The number of reports did take a sharp rise a few days later, however.  The cause was the distribution of an order that completed the transformation of the UFO from a bastard son to the family heir.  The piece of paper that made Project Blue Book legitimate was Air Force Letter 200-5, Subject:  Unidentified Flying Objects.  The letter, which was duly signed and sealed by the Secretary of the Air Force, in essence stated that UFO’s were not a joke, that the Air Force was making a serious study of the problem, and that Project Blue Book was responsible for the study.  The letter stated that the commander of every Air Force installation was responsible for forwarding all UFO reports to ATIC by wire, with a copy to the Pentagon.  Then a more detailed report would be sent by airmail.  Most important of all, it gave Project Blue Book the authority to directly contact any Air Force unit in the United States without going through any chain of command.  This was almost unheard of in the Air Force and gave our project a lot of prestige.

The new reporting procedures established by the Air Force letter greatly aided our investigation because it allowed us to start investigating the better reports before they cooled off.  But it also had its disadvantages.  It authorized the sender to use whatever priority he thought the message warranted.  Some things are slow in the military, but a priority message is not one of them.  When it comes into the message center, it is delivered to the addressee immediately, and for some reason, all messages reporting UFO’s seemed to arrive between midnight and 4:00A.M.  I was considered the addressee on all UFO reports.  To complicate matters, the messages were usually classified and I would have to go out to the air base and personally sign for them.

One such message came in about 4:30A.M. on May 8, 1952.  It was from a CAA radio station in Jacksonville, Florida, and had been forwarded over the Flight Service teletype net.  I received the usual telephone call from the teletype room at Wright-Patterson, I think I got dressed, and I went out and picked up the message.  As I signed for it I remember the night man in the teletype room said, “This is a lulu, Captain.”

It was a lulu.  About one o’clock that morning a Pan-American airlines DC-4 was flying south toward Puerto Rico.  A few hours after it had left New York City it was out over the Atlantic Ocean, about 600 miles off Jacksonville, Florida, flying at 8,000 feet.  It was a pitch-black night; a high overcast even cut out the glow from the stars.  The pilot and copilot were awake but really weren’t concentrating on looking for other aircraft because they had just passed into the San Juan Oceanic Control Area and they had been advised by radio that there were no other airplanes in the area.  The copilot was turning around to look at number four engine when he noticed a light up ahead.  It looked like the taillight of another airplane.  He watched it closely for