142
THE HYNEK UFO REPORT operations crew of the 637th ADCC. The second was caused by the dropping of leaflets by an aircraft into the Hanford area. It is believed that there is no con nection between the two events.
UFOs at Oak Ridge
I have saved for last what I consider to be one of the most interesting radar and visual cases ( although the radar and the visual were reported from different loca tions) in the Blue Book files. It is interesting not only for the sightings themselves, but because of the location-the Atomic Energy Commission's plant at Oak Ridge, Ten nessee, the qualifications of the witnesses, and the com ments contained in the report, classified SECRET, from the FBI Field Office, Knoxville, Tennessee, to the Command ing General of the Third Army, and the Atomic Energy Commission's Security Division at Oak Ridge. In typical fashion, Project Grudge wrote off the radar contacts in a rather casual manner, calling them probable "weather anomalies," even though detailed weather re ports were never obtained. As for the visual sighting-a very good one, as we shall see-the Grudge report had this to say : ·
While it is impossible to definitely explain the phenomenon observed visually by people in the area, many of the details reported follow the pattern of reports on other incidents on which conclusions were drawn to the effect that people saw weather balloons, peculiar clouds or smoke formations, aircraft through an overcast, etc. Evidence to the effect that such sight· ings were made by numerous people usually breaks down since, in most cases, a would-be object is first reported by one individual and the number of sub sequent reports is usually determined by the publicity surrounding the incident. There is no doubt that a number of incidents had oc curred at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, beginning in June of 1 947, when a photograph of a UFO was taken by a ci vilian. The source of this information is a chronological