"Impact" Rating = 14
"Credibility" Rating = 14
"Expert" Rating = 7
"Strangeness" Rating = 6
On 16 July 1952, a UFO photograph was allegedly taken by United States Coast Guard station phototographer Shell Alpert at Salem,
This incident is Case 75 in Isaac Koi's "Top 100" article, since it was referred to in 38 of the books covered by that article.
J Allen Hynek has referred to this photograph as a “widely publicized case”, a “classic” that “has made the rounds in just about every magazine and book on the subject”.
This was Project Blue Book Case Number 1501.
This photograph was listed by Project Blue Book as “unidentified”.
Isaac Koi’s “ICES” Rating for this sighting = 8,232 (out of a potential score of 14*14*14*14 i.e. 38,416)
(1) “Impact” Rating of 12 (out of a potential score of 14), because it is Case 95 in Isaac Koi's "Top 100" article.
(2) “Credibility” Rating of 5 (out of a potential score of 14) because there is persuasive evidence that the eyewitness account that accompanied this photo was untrue.
(2) “Expert” Rating of 7 (out of a potential score of 14). It is given this neutral rating because (at the time of writing) it has not been included in any of the short lists of the best cases produced by various UFO researchers that have been compiled by Isaac Koi (see the “Best UFO Cases" article at PART 3: Existing lists by various individuals), but also is not commonly given by UFO researchers as an example of an incident that can be explained by hoax, misperception or other mundane cause.
(4)“Strangeness” Rating of 5 (out of a potential score of 14). The sighting has a relatively low strangeness rating since the photo merely shows unstructured lights.
Sections below:
Web Resources
This incident is discussed on the AboveTopSecret.com (“ATS”) internet discussion forums in Thread 304601.
There is a rapid turnover of UFO material on the Internet. Many links to material on UFO websites quickly become out of date. Therefore, instead of giving many links to specific webpages I have instead included below a search box which can be used to search various leading UFO websites at the same time. You can then click on tabs at the top of the search results to list only results from forums, only results from websites I have labelled as "skeptical" etc. I have included tabs for a couple of specific websites that I find particularly useful, including the valuable archives of the UFO UpDates email discussion List. The relevant websites are all listed in the discussion of the "UFO Searchillion" search engine in Section 2.4 of the "Free UFO Researcher Starter Pack" and continues to evolve...
The relevant search box is one of the two main tools on this website which are intended to help reduce the amount of reinvention of the wheel within UFOlogy. The other main tool is the collection of tables of references to discussion of UFO incidents, personalities and other matters in various books. Those tables can be sorted by author, length and date. I hope these tools are useful.
Book References
The table below includes references to relevant discussions in UFO/SETI books noted by Isaac Koi during a review of approximately 963 UFO/SETI books during the period 2003-2006 (with a few later additions). The table can be sorted by author, date and length of discussion by clicking on the relevant word in the top line of the table.
Many of the tables of references on this website are considerably longer than the references to books found on most other UFO websites. Indeed, some are probably the longest that have been collated in relation to some events and personalities. Together with the "UFO Searchillion" search box, I hope that these tables are found to be a useful contribution to UFOlogy.
For discussion of the
|
Year |
Discussion by:
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No. of Pages |
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Condon Report (“Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects”, Edward U Condon (Director) and Daniel S Gillmor (Editor) (1969)) as Condon Case 56 at pages 116 (in Section 3, Chapter 2 “Analysis of UFO Photographic Evidence”, by William K Hartmann), 716-719 and plates 59-60 (in Section 4, “Case Studies”, Chapter 3, “Photographic Case Studies”) of the uncorrected version submitted to the Air Force (with the same page numbering in the 3 volume paperbound edition distributed by the National Technical Information Service, US Department of Commerce) at pages 81, 467-469 of the Vision hardback edition (with the same page numbering in the Bantam paperback edition). The first of these editions has the same page numbering as the edition available free online at the following links: http://www.project1947.com/shg/condon/contents.html |
7 |
|
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Cowles and UPI (the editors of ) in “Flying Saucers : Twenty-One Years of UFOs” (1968) at pages 88-89. |
2 |
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Dione, R L in “God Drives a Flying Saucer” (1969) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 9-10 (in Chapter 2) of the Corgi paperback edition. |
2 |
|
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Flammonde, Paris in his “Ufo Exist!” (1976) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 308 (in Chapter 15) of the Ballantine Books paperback edition. |
1 |
|
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Fowler, Raymond E in his “UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors” (1974) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 94 (in Chapter 8) of the Exposition Banner hardback edition, at page 91 of the Bantam paperback edition. |
1 |
|
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Gelman, Rita and Seligson, Marcia in their “UFO Encounters” (1978) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 35 (in Chapter 6) of the Scholastic softcover edition. |
1 |
|
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Guieu, Jimmy in his “Flying Saucers Come From Another World” (1956) (edited by Ronald Story) (edited by Ronald Story) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 62 (in Chapter 2) of the Hutchinson hardback edition. |
1 |
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Hall, Michael David and Connors, Wendy Ann in their “Captain Edward J Ruppelt : Summer of the Saucers - 1952” (2000) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 136-137 (in Chapter 5) of the Rose Press softcover edition. |
2 |
|
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Holledge, James in his “Flying Saucers over |
3 |
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Holzer, Hans in his “The UFOnauts” (1976) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 31-32 (in Chapter 2) of the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback edition. |
2 |
|
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Hynek, J Allen in his “The Hynek UFO Report” (1977) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 221-224 (in Chapter 10) of the Barnes & Noble hardback reprint (1997) at pages 231-234 of the Dell paperback edition (with the same page numbering in the Sphere paperback edition). |
4 |
|
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Knight, David C in his “UFOs: A pictorial history from antiquity to the present” (1979) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 52 (in Part 3) of the McGraw Hill hardback edition. |
