United States Air Force officer whose name is on the two PURSUE Release 06 records of a 1952 talk on the Air Force’s investigation of unidentified flying objects: DOW-UAP-D154, a 19-page transcript on the letterhead of the Office of the Under Secretary of War, and DOW-UAP-PR160, a 65-minute audio recording posted on DVIDS. Both carry the same summary, which dates the talk to March 1952, credits it with approximately 800 cases, about 20 per cent unexplained, and says its methods were later incorporated into Project Blue Book. The DVIDS page metadata give 26 March 1952 and Boston, Massachusetts; the transcript itself names no date, place or host.
The transcript gives no turn to a named speaker. The speaker says “the center” appointed a permanent project engineer and that the speaker is that engineer, and a later turn refers to him as Lieutenant Ruppelt, where the heading and summary say Captain. The talk describes the Lubbock Lights, measured at 30 degrees per second across the sky; treats the Green Fireballs as a separate division, with Lincoln LaPaz holding that they came from Russia; reports Air Defense Command radar tracks at 1,000 to about 3,500 miles an hour, never ruled out as set malfunctions or atmospheric effects; and proposes diffraction-grating cameras, radar scope cameras and a long focal length camera, all still at the planning or talking stage. It says Battelle Memorial Institute hoped to make specialists available and possibly a clipping service, and that the project was carried as confidential.
Elsewhere in the release his name sits in the paperwork of the Air Technical Intelligence Center: the initials line “Capt Ruppelt/jos” on a disposition form of 15 October 1952 in the case folder on the Tremonton Film 1952, a laboratory note that the part of that film not showing the objects had gone to Captain Ruppelt, and a telephone call to Captain Ruppelt of ATIC on 16 December 1952 in the Flying Discs File 1952.
Connections
PURSUE · Project Blue Book · Air Technical Intelligence Center · Lubbock Lights · Green Fireballs · Lincoln LaPaz · Battelle Memorial Institute · Tremonton Film 1952 · Flying Discs File 1952 · J. Allen Hynek