The UFO Phenomenon

CIA spy plane behind decades of UFO reports

By T.K. Randall
December 31, 2014 ·  206 comments

The Lockheed U-2S spy plane. Image Credit: US Air Force In a somewhat jovial end of year Tweet, the Central Intelligence Agency revealed on Monday that one of its most popular online documents of 2014 was a report from 1998 detailing its involvement in the development of the U-2 spy plane.

Entitled 'The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974', the document also investigated the fact that the top secret plane was responsible for a long spate of UFO reports throughout the 50s and 60s.

"High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect - a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs)," the report stated.In particular the report detailed how sightings of fiery or shiny objects by airline pilots were the result of the spy plane being tested at 60,000ft, an altitude far higher than airlines were flying at the time.

Such sightings even lead to the establishment of Operation Blue Book by the Air Force, a project that aimed to collect and analyze sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects over the United States.

The CIA report concluded that during the 1950s and 1960s more than half of all reported UFO sightings could be attributed to flights of the U-2 and A-12 Oxcart spy planes.

#1 most read on our #Bestof2014 list: Reports of unusual activity in the skies in the '50s? It was us. http://t.co/BKr81M5OUN (PDF 9.26MB)

— CIA (@CIA) December 29, 2014

Source: News.com.au | Comments (206)

Tags: CIA, UFO, Blue Book, U-2