It has been known for some time that during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs had some material on UFOs in its curriculum. The chapter of the textbook “Introductory Space Science” for the class Physics 370 has been posted on CUFONSM for quite a while. This file contains expanded coverage, including a newspaper article from the “Lemoore Advance, A letter of reply from the A.F. Academy transmitting copies of the two versions of Chapter 33, Chapter 33 as it was in use from 1968 – 1970, and the revised Chapter 33 placed in use for the Fall Quarter, 1970. (Posted 14 MAY 1992) — Jim Klotz, CUFONSM SYSOP
from the Lemoore, CA Advance, October 8, 1970
AIR ACADEMY TEXT BOOK URGES MORE STUDY OF UFO SIGHTINGS
by TED HUBBARD
Students at the U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs are being taught to stop scoffing at the mention of UFO’s or “flying saucers” and to keep an open mind on the subject.
This was made clear last Thursday in an interview given by Major Stewart Kilpatrick, deputy Director of Public Information of the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, to the Lemoore Advance in a lengthy and exclusive phone interview.
The “National Enquirer,” a country-wide journal, which claims the “largest circulation of any weekly paper in America,” headlined this following statement, “Air Force Academy Textbook Warns Cadets That UFO’s May Be Spacecraft Operated by Aliens From Other Worlds,” in its Oct. 11 issue. “Because so many of our readers are interested personally in aircraft, The Advance sought to verify what appeared to be exaggerated claims and somewhat on the unbelievable side. This despite the reported sightings of some strange craft over Lemoore by several witnesses a few weeks ago.
Major Kilpatrick, as second ranking officer in public affairs at the Air Academy, is in a position to speak authoritatively for the Air Force. He admitted at once that Plebes are taught from a text entitled “Introductory Space Science, Volume II” and an entire Chapter 33 deals entirely with UFO considerations. He quoted from page 455, that “50,000 virtually reliable people have reported sighting unidentified flying objects.”
“This leads us with the unpleasant possibility of alien visitors to our planet,” the 14-page chapter continues, “or at least alien controlled UFO’s.”
According to the Academy text book: “If such beings are visiting the earth, two questions arise: (1) Why haven’t they attempted to contact us officially, and (2) Why haven’t there been accidents which would have revealed their presence?
“Why no contact? That question is very easy to answer in any of several ways: (1) We may be the object of intensive sociological and psychological study. In such studies you usually avoid disturbing the test subjects’ environment. (2) You do not contact a colony of ants – and humans may seem that way any aliens (variation: a zoo is fun to visit, but you don’t `contact’ the lizards). (3) Such contact may have already taken place secretly, and may have taken piece on a different plane of awareness – and we are not yet sensitive to communications on such a plane.”
In releasing this interview in The Lemoore Advance we are well aware that many readers will certainly “raise an eyebrow or two.” But Major Kilpatrick insisted the above chapter in the text is not a fairy story. At the end he seemed to go along with the recommendations of the physics text book which advises Air Force officers as follows: “The best thing to do is to keep an open and skeptical mind – and not take an extreme position on any side of the question.”
“Introductory Space Science” closes the chapter with the wish expressed that renewed extensive investigation be given to the possibility of UFO’s. This will require expenditure of a considerable sum of government funds, it explained, and in the present public attitude of scorn and ridicule whenever “UFO’s” are mentioned, such possibility seems almost hopeless the chapter laments. As most people know, the Dr. Eugene U. Condon investigation was closed down by the Pentagon and no present official scientific investigation is now operating in this field. In 1966 we talked with six different Air Force pilots at Travis Air Force Base, who claimed to have seen UFO’s but stated they did not dare report them for fear of extreme ridicule. At least in 1970 this Air Force attitude seems to have changed as indicated by Major Kilpatrick interview with The Advance. Lemoore’s representative at the Colorado Springs Academy is Steve (Moon) Mullens, former basketball star on the Tiger team, and alumnus of Lemoore High. We are asking him his opinion of his science text’s presentation of the so called UFO’s.
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