50 Years Ago: Government Stops Investigating UFOs

To mark the 50th anniversary of the end of Project Blue Book, the National Archives will display records from the Air Force’s unidentified flying objects (UFOs)  investigations.

Report of a “flying saucer” over U.S. airspace in 1947 caused a wave of “UFO hysteria” and sparked Federal investigation of unidentified flying objects. For more than 20 years, the U.S. Air Force analyzed UFO sightings and any security threat they posed; most notably through Project Blue Book, which launched in 1952.

After investigations found no evidence of any UFO that was extraterrestrial in nature or that threatened national security, the Air Force announced Project Blue Book’s termination on December 17, 1969. Of the 12,618 UFO sightings reported between 1947 and 1969, 701 remained “unidentified.” Project Blue Book concluded its investigation 50 years ago, but American fascination with UFOs endures.

Project Blue Book’s duration coincided with a tumultuous period in American history. Domestic unrest during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests had spurred growing American distrust of the government. Aware of this mounting skepticism, the Air Force quickly declassified and transferred its UFO investigation records to the National Archives, where they are available for public examination. The records on display come from those files.

East Rotunda Gallery, December 5, 2019 through January 8, 2020.

> Learn more about Project Blue Book

Past Featured Records

Title IX
An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
Court-Martial record of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, March 10, 1778.
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.” More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...
Indictment for illegal voting, 1872
Susan B. Anthony devoted more than fifty years of her life to the cause of woman suffrage. After casting her ballot in the 1872 Presidential election in her hometown of Rochester, New York, she was arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted for voting illegally. At her two-day trial in June 1873, which she later described as "the greatest judicial outrage ...
Sylvia Mendez and the Struggle for Mexican American Civil Rights
Friday, September 13, 2024 - Wednesday, October 2, 2024East Rotunda Gallery Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez moved to Orange County, California, with their children Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr., and Jerome in 1944. When they tried to enroll in the majority-white school near their home, they were instead sent to a segregated school for Hispanic students. The Mendez family filed a ...
A President Resigns – 50 Years Later
Thursday, August 1, 2024 - Thursday, September 12, 2024East Rotunda Gallery “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first.” –Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1974 During the night of June 17, 1972, five ...