued reporting:] In addition, Watson had been telling the reporters that the Project was dead. Cabell read this, evidently, but he was for keeping it all quiet and thought that this story from ATIC was just a cover-up.
The story had leaked out when the T-33 crew talked to the tower and when they had inadvertently talked to each other on the VHF instead of the intercom. Later on they were talking in a bar and a reporter [Dick Aurelio] overheard them. Both of these bits of intelligence were put together and the local story evolved [via the good intentioned help of the PIO, Major John B. Barron, at Mitchel AFB].
Cummings somewhere got word that the ADC radar site at or near Sandy Hook had been picking up targets at the same time as the activity was going on at Monmouth so he went to [the] site to try to find out what was going on. He got a very cold reception and had to call the Duty Officer at D/I to get into the place.
When he did he found out that things were all fouled up. The radar logs showed unidentified targets but the officer said that they were SAC aircraft on a classified training mission. The log didn¹t show this however. Jerry did think that he established that the radar had no target other than the T-33 at the time of the sighting.
When Rosy and Cummings finished they couldn¹t get a flight to Washington so they again called the Pentagon to see if they could get an aircraft to come up after them. They didn¹t have aircraft that intelligence could get so the Pentagon said to charter a plane. This they did [with the help of Lt. Col. Rosengarten's own initiative].
When they got to Washington they cleaned up and went out to the Pentagon and Gen. Cabell had a meeting set up. There were several people from the aircraft industry at the meeting. How they had found out about the meeting, Jerry didn¹t know. One of the men was a Mr. Brewster from Republic Aircraft.
The whole meeting was recorded on wire but several weeks later, at ATIC, at the direction of either Col. Watson or Deyarmond, the wire was destroyed. I heard it before it was destroyed, however.
The meeting was a rough one. While Jerry and Rosy were in New Jersey the General had done a little bit of checking. He had called ATIC and talked to Rodgers and it was obvious that Rodgers didn¹t have the answers that the General thought he should have. He got a good clue that Project Grudge had been scuttled a long time before.
When the briefing was rolling the General asked Jerry to give a resume of what had been taking place on Project Grudge. Jerry told me that he looked at Rosy and got the OK sign, so he cut loose [Colonel Rosengarten did not confirm this to the authors]. He told how every report was taken as a huge joke; that at the personal direction of Watson, Rodgers, Watson's #1 stooge, was doing everything to degrade the quality of the reports; and how the only analysis consisted of Rodger's trying to think up new and original explanations that hadn¹t been sent to Washington before. Rodgers couldn't even find half of the reports.
The General then got on his horse. He said, I want an open mind, in fact, I order an open mind. Anyone that doesn¹t keep an open mind can get out, now. As long as there is any element of doubt, the Project will continue.
About this time one of the General's staff suggested that since there were industry observers present, maybe the remarks should be kept objective or that the industry people chouls [sic] leave. This got the Old Man and he said that he didn't care how embarrassing it was, he wasn't ashamed to give people the devil in front of strangers. [Colonel Rosengarten does not remember any representatives of private industry being present at the meeting.]
He said that the apparent disregard of his orders were a source of concern. He complimented Cummings and Rosy by saying that he was glad to 'Get action.' [This point is confirmed by our interview with Colonel Rosengarten.]
The General asked about the results of the investigations of several other good sightings but a telephone check to ATIC showed that they had been lost, no one ever could find them. [These may refer to some records which other sources confirm were destroyed at ATIC either in late 1950 and/or represented records from late 1950 which were destroyed about that general time.]
His next question was: 'Why do I have to stir up the action? Anyone can see that we do not have a satisfactory answer to the saucer question.'
Cabell went on to say that he wanted some action. He wanted the Project reorganized and he wanted all of the directives reissued because, he said, it was obvious that they were not being followed.
