65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_004

Spans 1947-1949 and shows the investigation shifting from ad hoc 1947 disc reports to a more organized, security-conscious footing tied to nuclear facilities. It includes civilian and military witness accounts of unconventional aircraft (one describing a cylinder apparently built for jet propulsion, resembling no conventional airplane type), sightings reported over the Oak Ridge, Tennessee Atomic Energy Commission complex, and a March 1949 Army G-2 memo naming the renamed program 'Project Grudge' and describing a Los Alamos conference on the 'green fireball' phenomena that began in December 1948, at which University of New Mexico astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz argued his own sighting (the 'Starvation Peak incident') did not match a normal meteorite fall on five specific counts. The section closes with a Louisiana field-office report on a proposed civic 'convention of flying saucer seers' in Alexandria that drew nationwide public interest and worried the Bureau would incentivize false sighting reports.

Why this rating The green-fireball material involves a credentialed astronomer's own sighting plus a formally convened multi-agency scientific conference concluding the phenomenon did not fit known meteor behavior, which is more than a single casual witness -- but it remains visual-only (no radar, photograph, or instrument reading described in the sampled text) and no alternative explanation, conventional or otherwise, is offered, so it falls short of 'strong.'

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• Unverified

  A witness near Oak Ridge described an unidentified cylindrical object that appeared built for jet propulsion and did not resemble a conventional airplane.

• Unverified

  The Army renamed the disc-investigation program 'Project Grudge' by early 1949 and classified the 'green fireball' sightings near Los Alamos as secret, assigning primary responsibility to Air Materiel Command.

• Unverified

  Astronomer Lincoln La Paz argued that the green fireball he personally observed near Starvation Peak did not fit the profile of a normal meteorite fall, citing its color, duration, and constant-velocity horizontal path.

• Unverified

  An Alexandria, Louisiana civic club's proposed 'convention of flying saucer seers' drew so much public interest that the FBI worried it might encourage people to falsely claim sightings in order to attend.