An excerpt from
Unconventional Flying Objects
by Paul Hill
(Hampton Roads Publishing, 1995, ISBN 1-57174-027-9)
p.22-24
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  Early Beginnings


  I made my beginning analysis of unconventional object
maneuvers in the 1950s. This work was no doubt stimulated by my
sighting of unconventional objects on July 16, 1952. My sighting
was made at the peak of the flap for that year, tightly
sandwiched between the July 14 Pan American Airways sighting in
my own neighborhood and the great Washington D.C. flap on July
19, 1952. My sighting was investigated by Project Blue Book,
classified as unknown, and given first public mention by Major
Edward Ruppelt on pages 157-58 in his "Report on Unidentified
Flying Objects".

  My background of flight experiments with rocket-supported
platforms was pertinent to the understanding of the control of
unconventional objects, that is, to the understanding of how
they maneuver. It enabled me to correlate their tilt-to-control
maneuvers fifteen years before that idea came to a member of the
Condon Project. In his book [*], Dr. David Saunders says, "...
information might be gleaned from a careful analysis of the
relation (if any) between attitude changes (tilting) of a single
UFO and changes in its direction, or speed of flight. Questions
along these lines were a part of my UFO reporting questionnaire
that the project never got around to using" (p. 232).

  While I did not invent the idea of flying platforms, I built
the first ones capable of flight testing and capable of testing
flight maneuvers. They were of the type which tilt-to-control,
the thrust remaining coincident with the axis of symmetry. I did
not realize until after I had experienced the superb
controllability of my device that unconventional objects might
be controlled on the same principles. If this thought was
correct, I had a nearly perfect piece of equipment for
simulating their maneuvers. Another encouraging aspect was that
saucer UFOs even looked like a flying platform.

  I was soon doing the pendulum-rock and falling leaf, the
sudden reversals, banking-to-turn, and the silver-dollar wobble,
surely the first UFO maneuver flight simulations. I did them as
much because they came naturally and I enjoyed doing them, as
for any other reason. Although some data about some of them,
such as the falling leaf and sudden reversals, was common even
then, data about others, such as the bank-to-turn, was in short
supply and the experiments were almost ahead of the data. But as
the data rolled in through the 1950s, the correctness of the UFO
maneuver simulations became more and more evident. By the time
I saw the Tremonton, Utah, movies of maneuvering disks (see
Section XI) in slow and stop motion, in which I could make out
the circular planforms and the edge-on fadeouts as well as the
elliptic in-between on banking turns, I was totally convinced
that the analysis of UFO maneuvers as presented in Section XI is
the correct one.

  I was prevented from making any pronouncements about this
application of my work by official National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics (NACA) policy. That policy was that flying
saucers are nonexistent. NACA Director, Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, made
a public pronouncement to that effect at about that time, and I
had been instructed by my superior in official channels that my
name could not be used in connection with my sighting or in any
way that would implicate the NACA with these objects. NACA
research officials were all scientists with management training
in which the necessity for unambiguous policy had been
emphasized. Clearly, I was destined to remain as unidentified as
the flying objects. When the name of the organization was
changed from NACA to NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, the same officials remained in charge, and one
could notice no change in policy. The only difference was that
individuals were going into space; when astronauts sighted
unknowns in space, a grounded official couldn't rationally
contradict them. But they could shut them off the air ('APRO
Bulletin', February 1976).


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[*] David R. Saunders, R. Rodger Harkins: "UFOs ? - Yes !", The
World Publishing Company, New York 1969