Edward James Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960), a decorated U.S. Air Force pilot, served from 1951-53 as the director of Project Blue Book, one of the U.S. government’s earliest efforts to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). During a time of intense public interest in “flying saucers,” Ruppelt insisted on using the term “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs, which he said was more precise. On a subject often dominated by speculation and sensationalism, Ruppelt brought an attitude of open-minded scientific detachment. Under his direction Project Blue Book conducted the U.S. government’s first rigorous studies of UAP.
Career
Ruppelt, a native of Grundy Center, Iowa, enlisted the Army Air Corps during World War II in 1942. He won a dozen medals serving as a B-29 bombardier and radar operator, flying missions to India, China, and the Pacific. After the war, he attended Iowa State College where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering. When the Korean War began he returned to active duty in the Air Force. Assigned to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Captain Ruppelt was soon drawn into the emerging controversy about “flying saucers.”¹
Reports of unidentified aerial phenomena around U.S. military installations had proliferated since the onset of the Cold War in 1947, leading to fears that the Soviet Union had developed new flying technology or that extraterrestrial visitors had come to earth. In early 1951 Major General Charles P. Cabell, then Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Air Force, ordered ATIC to determine if the sightings indicated a threat to U.S. national security. With hundreds of reports coming in from around the country, Cabell called for analysis of the data. Ruppelt agreed to run the study.
Methods
In reviewing the Air Force’s previous investigations, known as Project Sign (1947-48) and Project Grudge (1949-51), Ruppelt concluded the study of unidentified aerial phenomena suffered from confusion, bias and disorganization. The project was renamed Blue Book and Ruppelt laid off staffers whose opinions rendered them biased.
“If anyone became anti-flying saucer and was no longer capable of making an unbiased evaluation of a report, out he went,” Ruppelt wrote. “Conversely anyone who became a believer was through. We were too busy during the initial phases of the project to speculate as to whether the unknowns were spaceships, space monsters, Soviet weapons, or ethereal visions.”²
Ruppelt brought in diverse scientific specialists to assess physiological, psychological and meteorological issues raised by the sightings. He personally investigated some of the best-known incidents. In the fall of 1951, he traveled to Texas, to assess the “Lubbock Lights,” first reported by four professors at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University). The three men said they were sitting in the backyard of one of the professor's homes when they observed twenty to thirty lights, as bright as stars but larger in size, flying overhead. A geologist, a chemist, a physicist, and a petroleum engineer also reported seeing the same objects on fourteen different occasions, according to Ruppelt. An undergraduate had even taken five blurry photos that showed an inverted V formation of lights.³
Ruppelt initially concluded the professors had seen a flock of plover birds, reflected in the new vapor streetlights that Lubbock had just installed. But he admitted he could not explain the photos. As he told reporters, “The photos were never proven to be a hoax but neither were they proven to be genuine."⁴
In the summer of 1952, Ruppelt had to respond to multiple reports of unidentified flying objects seen by radar operators and pilots at Washington’s National Airport and at Andrews Air Force Base, both close to the nation's capital. When the press reported on bright moving lights in the night sky, the Air Force refused to comment, which only generated more headlines and questions. “I had inquiries from the office of the President of the United States and from the press in London, Ottawa, and Mexico City,” Ruppelt recalled.⁵ While Ruppelt thought some of the sightings could be explained by weather or known aircraft, others could not.
Ruppelt acknowledged that some people have a "will to see" that shapes their perceptions. “Consciously or unconsciously, they want UFO's to be real and to come from outer space,” he wrote. “These individuals, frightened perhaps by threats of atomic destruction, or lesser fears -- who knows what -- act as if nothing that men can do can save the earth. Instead, they seek salvation from outer space, on the forlorn premise that flying saucer men, by their very existence, are wiser and more advanced than we. ….To such people a searchlight on a cloud or a bright star is an interplanetary spaceship.”⁶
Data
A large part of his job, Ruppelt said, was briefing government officials behind closed doors. He spoke to the Secretary of the Air Force and to students at the Air Force's Command and Staff School. He addressed classes at the Air Force's Intelligence School, and the technical staff at the Atomic Energy Commission's Los Alamos laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was built. Project Blue Book also published a classified monthly report on UFO activity that was distributed to major Air Force command headquarters.
“Unfortunately the general public was never able to hear these briefings,” Ruppelt said. “For a long time, contrary to present thinking in military circles, I have believed that the public also is entitled to know the details of what was covered in these briefings.”⁷
In 1952, Ruppelt brought in consultants from Battelle Memorial Institute to review 3,201 UAP reports collected by the Air Force. In their report, released in 1955 after Ruppelt retired from active duty, found 69 percent of objects cited by witnesses could be identified (IFOs). There was insufficient information to make a determination in 9 percent of the cases, leaving 22 percent classified as unidentified or unknown (“true UFOs”).
Ruppelt, working as a research engineer for Northrop Aircraft Co., returned to the subject in 1956 when Doubleday published his account of Project Blue Book, entitled The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. “There is world-wide interest in flying saucers,” he wrote. “People want to know the facts. But more often than not these facts have been obscured by secrecy and confusion, a situation that has led to wild speculation on one end of the scale and an almost dangerously blasé' attitude on the other. It is only when all of the facts are laid out that a correct evaluation can be made.”⁸
While many reports of seemingly mysterious aerial phenomena could be explained, Ruppelt wrote that 15 to 20 per cent fell into the “unknown” category. Four years later, in a second edition of the book, he wrote, “More manpower, betters techniques and plain old experience has allowed the Air Force to continually lower the percentage of ‘unknowns’ from 20% when I was in charge of Project Blue Book to less than 1% today.”
Ruppelt said he was now “certain” that UFO’s did not exist, that all sightings could be explained by known phenomena, such as bolides (supermeteors that disintegrate in the atmosphere), high flying jets and weather. UFOs, he concluded were a “Space Age Myth.”.⁹
Ruppelt died of a heart attack in September 1960 at age 37. Project Blue Book continued through December 1969.
Book
The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J Ruppelt
Audio
Documentaries
Biography
Television
Project Blue Book was an American historical drama television series that ran for two ten-episode seasons on History in 2019 and 2020. The character of U.S. Air Force Captain Michael Quinn (played by Michael Malarkey) was loosely based on Ruppelt.
