Comprehensive Catalog of 1,700 Project Blue Book UFO Unknowns: Database Catalog (Not a Best Evidence List) – NEW: List of Projects & Blue Book Chiefs Work in Progress (Version 1.27, Dec. 20, 2016) Compiled by Brad Sparks © 2001-2016 The main purpose of this catalog at present is to help identify and fill in where possible missing or difficult-to-obtain U.S. Air Force documentation on better quality Unexplained UFO cases, not to present any so-called "proof" of UFO reality nor to discuss and argue possible IFO identifications (usually too voluminous to include in a mere catalog). These are subjects reserved for later analysis once full files can be examined (with a few exceptions on IFO’s noted below). This is not a list of official USAF designations of “Unexplained” or “Unknown” cases as it has proven to be almost impossible to establish when such evaluations were considered final or definitive and many more cases misdesignated IFO’s have turned out to be Unexplained UFO’s based on recent analyses. Here the goal is preliminary and to compile more complete documentation, not the perfection of the analysis or categorizations. Many cases here are merely placeholders for later work to fill in more info from the BB files or other sources. This catalog will be used eventually to produce another catalog of UFO Best Evidence, after a screening process based on Hynek's and on other criteria. For that reason columns for data on Duration, No. of Witnesses, Angular Size and "Instrumentation/Scientists etc." have been separately presented from the available case data and/or calculated where possible. Proper Definition of “UFO” = “Unknown” or “Unidentified” Proper scientific investigation and its standard protocols require defined terms. Hynek defined "UFO" to mean cases found to be "Unidentified" or "Unknown" (interchangeable terms*) after scientific screening where there is sufficient data for the scientific screening to eliminate IFO's and conventional explanations, and thus by definition there is not Insufficient Data**. (*Interchangeable terms: Hynek's UFO Experience 1972 p. 294; Hynek UFO Report 1977 pp. 58, 258.) (**Sufficiency of data: Hynek 1972 pp. 12, 42; Hynek 1977 p. 286.) Hynek explained that the mixing of Insufficient Data cases with other categories was an improper and invalid statistical and scientific procedure, since Insufficient Data should be “excluded” from the outset as bad or inadequate data (Hynek 1977 pp. 259, 292). This Catalog cannot possibly present all of the essential data of a UFO case, which would require many thousands of pages for all of the cases cataloged here – this is, after all, just a catalog, a guide to the larger BB database, paper and digital, as well as to missing BB data available from other sources or which need to be searched for. Some would like to hairsplit a difference between “unknown” and “unidentified” in order to confuse the situation and make “unknown” to imply alien spacecraft (it does not mean that and does not imply it). They further wish to adulterate the term “unidentified” – which means the BB UNKs Catalog version 1.27 / Dec. 20, 2016 / © 2016 Brad Sparks same thing as “unknown” in the BB UFO context and properly means a case with sufficient data that has undergone scientific review for IFO’s and has passed. Instead they wish to weaken it into a nearly worthless meaning of “non-identified for whatever accidental reason, regardless of sufficiency of data, regardless of IFO screening, but not unidentifiable.” Their intent is to suggest that no case has ever had sufficient data (unless an IFO of course) and no case has ever been scientifically screened. This is frankly a dishonest debunking tactic and is categorically rejected here. Thus, here in the BB UFO context Unknown = Unidentified = Unidentifiable. The standard BB term for many years was "Unknown" and it does not mean ET. Battelle Memorial Institute / BB Special Report No. 14 is entirely based on the term "Unknown" throughout its 300+ pages, not "Unidentified." The term "Unidentified" was regarded as something of a synonym but was confusingly redundant since "UFO" already has the word "Unidentified" as the "U" in "UFO." Debunkers today embrace this redundancy as a trick to cause confusion as to whether there are any puzzling UFO Unknowns at all – their use of "Unidentified" intends to suggest that these are no different from IFO's but by accident or happenstance just happen to not have enough "data" to identify or explain them (again note the dishonest resort to an insufficient data argument when there is no insufficiency). Readers are responsible for doing their own research into sources on a case listed in this Catalog (a short not exhaustive list of sources are usually given in parentheses at the end of the narrative