by Jennie Zeidman, © 1999 by author

Five months after the closing of Project Blue Book and the termination of his twenty-one year "scientific consultancy to the Air Force", Allen Hynek was once again under contract to the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He was listed as a "Special Government Employee" (the quotation marks exist on the contract sheets). This work, under Civil Service status, continued through four consecutive annual contracts, with the stipulation that his service was not to exceed 20 days per year. His salary was $107 per day, and his employment was intermittent, with no pre-scheduled regular tour of duty. He actually worked only a few days each contract period. Although his contract was renewed effective May 4, 1974, he was only paid for one day during the pay period and there is a notation on the sheet which indicates Termination – "no other work available." Soon after October 26, 1973, which was probably his next-to-last, and almost certainly a most significant and traumatic working day, Allen Hynek announced the formation of his Center for UFO Studies.

I have written previously of my time with Hynek on October 26, 1973 and of his obvious unhappiness and agitation over events that had occurred at Wright Field during the previous few hours. These present notes provide some background details of an historic nature, and more personal memories of the following day, October 27, 1973, which I have not previously published.

In the fall of 1969, when Blue Book folded, Hynek expressed his mixed emotions (some would say sour grapes) by saying, "Good! Now I can write my book." (We consulted regularly about the manuscript, and The UFO Experience was published in 1972.) He seemed to have removed himself from official government UFO work forever. Then, in a letter to me dated May 1, 1970 (his 60^th birthday) he says "…the AF has asked me to be a consultant again – starting this summer – but on what I don’t know! All I know is that I had to go through the whole clearance process again. It may be Rooshian (sic) devices or it may be UFOs." In a letter to me of June 19^th, he says "My new WPAFB assignment is official, but as yet I haven’t been called in for anything!"

Wait a minute, here! Russian devices? Allen Hynek? Hynek was an astronomer, for heaven’s sake, a mild mannered professor who taught undergrad general astronomy, mentored grad students, and specialized in stellar spectra. What was he doing with Russian devices? For that matter, what was he doing with UFOs? Even more germane, if, as the government insisted, UFOs were of no consequence and of no relevance to national security, why would an astronomy professor need a security clearance in the first place?

Hynek was often asked, "how he got into the UFO business," and his answer was by rote:

"The Air Force needed an astronomer to go over the UFO reports and weed out those which could be attributed to natural, astronomical phenomena," he would tell those who inquired. "One day in 1948 two men from Wright Field showed up at my office and asked if I would do it. I thought it might be interesting, and Wright Field was only 60 miles away." In The UFO Experience he says he "accepted the invitation almost in a sense of sport." He compared himself to the innocent bystander who got shot. According to Hynek, his UFO consultancy was by pure happenstance.

Well, not exactly. In fact, not exactly at all.

The Air Force, it turns out, did not just pick Hynek’s name out of a hat; he wasn’t chosen by coincidence – the personable young professor who happened to be close by. He was actually a logical and obvious choice. For Hynek was a rocket man.

If asked, "What did you do during the war? Hynek’s answer was open and ingenuous. "I was at Johns Hopkins, working on the radio proximity fuse." Indeed, in 1942 he was granted leave from his Assistant Professorship at Ohio State University to work at the Applied Physics Laboratory. On a basic "Who’s Who" sheet from his early years at Ohio State he wrote, "Supervisor of technical reports at Applied Physics Laboratory during the war," and on another sheet dated May, 1944, "of (sic) the staff of John-Hopkins (sic) University, 1942-."

After the war, Hynek’s academic stars rose quickly. He returned to Ohio State as an associate professor, and advanced to full professor in 1950. He taught, he served as director of Ohio State’s McMillan Observatory from 1946-1953, he was appointed an assistant dean of the Graduate School, and he managed to pursue his own specialty, a long-term program on stars with composite spectra and on the infra-red spectra of double stars.

But there was even more on his plate.

