In the end, we are left with a case where one man apparently saw a strange object, and about a dozen others heard the sound it made. That would, of course, rule out hallucination. It does not prove that Lupton saw a flying saucer, just that he did seem something strange.
It is too bad that the last unidentified UFO sighting in the Project Blue Book files had to be so non-spectacular. There were no photographs, radar tracks, or movies taken. It was just a sighting in the early morning caused by a low flying, and very noisy, object.
What might be more important in this, the last of the Blue Book unidentifieds, is the reaction of the military. Rather than investigate the case, they spent time trying to convince the witness he had seen a helicopter when the evidence showed that no helicopters were flying in his area at the time. And even with those negative results, they noted on the Project Card that a helicopter was the most likely answer.
To that, all I can say is, "Did I miss something?"
So, What Do We Make of All This?
At the end of Project Blue Book in 1969, the Air Force released a fact sheet about its study of UFOs. It reported that Air Force investigators had studied 12,618 reports and identified all but 701. According to the fact sheet "Of these total sightings, 11,917 were found to have been caused by material objects (such as balloons, satellites and aircraft), immaterial objects (such as lightning, reflections and other natural phenomena), astronomical objects (such as stars, planets, the sun and the moon), weather conditions and hoaxes. As indicated only 701 reported sightings remain unexplained."
The question that must be asked is if the 701 unexplained sightings are a significant number. It is a small number compared to the total of sightings reported. Air Force officers and scientists reviewing the data have suggested that had "complete" information been available, the sightings would have been explained. It was a failure on the part of those reporting the sighting, or on the part of the officers investigating the sighting. Had they been able to do the "job" right, an explanation would have been found.
But let's look at the Air Force investigation as we have seen studied it. The Mantell case is particularly illustrative of a point. Mantell was killed chasing something that neither he, nor those on the ground who saw it could explain. To all of them, it was something other than a natural phenomenon and it certainly wasn't a balloon. All were familiar with balloons and this thing was just too big.
Given the range of the sightings, that is, the object was seen in towns separated by something on the order of 175 miles, a single weather balloon could not account for the sighting. Whatever it was had to be huge and very high, or the sightings, those seeming to be were, in fact, unrelated.
The investigators finally settled on Venus as the culprit. Spotting Venus in the daytime, under the best conditions, is difficult. The weather reports suggested that the weather conditions were not the best. There was a layer of haze that should have obscured Venus.
The investigators decided it was a weather balloon, though there seemed to be no evidence to support the claim. Finally, they decided on a combination of Venus and two weather balloons. It was a wholly unsatisfactory explanation. The case, in 1948, should have been labeled as "unidentified" because they didn't have a real explanation for it.
Now, looking back on it, reading the file, and knowing of the classified Navy project called Skyhook, we can see what the solution is. Mantell, as well as those on the ground, in those widely separated locations, saw a Skyhook balloon. The descriptions provided by the witnesses, as well size and shape of the balloon, makes it clear. Today, the Mantell case should be written off as a Skyhook, but in 1948, it was unidentified.
The point here is that the Mantell case was not Venus, as the Air Force said, it was not a weather balloon as the Air Force said, and it was not a combination of weather balloons and Venus as the Air Force said. It was, in fact, a single balloon, of a type that was new and unknown to the majority of the people in the United States in 1948. The Air Force, in 1948, had no answer to the case, but they labeled it as identified nonetheless.
This tells us that, at one time, the Air Force was interested in labeling the cases but not solving them. By rushing to slap the label on the case, they harmed their own credibility when the actual solution was discovered. UFO believers, scientists, military officers, and the rest of us would have been more accepting of their "final" solution had they not blunted the impact of it with a number of other, unacceptable answers.
In fact, by studying the trend in explanations, we can put together a history of the UFO project as it began in the summer of 1947. Ed Ruppelt, in his book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, reported that the Pentagon was in a panic during the summer of 1947. There were reports of flying saucers all over the country, but officials didn't know what they were. There was a press for immediate answers. If flying saucers were real, and extraterrestrial, control of the sky was gone. If they were real, then questions about an alien invasion became very real.
But that was the summer of 1947 when the phenomenon was still new. Ruppelt wrote, "As 1947 drew to a close, the Air Force's Project Sign had outgrown its initial panic and settled down to a routine operation." It meant that those at the top had realized that alien invasion fleets were not standing by to land. In fact, some may have thought, after the summer, that if they waited long enough, the fad would end and there would be no reason to worry.
In the summer of 1948, it became clear that the Chief of Staff of the Air Force didn't believe that UFOs were extraterrestrial. A report sent to him was slapped back and those who had authored it found themselves searching for new work. The lieutenants and captains in the Air Force was smart enough to see that suggesting UFOs were real was not a way to advance their careers. Answers were what was wanted and answers they supplied. UFO cases that had been puzzling were suddenly solved. The explanations might have flown in the face of the facts, but that didn't matter. The Chief of Staff wanted answers.
The only time that the official Air Force investigation progressed with what could be objectivity was a short period from the end of 1951 to the very beginning of 1953. Is it any wonder then, that about forty percent of the cases listed as unidentified came from that period?
After that, in document after document, in report after report, and policy shift after policy shift, there is a single uniting thread. UFO sightings are to be explained. It doesn't matter if the facts must be ignored, the case is to be solved.
Take, as just a single example that we studied earlier, the report from Minot Air Force Base. The Air Force would have us believe that the men assigned to the Strategic Air Command are incapable of recognizing a B-52 when it flies over. The investigators would have us believe that these same men are incapable of recognizing the stars in the sky. And, to explain the radar returns, they would have us believe that plasmas, a phenomenon that had just come into the public arena, was responsible for those sightings. Those investigators would even ignore the fact that radars other than that on the aircraft was affected. Plasmas sounded good in 1968.