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It was from ATIC's chief to a civilian intelligence specialist. It said, "Are you positive that the Navy junked the XF-5- U-1 project?" The non-earthly category ran the gamut of theories, with space animals trailing interplanetary craft about the same distance the Navy was behind the Russians. This confused speculating lasted only a few weeks.
The one thing that Shallet's article accomplished was to plant a seed of doubt in many people's minds. Was the Air Force telling the truth about UFO's? The public and a large percentage of the military didn't know what was going on behind ATIC's barbed-wire fence but they did know that a lot of reliable people had seen UFO's.
Many writers thought this after the interview with the major, and many still think it. You can't really blame them, either. In early 1952 I got a telephone call on ATIC's direct line to the Pentagon. It was a colonel in the Director of Intelligence's office. The Office of Public Information had been getting a number of queries about all of the confusion over the Mantell Incident.
ATIC's scientific consultants studied it and discussed it with several leading European physicists whose specialty was atmospheric physics. And there were other widely publicized theories. One man said that they were all skyhook balloons, but we knew the flight path of every skyhook balloon and they were seldom reported as UFO's.
It said, "It is readily apparent that further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein." Somebody read the note and concurred because with the completion and approval of the Grudge Report, Project Grudge folded. People could rant and rave, see flying saucers, pink elephants, sea serpents, or Harvey, but it was no concern of ATIC's.
This, coupled with rumors that the Soviets were frantically developing the German ideas, caused no small degree of alarm. As more UFO's were observed near the Air Force's Muroc Test Center, the Army's White Sands Proving Ground, and atomic bomb plants, ATIC's efforts became more concentrated.
Our proposal for setting up instruments had gone to the Pentagon weeks before, so that was already taken care of. We needed more people, so I drew up a new organizational cable that called for more investigators and analysts and sent it through to ATIC's personnel section. About this time in the history of the UFO the first of a series of snags came up.
During World War II the organization that was ATIC's forerunner, the Air Materiel Command's secret "T-2," had developed highly effective means of wringing out every possible bit of information about the technical aspects of enemy aircraft. ATIC knew these methods, but how could this be applied to spaceships? The problem was tackled with organized confusion.
I can't divulge how high these targets were flying or how fast they were going because it would give an indication of the performance of our latest radar, which is classified Secret. I can say, however, that they were flying mighty high and mighty fast. I turned the letter over to ATIC's electronics branch, and they promised to take immediate action. They did, and really fouled it up.
When the target faded on the radar, some of the people went outside to visually look for the UFO, but it was obscured by clouds, and the clouds stayed for an hour. When it finally did clear for a few minutes, the UFO was gone. A conference was held at ATIC that afternoon. It included Roy James, ATIC's electronics specialist and expert on radar UFO's.
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