Numerous U-2 spy planes testing at high altitudes were the primary cause of many UFO sightings reported to Project Blue Book beginning in 1955
Midway through the 1950s, the USAF and CIA covered extremely high-altitude flights of their then-secret U-2 surveillance planes with UFO sightings.
The United States Air Force (USAF) program known as Project Blue Book was established in March 1952 at General Cabell’s request to research unidentified flying objects. Despite the fact that this research team continued to work until 1969, it is still uncertain if Project Blue Book was actually employed to keep an eye on unidentified flying objects in American airspace or to cover “black programs” that the team itself was well aware of.
Airliners flew between 10,000 and 20,000 feet in the middle of the 1950s, while military planes like the B-47 and B-57 soared below 40,000 feet. However, in 1955, the then-covert U-2 spy planes started flying over 60,000 feet, an altitude above which no aircraft was known to function, according to Bill Yenne’s account in Area 51 Black Jets. Due to this, U-2s conducting high-altitude testing were a common cause of UFO encounters reported to Project Blue Book beginning in 1955.
The aircraft were difficult to see because they were in the troposphere and had no trailing contrail; they could only be seen if sunlight reflected off of their silver wings. This assertion is confirmed by Gregory Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach, who stated in their book The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 that the reports of U-2s as UFOs “were more prevalent in the early evening hours from pilots of airliners flying from east to west.”
These evening sightings occurred because an airplane flying at 20,000 feet was in darkness as the sun descended below the horizon. However, if a U-2 was flying nearby at the same time as the aircraft, its horizon would be farther away from it at 60,000 feet, and because it was flying so high in the sky, its silver wings would reflect the sun’s rays and seem to the airliner pilot 40,000 feet below as fiery objects.
But even during the day, when their silver bodies might reflect the sun even on the ground, the high-flying U-2s could be mistaken for UFOs. An object that was high in the sky was not anticipated to be observed at the time since no one thought an airplane could fly above 60,000 feet.
When Blue Book members received a letter reporting a UFO sighting, they called the CIA in Washington and requested that the Agency’s Project Staff check U-2 flight logs. By doing this, the investigators were able to rule out the majority of the UFO reports, even though they were unable to inform the letter writer of the true cause of the UFO sighting.
By the time Project Blue Book was formally shut down, its investigators had looked over a total of 12,618 UFO reports, classifying all but 701 of them as misinterpretations of regular objects.
According to Pedlow and Welzenbach, the majority of the “unidentified” sightings were U-2s and other dark aircraft, while the other inexplicable sightings remain unsolved.
Photo by U.S. Air Force