In addition to his many other activities, and undoubtedly as an offshoot of his wartime work, Hynek had an ongoing position with the V-2 rocket program at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. He did not mention this to his students. Even Jacques Vallee’s ego-biographical Forbidden Science (1992), which places great emphasis on the two men’s intellectual intimacy, mentions Hynek’s proximity fuse work but nothing of the V-2 connection. Yet, though mention of his current or previous government aerospace work failed to reach the "outside world," the May 1948 issue of The OSU Alumni Monthly (p. 9) refers to Hynek as "one of the nation’s ‘name’ men in rocket research." It is also noted that he "has been summoned several times by the government to serve as observer at rocket launchings in New Mexico." A year later, presumably after he became UFO connected, the May 1949 issue of the Monthly refers to Hynek as "nationally known in the field of rocket research," (but does not mention any UFO connection).

It was not until the publication in 1992 of David DeVorkin’s book Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the US Space Sciences after World War II, that many of Hynek’s UFO associates became aware of the full extent of his involvement in post-war V-2 research. I do remember him making a trip to Huntsville, Alabama during 1953, and me picking up right away and asking, "Redstone Arsenal?" He said yes, and upon my further inquiry acknowledged that he had met Werner Von Braun, or perhaps knew Von Braun, but that was the extent of it.

The DeVorkin book contains no less than 14 references to Hynek’s involvement and contributions to the development of upper atmospheric research. And once I started looking, I found other references as well. Buried in his extensive bibliography is a hand written reference to Chapters 10-19 inc. of New Weapons for Aerial Warfare, Little Brown & Company edited by Joe C. Boyce. No date is given, and I have been unable to track it down, but its location in his list of publications places it between 1946 and 1950.

Why was it okay for Hynek to say, "I worked on the proximity fuse during the war," but not to advertise that "after the war I worked on the utilization of captured V-2 rockets as vehicles for instruments for upper atmospheric research?" I have considered the possibility he was sensitive that he had some degree of working relationship with the Project Paperclip gang – the captured German scientists brought to work in the United States (away from the sure clutches of the Soviets). A simpler answer is that Hynek’s UFO image needed to be divorced from any previous government connection. (Today we would say it was politically incorrect to mention any previous government or V-2 connection.) He was simply the mild-mannered astronomy professor picked at random to gently teach the UFO-reporting public the error of its ways.

But Hynek was derelict in his duties to the Air Force. As time progressed his adherence to "the party line" became more and more difficult. The "sport" of the job was long past, replaced by a growing frustration and anxiety over his difficult position. He was supposed to be pacifying the public, downplaying UFO reports, yet he was becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the phenomenon, and of the gross inadequacies of the Air Force "investigation." Conversely, the Air Force was becoming unhappy with Hynek. He wasn’t exactly a loose cannon rolling on the deck, but neither was he the perfect "yes man" they required. He found himself in a precarious double balancing act, not only with the Air Force, but also with his public position. When I was a student in his "Astronomy 500" class the fall of 1952, he told us of his consultancy, and that as far as he could tell, UFO reports were primarily the result of misinterpretations of normal events or aircraft. Years later it was revealed that as early as the summer of 1952 – months earlier – at the time of the great Washington National over flights, he had already written the first of several letters to the Air Force pointing out the need for an in-depth scientific study. Invariably he was ignored. In effect, the Air Force was saying, "Just supply us with meteors, or Venus, or lenticular clouds, and mind your own business."

Despite his considerable background in aerospace work, and a track record of scrupulous security checks, it had been decided he was to be left out of the inner circle. In January 1953, when he returned from the Robertson Panel, he expressed to me (in retrospect, very naively) his bewilderment at having to "sit in the hall" during some of the sessions. The final insult, of course, was the failure of Northwestern University to be granted the "scientific study" which ultimately became the fiasco of the University of Colorado’s Condon Report. Hynek said it was analogous to appointing a non-cook as chef-maitre of Maxim’s.

Hynek was used. He was abused. He was trapped. Increasingly frustrated and bitter, he wanted no more of the Air Force’s game. But if he resigned he would lose the little access he did have to the data. He began to photocopy for his own future use all of the Air Force material which he was allowed to see. And he bided his time.

