Like all good “Unknown” UFO reports, there are as many opinions as to what the bright blob of light could have been as there are people who’ve seen the photo.  “Some kind of light phenomenon” is the frequent opinion of those who don’t believe.  They point out that there is no shadow of any kind of a circular object showing on the ground—­no shadow, nothing “solid.”  But if you care to take the time you can show that if the object, assuming that this is what it was, was above 4,000 feet the shadow would fall out of the picture.

Then all you get is a blank look from the light phenomenon theorists.

With the sighting from the RB-29 and the photograph, all of the other UFO reports that Blue Book has collected and all of those that came out of the European Flap, the big question—­the key question—­ is:  What have the last two years of UFO activity brought out?  Have there been any important developments?

Some good reports have come in and the Air Force is sitting on them.  During 1954 they received some 450 reports, and once again July was the peak month.  In the first half of 1955 they had 189.  But I can assure you that these reports add nothing more as far as proof is concerned.  The quality of the reports has improved, but they still offer nothing more than the same circumstantial evidence that we presented to the panel of scientists in early 1953.  There have been no reports in which the speed or altitude of a UFO has been measured, there have been no reliable photographs that show any details of a UFO, and there is no hardware.  There is still no real proof.

So a public statement that was made in 1952 still holds true:  “The possibility of the existence of interplanetary craft has never been denied by the Air Force, but UFO reports offer absolutely no authentic evidence that such interplanetary spacecraft do exist.”

But with the UFO, what is lacking in proof is always made up for in opinions.  To get a qualified opinion, I wrote to a friend, Frederick C. Durant.  Mr. Durant, who is presently the director of a large Army Ordnance test station, is also a past president of the American Rocket Society and president of the International Astronautical Federation.  For those who are not familiar with these organizations, the American Rocket Society is an organization established to promote interest and research in space flight and lists as its members practically every prominent scientist and engineer in the professional fields allied to aeronautics.  The International Astronautical Federation is a world-wide federation of such societies.

Mr. Durant has spent many hours studying UFO reports in the Project Blue Book files and many more hours discussing them with scientists the world over—­scientists who are doing research and formulating the plans for space flight.  I asked him what he’d heard about the UFO’s during the past several years and what he thought about them.  This was his reply: