The Estimate of the Situation.

Greetings. The Estimate of the Situation.

"Sign's [Project] pro-extraterrestrial faction, including its director, Capt. Robert R. Sneider, was convinced it had the proof it was seeking, and by fall it had prepared a Top Secret Estimate of the Situation and sent it up the chain of command. At the Pentagon it ignited a fierce controversy. No copy of the document has surfaced, but one Air Force officer who saw it later, Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, said it recounted the DC-3 encounter and other reports by credible observers and declared that the evidence pointed to interplanetary visitation. 

When the Estimate got to him, the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, rejected it on the grounds that it had not proven its case. In a few months it was declassified and all copies were ordered burned, though some are said to have been kept secretly. 

For years the Air Force would deny that any such report ever existed."

Quote from Jerome Clark's "The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial," published in 1997.

On July 24th of 1948, a cigar-shaped UFO nearly collided with an Eastern Airlines DC-3 over Montgomery, Alabama. In late September or early October of that same year, following their investigation of the aforementioned Chiles-Whitted sighting, personnel at Project Sign drafted an intelligence report, or rather an estimate of the situation.

The Estimate of the Situation was, according to Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, pictured below, who later headed the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, a "rather thick document with a black cover, printed on legal sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words 'Top Secret'." After reviewing reports from scientists, pilots, and other credible observers, the estimate concluded that the best available information suggested an extraterrestrial origin for unidentified flying objects. Although the author remains unknown, many believe it to be Project Sign's chief officer at the time, Captain Robert R. Sneider. Over time, the report made its way through numerous channels until eventually reaching the highest levels of the Pentagon, where it generated a great deal of spirited debate. 

Following the debate, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, pictured below, rejected the estimate on the grounds that its author(s) had not proven their case. Some months later, the document was ordered declassified with all copies to be burned, though, Ruppelt noted, "a few copies, one of which I saw, were kept as mementos of the golden days of the UFOs." This turn of events caused proponents of interplanetary visitation to lose official favor and to be subsequently reassigned, while officers who considered UFOs to be misinterpreted mundane phenomena rose to power in Project Grudge, the replacement for Project Sign. 

"What is important to consider is the number of high-ranking and senior Air Force investigators who we know from the record in the pre-Robertson Panel era felt the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the logical explanation for UFO events. As early as 1948 most of the Air Force Project Sign group studying UFOs felt that the ET hypothesis was the only reasonable conclusion for the phenomenon. Serious consideration was being given to author the estimate of the situation to give to their superiors in the chain of command. They had held off developing the Estimate over concern as to how it would be received. Then on July 24th, 1948, the Chiles/Whitted event occurred. This pushed them over the top and sometime in the late fall of 1948 the Estimate was released to the chain of command and stated that the unexplained UFO sightings were most likely extraterrestrial craft."

Quote from 2015's "The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obama," written and researched by the late Larry Holcombe.

No copies of this near-legendary document have surfaced since, though its existence has been confirmed by Dewey J. Fournet, who as an Air Force major in the Pentagon, served as liaison with the official UFO project headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Nonetheless, for years the Air Force denied that there ever had been such an estimate of the situation. In the mid-1990's, when a coalition of the major Amercian UFO groups purchased Ruppelt's papers, a draft copy of his important work "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" (1956) became available. As it so happened, it turned out that in his original version he had revealed what the estimate contained. Unfortunately, that description did not make it into the published edition.

The Estimate of the Situation. Undiscovered. Iconic. Potentially revealing of the UFO situation in the 1950's. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.