Because of the mounting speculation about unidentified flying objects, MI has gone to the one person who might legitimately be called an authority on the subject. He is Maj. Hector Quintanilla, Jr., Chief of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, the official body designated by the U.S. Government to field and investigate all report on UFOs.

            Major Quintanilla’s headquarters is at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The base is this country’s scientific center for aerospace research and development, which makes it eminently suited for this far-out project. As Quintanilla himself put it when interviewed for MI:

            “Within the base, we have photo-analysts, radar experts, aerodynamic engineers, physicists, astronomers, chemists. You name the scientific discipline that might be needed to evaluate a UFO report – and we have it right here in the Wright-Patterson complex.”

            Project Blue Book also can call on the services of some 120 officers well-grounded in UFO-investigation methods. There is at least one such officer at every Air Force Base in the U.S. All are ready at a moment’s notice to investigate UFO sightings. Their reports must be channeled through Major Quintanilla, whose big, automated files already include 11,000-odd case histories of sightings.

            The major is a physicist with an 18-year diversified Air Force career in radar operations, intelligence, and research and development on data-processing systems for intelligence purposes. For four years now he has been immersed in the greatest intangible of our time – the UFO.

            A focal point in Major Quintanilla’s office is a display case with UFO mementos – pieces of fused glass, weird formations of clay and stone, scraps of twisted metal, bits of fabric and even some fragments of a pancake – items people have sent to him to support their contention that they had sighted a UFO and, in some instances, visited with its crew.

            Quintanilla himself would welcome a visit by an extraterrestrial space crew, for one simple reason: “If we could retrieve an interstellar spacecraft of some sort, then we could save the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars.”

            In what way? Look at all the research and developmental sweat it would save American space scientists. By studying its propulsion system, its guidance-and-control system, its communications system, we would be conserving years and years of effort and vast sums of money.

            But so far as Quintanilla is concerned, the probability of retrieving such a vehicle is next to nil.

            He bases that opinion mostly on the vast distances involved between this planet and all possible planets out there. Not only in our own galaxy but also beyond our galaxy. “I think,” says Quintanilla, “that the magnitude of the distance which we, or any other race of beings, would have to travel to visit each other is just too tremendous for even the most illogical type of consideration. I would say that based on what we know right now interstellar space voyages are out of the question.”

            This is not to say that Quintanilla doesn’t believe there are no other forms of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. “The existence of life elsewhere and its capability to travel through stellar and galactic distances are two different considerations,” he is careful to point out. “Extraterrestrial life? Yes, I believe that is possible. Interstellar space travel? No.”

            It is now generally accepted that any travel to this planet by an alien cosmic race would have to be interstellar since our solar system does not show much promise of intelligent life, except here on earth.

            In fact, some of the most prominent scientists believe that the nearest point in the universe where intelligent life could exist is four and a third light years away. That’s approximately 26,000,000,000,000 miles! Think about it for a while.

            If scientists say it’s virtually impossible for UFOs to be spacecraft from another stellar system, what are they then?

            The biggest number of sighting reports can, without too much difficulty, be classified as conventional or natural phenomena, according to Quintanilla. After reviewing the great majority of UFO sightings in Blue Book’s files, he is unable to find evidence that the objects as reported by the observers represent any type of extraterrestrial craft.

            But Project Blue Book still has not been able to identify the nature of the objects reported in some 600 cases, of which more than 60 were sightings by so-called reliable observers. How does Quintanilla explain this?

            “You must remember one thing,” says Quintanilla. “All UFO reports contain subjective information, not objective scientific data. At the time an observer reports a UFO sighting to the Air Force, the object is unidentified to him. It mystifies him for one reason or another. This does not mean that the observation reported actually is unidentifiable. The small percentage of UFOs reported to us that we could not identify – less that 5 per cent – remain mysteries for a number of reasons. In many cases there’s not enough information to make an evaluation. And the evaluation of the observer depends on his background, his training and knowledge. You and I could look out the same window at the same object and we might see two different things.”

            At one time Project Blue Book tried to construct a model of a UFO as had been reported to the Air Force by well-intentioned citizens. Based on their descriptions, Blue Book scientists came up with 13 different theoretical models. These all were derived from what at first had appeared to be the same type of UFO. “This is another, more graphic illustration of the subjective nature of UFO reports,” says Major Quintanilla. “No two observers had seen the same thing in the same way.”

            Question – Are you saying that people who report that they have seen UFOs are misleading themselves?

            Quintanilla – I don’t question the integrity of the UFO observer. In most cases he tries his best to make a good observation and interpretation of the object seen. But the outward circumstances of the observation and his inward emotional reactions to it can be misleading. He really believes that he’s seen something mysterious, when it could have been something quite common seen under uncommon conditions or in an uncommon situation. If we had better data from the observer, we might be able to find the visual stimulus that caused the sighted object to appear unusual. And this is true of those unsolved cases.

            Yet they are unsolved. There may even be others like them in the future.

            What then can we expect to learn about UFOs eventually – in terms of hard facts?

            A group of scientists at the University of Colorado is making an authoritative assessment of UFO reports that have been submitted to them direct and from the Air Force files. Hopefully, at the end of the 18-month study, instigated at the request of the Air Force, they will be able to determine scientifically what the UFO phenomena represent.

            So until the university scientists, directed by Dr. Edward U. Condon, complete their study and make their recommendations sometime next summer, the UFO question remains open – at least so far as the public and scientific community are concerned.

            If UFOs are so intangible, so much a result of human fancy, one might wonder whether the continuation of Project Blue Book is not just wasting tax money.

            Q – How can Project Blue Book be justified?

            Quintanilla – Our basic responsibility – at least until the University of Colorado investigation arrives at a final determination about the nature of UFOs – is to examine and analyze the UFO reports submitted to us so that we can decide whether or not these phenomena are a threat to the security of the United States. One of the primary responsibilities of the Air Force is to make sure that no hostile vehicle enters our airspace.

            Q -  How come Project Blue Book has never tried to set up a UFO-detection system? Mass-spectrometers, spectroscopes, spectrographs and Geiger counters are some of the instruments that would give you an incontestable reading on what UFOs are made of. Obviously many people have seen something which they didn’t understand.

            A – For us to be there on the spot of a UFO sighting with spectrometers and Geiger counters, we would have to be able to predict the event. Otherwise, such an endeavor would require a tremendous task force on standby throughout the country. This would cost a huge amount of money.

            Q – But wouldn’t catching a UFO be worth it?

            A – I’ll turn your question right around and ask, “Would you as a taxpayer be willing to pay for this?”

            And on this note, we pass the buck to the reader. Would you be willing to pay the additional high taxes necessary to learn once and for all what UFOs really are?

            If your answer is yes, we must add that Major Quintanilla feels that eventually it will be established incontrovertibly that UFOs are what the Air Force has claimed them to be: natural phenomena or conventional objects observed in unusual conditions or circumstances. 

                                                                                                               Mechanix Illustrated