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34 Project Blue Book closed its doors in 1969, this case was still listed as unknown, and the final chief of the project, Maj. Hector Quintanilla, called it the most puzzling report of more than twelve thousand in the files. The Socorro landing is widely regarded as one of the most impressive and baffling cases of all. As such, it placed such previously "far-out" aspects of the subject as nuts-and-bolts high-performance craft and small humanoid crew members somewhere near the center. This UFO gave every indication of being a solid object... something manufactured... a machine. There was no need to invoke such esoteric explanations as parallel universes or psychic projections to account for some- thing that looked and acted like a very advanced form of trans- portation. So advanced that it cannot be understood. But not necessarily so advanced that it might never crash. In 1965 an effort was begun to rebuild public confidence in the official investigation, which had been badly damaged by repeated disclosures of the failure of Project Blue Book explanations to match the facts on which they were supposed to be based. The upshot was a $500,000-plus government contract to the University of Colorado to study the Air Force investigation—in public. The initially enthusiastic support from the major private UFO groups soon turned sour, as it became apparent that outspoken study director Dr. Edward Condon had concluded well in advance that there was nothing to be learned from investigating UFOs. When his unscientific attitude could no longer be ignored, two scientist members of the Colorado group went public with a damaging document and were promptly fired. Despite the open controversy, the final report of the Condon Committee was completed in 1968, blessed by the National Academy of Sciences, and then published commercially. Dr. Condon's thor- oughly negative summation was in stark contrast to the fas- cinating data buried in the lengthy report, where 30 percent of the cases were left without conventional explanation. Of more than 550 unexplained reports then in the Project Blue Book files, only three were considered by the University of Colorado, while current sightings having little chance of being signifi- CRASH AT CORONA