1 |
|
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Lorenzen, Coral and Lorenzen, Jim in their “UFOs: The Whole Story” (1969) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 44 (in Chapter 1) of the Signet paperback edition. |
1 |
|
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Lorenzen, Coral E in her “The Great Flying Saucer Hoax” (1962) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 32 (in Chapter 4) of the APRO hardback edition. |
1 |
|
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Lorenzen, Coral in “Flying Saucers : the Startling Evidence of the Invasion from Outer Space” (1966) (an enlarged version of her “The Great Flying Saucer Hoax” (1962)) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 40 (in Chapter 4) of the Signet paperback edition. |
1 |
|
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Maney, Charles And Hall, Richard in their “Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects” (1961) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 66 (in Part 2, Chapter 5, by Charles Maney), 82 (in Part 2, Chapter 7, by Charles Maney) of the privately published hardback edition. |
2 |
|
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Marvels and Mysteries (Editors Of) in “Marvels and Mysteries: UFOs” (1997) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 26 of the Parrallel softcover edition. |
1 |
|
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Menzel, Donald and Boyd, Lyle in their “The World of Flying Saucers” (1963) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 122 (in Chapter 6) of the Doubleday hardback edition. |
1 |
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Menzel, Donald and Taves, Ernest in their “The UFO Enigma“ (1977) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 192 (in Chapter 14) of the Doubleday hardback edition. |
1 |
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Menzel, Donald in his “Flying Saucers“ (1953) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 261-262 (in Chapter 19) of the Putnam hardback edition. |
2 |
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Michel, Aime in his “The Truth about Flying Saucers” (1956) on the unnumbered photographic pages before pages 161 (in Part 2, Chapter 4) of the Robert Hale hardback edition, Photographic Plate |
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NICAP in its “The UFO Evidence” (1964) (edited by Richard Hall) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 88 (in Section 8) and page 111 (in Section 9) of the privately published paperbound edition, with the same page numbering in the 1997 Barnes & Noble paperbound reprint. Available free online at: http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_8.htm |
1 |
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Palmer, Raymond A in his “The Real UFO Invasion” (1967) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 172, 176 (in Chapter 6) of the Greenleaf paperback edition. |
2 |
|
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Randle, Kevin and Estes, Russ in their “Spaceships of the Visitors” (1997) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 130-132 (in Part 3) of the Fireside softcover edition. |
3 |
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Randles, Jenny and Hough, Peter in their “Encyclopedia of the Unexplained” (1995) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 55 (in the unnumbered chapter entitled “Space Invaders”) of the Brockhampton hardback edition. |
1 |
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Rehn, K Gosta in his “UFOs Here and Now” (1974) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 144 (in the unnumbered chapter entitled “Photographic Records of UFOs”) of the Abelard-Schuman hardback edition. |
1 |
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Rickard, Robert and Kelly, Richard in their “Photographs of the Unknown” (1980) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 58 (in the unnumbered chapter entitled “UFOs”) of the NEL softcover edition. |
1 |
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Ridpath, Ian in his “Signs of Life” (1977) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 168 (in Chapter 9) of the Penguin softcover edition. |
1 |
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Sachs, Margaret in her “The UFO Encyclopedia“ (1980 (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 275-276 (in an entry entitled “ |
2 |
|
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Sheaffer, Robert in his “The UFO Verdict” (1980) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 52 (in Chapter 6) of the Prometheus softback edition. |
1 |
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Sheaffer, Robert in his “UFO Sightings: The Evidence” (1998) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 87 (in Chapter 6) of the Prometheus hardback edition. |
1 |
|
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Sparks, Brad in version 1.7 of his “Comprehensive Catalog of 1,500 Project |
2 |
|
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Spencer, John in his “UFOs: The Definitive Casebook” (1991) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 27 (in the unnumbered section entitled “ |
1 |
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Stevens, Wendelle and Roberts, August in their “UFO Photographs: Around The World: Vol. |
1 |
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Story, Ronald in “The Encyclopedia of UFOs” (1980) edited by Ronald Story (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at pages 313-314 (in an entry entitled “Salem (Massachusetts) Coast Guard photo”) of the NEL hardback edition. |
2 |
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Time-Life (Editors of) in “The UFO phenomenon: Mysteries of the Unknown” (1987) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 97 (in Chapter 3) of the Time-Life Book hardback edition. |
1 |
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United Press International and Cowles Communications Inc (the editors of ) in “Flying Saucers: A Look Special” (1967) at page 26. |
1 |
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Vesco, Renato and Childress, David Hatcher in their “Man Made UFOs 1944-1994 – 50 Years of Suppression” (1994) (available on Amazon USA and on Amazon UK) at page 355 (in Chapter 10) of the AUP softcover edition. |
1 |
Other Material
Listed as Project Blue Book Case Number 1501 on the redacted US National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) microfilm records of Project Blue Book, released to the National Archives in 1975 – see National Archives Microfilm Publication T1206 roll number 1. An image of the relevant index page has been given the unique Page ID (“PID”) of NARA-PBB1-59 (page 59 of 1014) at the link below.
Listed (without a Project Blue Book Case Number) on the unredacted Maxwell Air Force Base (“Maxwell”) microfilm records of Project Blue Book – see Maxwell microfilm roll number 30,363. An image of the relevant index page has been given the unique Page ID (“PID”) of MAXW-PBB2-292 (page 292 of 1352) at the link below.
http://www.bluebookarchive.orgPlease use the comments section below to share references to any particularly interesting relevant articles.