US Air Force cataloged UFO artifacts for 22 years
By June Hargrove ·
For over two decades, members of the public submitted artifacts to the Air Force for analysis under a system of specimen numbers that link physical matter to paper trails.
The US National Archives catalog contains a description for a series titled Project Bluebook Artifacts. According to the file's catalogue entry, this series consists of "submitted artifacts related to case files on sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs)" collected by the U.S. Air Force between June 1947 and December 1969.
As a radar officer, I know the importance of a chain of custody. The record of who held the files often tells as much as the files themselves. For these artifacts, the custody shifted through three distinct entities over two decades. From 1947 through 1951, the series was maintained by the USAF Air Material Command Intelligence Department Technical Intelligence Division. By 1951, responsibility moved to the USAF Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff Operations Office of the Director of Intelligence Air Technical Intelligence Center, where it remained until March 1952.
From March 1952 until the project's end in 1969, the records were held by the USAF Air Force Systems Command Foreign Technology Division Project Blue Book Office and its predecessors. This final move puts the artifacts under the purview of the Foreign Technology Division—a unit typically concerned with the technical analysis of adversary hardware.
Physical Specimen Number
The catalog description specifies that the Air Force did not simply store these objects in a bin. Each item was assigned a "unique identifying Physical Specimen number and Artifact number" by the Technical Intelligence Division and subsequent offices.
These numbers served as the bridge between the physical matter and the paper trail. The catalogue entry notes that there are citations within the relevant case files that correspond with these numbers. To understand the artifact, one must find the case file; to verify the case file, one must locate the specimen. The description clarifies that the accompanying case files contain reports from the individuals who submitted the items, the correspondence between those individuals and the Air Force, and "reports of analyses of the objects themselves."
1947 to 1969
While the public record generally identifies Project Blue Book as a systematic study running from March 1952 to December 1969, the artifacts series dates back further, beginning in June 1947. This aligns with the earliest widely reported waves of sightings that preceded the formal establishment of Blue Book.
For twenty-two years, the Air Force acted as a repository for materials submitted by the public. The nature of these "artifacts" is not described in the catalog entry. The text does not specify if the items were fragments of metal, biological samples, or consumer electronics mistaken for something else. It only confirms that they were analyzed and cataloged.
Films, Tapes, and Canada
The search for these artifacts brings up related series in the National Archives that expand the scope of the investigation. The record lists Sound Recordings Relating to Project Blue Book Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Investigations and Project Blue Book Motion Picture Films, suggesting the Air Force was collecting multi-media evidence alongside physical specimens.
Further records involve the Office of Special Investigations, which produced reports, correspondence, and photographs of sightings, each tied to an individual identification number.
Perhaps most notable is the overlap with international intelligence. The catalog identifies a series titled Records Relating to Military Matters in Canada. Among the diverse subjects of that series—which include pipelines, civil defense, and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)—the records explicitly list "unidentified flying object" as a subject of correspondence, memorandums, and reports between the two nations.
The artifacts themselves remain separate from the narrative reports. The catalogue entry directs researchers to three specific series for further information: the Project Blue Book Case Files (NAID 595466), the Sanitized Version of those files (NAID 597821), and a separate 1954–1966 collection (NAID 542184). Whether the physical specimens still exist in the numbers assigned to them is a question the catalog entry leaves to the archives.