Dewey Fournet's motion study and Navy inquiry
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Date | 1951 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic), Ocean & underwater (topic) |
| People | Dewey Fournet, Edward Ruppelt, Donald Keyhoe, Michael Swords |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 42 |
| Year | 1951 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1951 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 8 |
Dewey Fournet was a U.S. Air Force major who, in 1951–1952, handled UFO matters in the Directorate of Intelligence at the Pentagon and served as liaison to Project Blue Book. In late 1952 he prepared a top-secret study of UFO motions arguing that some showed intelligent control, which he presented to the CIA's Robertson Panel in January 1953.[1][2]
At the Pentagon
Fournet was a pilot and engineer. After General John Samford and General William Garland arrived at Air Force intelligence in 1951–1952, Fournet took over the UFO analysis desk previously held by Major Aaron Boggs. Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt called him "our liaison officer in the Pentagon", said his word carried considerable weight, and described him as one of the officers most convinced that UFOs could be extraterrestrial craft.[1][3]
The motion study
In the autumn of 1952 Fournet studied whether the reported movements of UFOs were random or ordered, looking at manoeuvres and formation flying, and wrote it up around December 1952, shortly before leaving the service. He concluded that the formation flying showed intelligent control of a kind people could not achieve, pointing towards the extraterrestrial hypothesis; Ruppelt summarised the conclusion as that UFOs were spaceships. Fournet later said he had prepared it "primarily as a weapon" against apathy and bias in official circles.[1][3]
The Robertson Panel
Fournet presented his case to the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel in January 1953, using several of the study's cases. The panel concluded that UFOs posed no direct threat and could largely be explained, and Ruppelt wrote that Fournet's material got the same dismissive treatment as his own and Hynek's. The full study has never been found, but historian Michael Swords partly reconstructed it from diagrams, titled "UFO Formations", attached to a CIA letter of 27 January 1953 to physicist Julius Stratton.[1][2][4]
Later role
After leaving active duty, Fournet served on the board of the civilian group NICAP. Ruppelt called him the unidentified source of much of Donald Keyhoe's information, and Fournet and Air Force press officer Al Chop cleared several cases for Keyhoe's books.[1][5]
The Navy inquiry claim
A claim that Fournet ran a private, Navy-assisted inquiry into undersea and aerial UAP, sometimes linked to the name "Operation Interloper", comes mainly from later accounts rather than released Air Force or Navy records. Swords, who reconstructed much of Fournet's work, describes the motion study as his own initiative and does not document a separate Navy project.[1]
People and topics
- Project Blue Book — The Air Force's public UFO investigation from 1952 until its closure in December 1969.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Dewey Fournet — Pentagon Air Force intelligence liaison to Project Blue Book who produced a 1952 study of UFO motions.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Edward Ruppelt — Head of Project Blue Book in 1952–53 and author of The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
- Robertson Panel — Robertson Panel
- NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
- Donald Keyhoe — Retired Marine officer, author and director of NICAP who campaigned against UFO secrecy.
- U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
- Michael Swords — Historian of the Air Force UFO projects.
On the Timeline
- Proposal to collect UFO home movies (1950) (6 July 1950) — An Air Force officer wants to quietly collect UAP home movies from the public with FBI help.
- Urner Liddel's Skyhook balloon explanation (27 February 1951) — A Navy physicist publicly says all UAP reports are mirages or balloons.
See every 1951 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Michael Swords, "The Fournet motion study", Project 1947 · mail.project1947.com · archived copy
- Robertson Panel — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Keyhoe and Fournet", Project 1947 · mail.project1947.com · archived copy
- "The Robertson Panel", The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- "Sightings cleared for Major Donald E. Keyhoe by Albert M. Chop", NICAP · nicap.org · archived copy
- Ruppelt on the Tremonton film and Fournet's motion study — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- nicap.org · nicap.org · archived copy
- ufoexplorations.com · ufoexplorations.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Project Blue Book — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Project Blue Book records — National Archives · archives.gov · archived copy
- Project Blue Book files — The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- U.S. congressional hearings on UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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