Then, Jerry told me, the General looked at his staff of colonels for about 45 seconds and said, 'I¹ve been lied to, and lied to, and lied to, and lied to. I want it to stop. I want the answer to the saucers and I want a good answer.' [Colonel Rosengarten respectfully maintains that Cabell¹s blowup at that meeting was not over ATIC¹s failure to investigate but the press leaks surrounding the T-33 sighting. The reasoning he gives is that Cabell did believe there was certainly something to the flying saucers and for that reason he wanted to keep it all as quiet as possible until they found the answer.
Again, the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast is alluded to in this context as an example of the mind-set/concerns expressed at that meeting. He says he never heard of J.J. or E.H. Porter, Aaron Jerry Boggs, William Adams, Weldon Smith, or others that modern day researchers speculate may have been associated with that meeting.]
He started in on the Mantell Sightings and said that he had never heard such a collection of contradictory and indefinite statements. He said that he thought that he had a big activity operating and found out the only man, and apparently incompetent one at that, fumbling around trying to make excuses.
Col. Porter [Ruppelt words:] (whom I considered to be one of the most totally incompetent men in the Air Force for reasons other than the UFO Project) was his old stupid self and said that he still thought that the project was a waste of time.
The General's reply was that he didn't consider himself a crackpot or impressionable person and that he had a great deal of doubt in his mind that the saucers were all 'hoaxes, hallucinations or the misinterpretation of known objects.' He took a swing at the famous Grudge Report by saying that it was the 'most poorly written, unconclusive piece of unscientific tripe' that he¹d ever seen.
The General ended up the meeting by giving a pep talk and saying that he thought that things would change and that the saucers would become respective [sic]. He said that he was going to keep an open mind and that he wanted the same from his staff. [This is confirmed by Cabell¹s own autobiography.]
Cummings and Rosy came back to ATIC but the battle wasn't over. Watson hadn't been at the meeting, he had sent Col Dunn. Watson didn't openly fight the Project but he drug his feet for all he was worth. It wasn¹t until Watson went to Europe that the Project began to pick up. [The exact date of Watson¹s departure for Europe has still not been conclusively ascertained by any Air Force documents.]
Dalla riunione avvenuta nel Pentagono, ci fu un esito positivo. Il problema UFO tornò sotto gli occhi delle alte sfere, e poco dopo si aprì un nuovo Grudge, denominato Grudge II. Il quel periodo, in ottobre, l'agguerrito Cabell richiese anche di revisione la tecnologia tedesca come possibile collegamento ai dischi volanti, che investigatori del Sign tempo prima provarono, come Alfred Loedding, ma non ci riuscirono. Il colonnello Dunn venne incaricato di dare maggior attenzione al problema persistente dei dischi volanti, appena assunse nuove funzioni come comandante dell'ATIC, periodo in cui il leggendario Watson stava per trasferirsi definitivamente in Europa. Altri saucer-killer vennero rimpiazzati, come l'assistente del colonnello E.H. Porter, Jerry Boggs, altro Anti-UFO. Al suo posto, entrò il maggiore Dewey Fournet, che a differenza di Boggs, era di mentalità molto più aperta e più pro-saucer. Tuttavia lo stesso colonnello Porter, che Cabell puntava il dito contro insieme a Watson, non diete più molti problemi. Altri ufficiali, che lavoravano sotto Porter, come il colonnello William A. Adams e Weldon Smith, avrebbero presto avuto un impatto nell'ambiente molto più aperto e possibilista sulla problematica. Insomma, uomini giusti ai posti giusti. Tuttavia, elementi come Cummings lasciarono subito l'incarico, e lasciò ben presto l'Air Force intorno alla metà di novembre, per tornare a lavorare presso il California Istitute of Technology. Il posto di Rosengarten passò poi al tenente Ruppelt, e il tenente Henry Metscher prese il posto di Cummings.
Nel marzo del 1952 sarebbe nato il Blue Book, e fino al settembre 1953, fu l'annata migliore della seria indagine ufologica da parte del governo americano in merito alla questione UFO.