After his initial mention of a new contract in his letters of May and June 1970, I find nothing in my correspondence file for the next three years on the subject of working at Wright Field.

In January 1973 Hynek was informed that The UFO Experience had won the Ohioana Library Book Award as the best book by an Ohio or Ohio-connected author in the field of general non-fiction in 1972. The award (a soggy chicken salad lunch and a medallion) would take place in Columbus the following October 27^th. I knew early on about this, and received a letter from him dated September 28 announcing that he would be at Wright Field during the day of October 26. Could I pick him up and drive him back to Columbus? Of course.

Meanwhile, the eastern United States had exploded into the great fall UFO flap of 1973. Not a day went by without newspaper and television coverage of UFO sightings. An enormous and persistent high-pressure system created clear skies and balmy nights for most of the month, creating obvious opportunities for sky gazing. The two outstanding cases in the news were Pascagoula and Coyne and they vied for attention – even front-page attention – with bulletins from the Middle East. By the end of October the Yom Kipper War took prominence, and it was announced that Wright Field was on high security status as a staging and departure base for supplies headed for Israel. It was in this environment that I picked up Hynek and drove him to Columbus. I had never seen him in such mental distress.

The following day we met at noon at the awards luncheon (he had stayed at a hotel, not with my family) and he still seemed preoccupied.

We exchanged pleasantries with our tablemates, including astronaut (later Senator) John Glenn, also an award recipient. A few minutes remained before the speakers would be called to the microphone. Hynek and I discussed the UFO flap then in progress.

Someone at our table asked him the usual "what about the bodies at Wright Field?" and of course Hynek said he had no information on the subject. Then he turned to me, and in a quiet aside said that he had heard of – or did he say "knew" of? – a crash and retrieval at or near Holloman AFB, near Alamagordo, New Mexico. I believe he said bodies had been taken to Holloman.

I was stunned. Never before had he made such bold statements to me. Activities at the speakers’ table precluded further conversation. I took out a 3x5 card and wrote, "When did the Holloman incident take place?" Allen wrote "1962?" on the side (note question mark). I wrote, "Who leaked it to you?" Allen wrote. "The AF." (Note the underline.) I sputtered some further question, and at that moment he was called to receive his award. At the first available moment I pursued the topic, but he would only protest that he had already said too much. The subject was closed. Mindful of the protocols and responsibilities associated with classified information, but much to my later regret, we never discussed it again.

Fifteen years later I learned that Allen had spent that morning with Leonard Stringfield – very possibly their first meeting. Stringfield was a persuasive fellow, and as his special interest was crash-retrievals (almost always, alas, from anonymous sources) it was a natural assumption that it was he who had told Allen about the Holloman incident. So why would Allen have said (with underline) "The AF?" All he needed to say was, "I can’t tell you."

But Allen was angry at the Air Force. The previous day there had been a showdown at FTD. One of the most intense UFO flaps was in full swing, and the Air Force was doing nothing. He had challenged them. "Why aren’t you doing something?" he later told me he had said. And he had received only stony faces in reply. It wasn’t a question of a Mid-East-War-going-on-and-we-can’t-be-bothered-with-UFOs. It was a question of, regardless, the Air Force "would do nothing about" UFOs.

The total picture of Hynek’s 1970 – 1973 few-days-a-year work at Wright Field leads me to believe that the subject was indeed UFOs, not "Rooshian devices," and that the time was spent essentially on de-briefing sessions. Apparently through those years, although Blue Book was dead and gone, the Air Force still had Allen on the hook, and he could be reeled in on command. I imagine that they were keeping track of what knowledge he had acquired between meetings, and the progress of his thinking on the subject. In other words, was he a threat, or not? The October 26^th meeting had been scheduled at least a month in advance, so although propitious, it was not a case of, "There’s a UFO flap on, call Hynek."

No doubt Hynek was hoping he would pick up some useful information in the bargain.

Undoubtedly, the Air Force profited more than Allen did from these meetings.

References:

  "I Remember Blue Book," IUR, Vol. 16, Number 2, p 7.