Case file · Government program
Project Sign
The first official US Air Force study of 'flying saucers', run from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for most of 1948.
1948 CE · 39.82, -84.05 · status: official
The account
Sign (also called Project Saucer) followed the 1947 wave that began with Kenneth Arnold's sighting. According to Edward Ruppelt, some of its staff drafted an 'Estimate of the Situation' favouring an interplanetary explanation, which the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Vandenberg, rejected. Sign was replaced by Project Grudge in February 1949.
The sceptical view
No copy of the 'Estimate' has ever surfaced. Its existence rests mainly on Ruppelt's later account, and the Air Force's formal conclusions favoured ordinary explanations.
Connections in the atlas
- Wright-Patterson 'Hangar 18'
- Kenneth Arnold’s report to the Army Air Forces
- J. Allen Hynek, Air Force consultant turned investigator
- ▶ The government UFO files
- The Twining memo
- The Twining memo
- Gorman 'dogfight', Fargo
- Project Sign’s "Estimate of the Situation"
- Chiles–Whitted encounter
- Project Grudge
- Mantell incident
- Kenneth Arnold sighting