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TAB C: Project Blue Book Special Report # 14, Project 10073 (Project Stork); text - 94 pages; tabulated statistical data.- 170 pages. (see page TAB C -1) The classified version was completed in late 1953; a declassified version was published for government use only in 1955 by the Air Technical Intelligence Center. Although the unclassified report does not name the contractor, other documents in the Blue Book file make it clear that the contractor was the Battelle Memorial Institute, probably because of its proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base ("home" of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, the parent organization of Project Blue Book) and because of its uniquely large (at that time) computing facility. The project carefully analyzed 3,201 sightings that occurred between June, 1947 and December, 1952. Numerous characteristics of these sightings were converted to IBM card format and statistically processed by the computer. Of these 3,201, 21.5%, were listed as "unknown." The sightings were ranked according to credibility of the observer and quality of the information supplied. Four classification were used: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor. Of the 213 Excellent sightings, 33% were "unknown" whereas for the 435 Poor sightings only 17% were "unknown." (see TAB C -2)
(Note: this contradicts expectation, which is based on the idea that flying saucers or UFOs are not truly extraordinary phenomena but are conventional phenomena which were misperceived by the witness(es). If UFOs are explainable, then the Excellent sightings, made by better witnesses who supply, on the average, better descriptions of the phenomena than the Poor sighting witnesses, should have a lower percentage of unexplainable sightings ("unknowns") as compared to the Poor sightings. The actual statistical result reported by Battelle indicates that the witnesses have, in fact, seen extraordinary phenomena.) |