entry). Readers cannot just assume the data cited here from these other sources are correct without double-checking, if one is doing in- depth analysis. In complicated cases with conflicting sources not all conflicts may be recorded here let alone resolved. Errors in the original sources may also occur, since original sources are not automatically error-free, and these may not be resolvable without investigation. When IFO/conventional explanations are tentatively found or suggested on occasion, the cases are not removed from the catalog, so that researchers will be able to keep track of changes in case status from revision to revision of this Catalog. Whether to indicate such merely possible IFO suggestions is at my sole discretion to be used sparingly as I do not intend to get onto a slippery slope of deciding where to put a given case on a sliding-scale spectrum of possible- probable-certain IFO status. There is no point in segregating such relatively few cases (at present 27 including 10 merely “possibles”) from the main catalog into some separate catalog- listing because (a) many such IFO suggestions are only tentative anyway, thus requiring, again, some difficult and pointless* BB-style ranking of certitude into Possible, Probable, Certain, etc., and (b) multiple lists make it more difficult to locate cases. Keeping all cases in one chronological master list is easier for reference. (*When I say “pointless,” I do not mean that BB was justified in covering up its Possible- Probable doubts in identifying an IFO or conventional explanation, since BB had an obligation to either disclose those evaluations even if we today see how unreliable they were, or to eliminate the Possible-Probable-Was [Was=Certain] categories from its standard case Record Card, which it never did. My point is that distinguishing Possible, Probable and Certain can get so involved that it can bog down the whole investigation process in many cases, and only in some cases may Possible-Probable-Certain be distinguishable, but arguments about which cases can be are what are “pointless.”) -2- BB UNKs Catalog version 1.27 / Dec. 20, 2016 / © 2016 Brad Sparks BB Case Statistics and Problems When Project Blue Book (BB) closed down on Jan. 30, 1970 (it was not on Dec. 17, 1969, which was merely the announcement date by the Secretary of the Air Force) the total number of Unidentified sightings was thought to be 701 and this is the number given on all subsequent press releases and so-called "fact sheets." However, based on the review by Hynek and the CUFOS staff of the released sanitized BB microfilm and Hynek's personal records which included many missing (and unsanitized) BB documents, the final number was determined to have been approximately 587. The difference is about 114 Unknowns that have been eliminated somehow. (Don Berliner counted 585 BB Unknowns in 1974, in very close agreement when one considers that some BB cases are multiple cases and can be counted in different ways.) This lower number of Unknowns is evidently due to nearly 500 reports from civilians made direct to ATIC in 1952, of which nearly 100 were Unknowns, but all of which are lost. Battelle included these additional reports in its BB Special Report 14 study but apparently were not entered into or returned to BB files. Ruppelt’s BB Briefing for ADC in Jan 1953 recaps the statistics for 1952, as of Dec. 22, 1952, as totaling 1,021 reports for the year of which 20.10% were Unknowns or 205 (the BB Monthly Index shows about 12 additional sighting reports to the end of the year, or about 1,033 altogether, with 1 additional Unknown, or a year-end total of 206 Unknowns). Ruppelt’s Briefing stated that the 1,021 reports “do not include several hundred reports from civilians direct to ATIC.” The Hynek-CUFOS recount is in fair agreement, showing about 1,080 total including 208 Unknowns (these figures have had to be measured, using a ruler, on Hynek’s graphs and checked against a table of annual percentages of Unknowns). The slight difference is probably due to the 1,033 representing the number of reports with dates received in 1952 whereas Late 1952 sightings were still being received in Early 1953, so that 1,080 represents the total nunber of sightings that occurred in 1952 (a similar effect in Late 1951/Early 1952 does not cancel this out in 1952-53 because of the much fewer numbers in 1951 compared to 1952). This may also explain the slightly inconsistent 214 instead of 208 Unknowns figure for 1952 in The Hynek UFO Report (p. 263, which is not explained by Hynek). The BB monthly statistics are given in the Condon Report for 1950-1968. (Condon Report, p. 514, Bantam ed.) The monthly totals do not quite add up to the year-end total of 1,501 given in the table, but the discrepancy is small.