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memo concerning "Flying Discs" to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces at the Pentagon. The considered opinion, based on data furnished by numerous Air Force branches, he stated, was that "the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious ... The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely." Twining described the objects as metallic or light-reflecting, circular or elliptical with a flat bottom and domed top, sometimes with "well kept formation lights varying from three to nine objects," and normally silent. He proposed that the Army Air Forces set up a detailed study of UFOs, assigning a security classification . ora and code name to it. [1] As a result, such a project was set up within the Air Materiel Command, and given the code name "Sign." [2] The new agency began its operations in early 1948 at Wright Field (now called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) with the mandate to collect information, evaluate it, and assess whether the phenomenon was a threat to national security. As Project Sign became more convinced that the objects were not Russian, divisions grew between those who thought they were "interplanetary"—the term used at the time, when much less was known about our solar system—and those who were determined to find a more conventional explanation. Later that n La . ee ew year, some Project Sign staff wrote a top-secret report, an "Estimate of the Situation” providing data on convincing cases and concluding that, based on the evidence, UFOs were most likely extraterrestrial. The document eventually landed on the desk of General Hoyt Vanderbeng, Air Force Chief of Staff, who rejected it as unacceptable because he wanted proof, and responded by returning it to its authors at Project Sign. From then on, the proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis lost ground, and because of the clear message from Vandenberg and others, the safer position that UFOs must have conventional explanations was adopted by the majority of the project's investigators. It appears they were under pressure to shift their focus. The "Estimate of the Situation" was reportedly destroyed, and no copies have ever been found despite repeated attempts using the Freedom of Information Act. [3] Project Sign was later renamed Project Grudge, w'hich then became the well-known Project Blue Book in 1951, lasting for nineteen years. As time passed, it continued to become naggingly clear that these objects did not belong to any foreign government, and we had to face the clear possibility that they did not originate here on Earth. U.S. government documents released through the FOIA show that, as a result, some officials from multiple branches of government continued to assert that they might be interplanetary. As before, other factions stuck to their hope of finding a conventional explanation, no matter what.