Edward J. Ruppelt

Edward J. Ruppelt was a U.S. Air Force captain and World War II radar-bombardier veteran who, in 1951, was appointed head of Project Grudge, which he reorganized into the more methodical Project Blue Book. Widely credited with coining the term 'Unidentified Flying Object' to replace the loaded 'flying saucer,' Ruppelt tried to run the Air Force's UFO investigation with genuine scientific procedure during his tenure, standardizing report forms, consulting outside experts including a young J. Allen Hynek, and pushing back against pressure to dismiss cases without adequate analysis. He presided over Blue Book during the intense 1952 Washington, D.C. radar-visual flap, one of the program's most dramatic episodes. After leaving the Air Force, Ruppelt published The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956), a candid insider account that criticized the military's later drift toward reflexive debunking under his successors and remains a foundational text for understanding Blue Book's internal politics. Notably, in a 1960 revised edition, Ruppelt reversed some of his earlier openness, expressing greater skepticism toward extraterrestrial explanations — a shift some later researchers attributed to institutional pressure and others saw as an honest scientific recalibration. He died of a heart attack in 1960 at age 37, leaving behind the most influential firsthand account of the U.S. government's early UFO investigations.