The truth about Bermuda and flying saucers is out there — on the web.

Almost 130,000 pages of declassified records from the fabled Project Blue Book, the US Air Force’s files on Unidentified Flying Object sightings and investigations, were last week uploaded to the online database The Black Vault.

The site is maintained by American UFO enthusiast John Greenewald who has spent nearly two decades filing US Freedom of Information Act requests for official files on flying saucer reports and other unusual aerial phenomena.

Files on a number of UFO sightings reported from Bermuda are included in the online archive, including a 1949 incident which made banner front page headlines in The Royal Gazette and around the world.

Based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio between 1947 and 1969, Project Blue Book recorded a total of 12,618 worldwide sightings of UFOs — 701 of which officially remain “unidentified.”

The modern era of UFO sightings coincided, perhaps not uncoincidentally, with the introduction of jet aircraft and rocket technology in the immediate post-Second World War era.

The term “flying saucer” was coined in 1947 by an American newspaper to describe nine silver, disc-like craft businessman and aviator Kenneth Arnold reported seeing flying in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington State that year.

In 1952 the US Air Force introduced the broader term Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) to describe aerial anomalies not recognisable as known aircraft, spacecraft or meteorological or astronomical phenomenom.

While the vast majority of UFO observations investigated by Blue Book involved misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena — most often aircraft, balloons, clouds, meteor showers or bright planets — a small percentage of reported sightings went unexplained.

As early as the 1940s these technically “unidentified” objects led some researchers, conspiracy theorists and sensation-hungry media outlets to claim an exraterrestrial origin for UFOs, arguing they were alien spacecraft visiting the Earth from distant star systems.

Perhaps the most well-publicised of the Bermuda sightings took place on June 20, 1949 when a Paget architect reported seeing an object “spherical in shape and brilliantly silver in colour” speeding across the sky above the Island heading due south.

The architect, his wife and two friends watched the object for five minutes from the garden of a South Shore house. Project Blue Book reported the sphere “was seen to decrease in velocity and, when at a position about 80 degrees off the horizon in a line due south, it disappeared straight upward in a matter of seconds”.

A US Air Intelligence report on the sighting dated July 11 concluded that “due to the shape of the object no accurate estimate of the altitude or speed could be determined” but considering its position in relation to cloud banks it was “at least 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the surface of the ocean (rough estimated altitude 30,000 feet or higher).”

Investigators quickly seized on what seemed to be a plausible – and entirely down to earth – explanation for that sighting: meteorologists at Kindley Air Force Base at the East End had released a high-altitude weather balloon into the skies above Bermuda at precisely 6pm on June 20, just five minutes before the Paget architect reported seeing the spherical UFO.

But the Kindley weather officer, who provided calculations charting the balloon’s trajectory for US Air Intelligence, disagreed. In a written submission to investigators, he argued “observation of the balloon from Paget would have been impossible”.

Nevertheless the Blue Book report concluded the object was, at least for official purposes, indeed a weather balloon.

In January, 1956 the crew of a Danish freighter in waters south-east of Bermuda reported seeing a round bright object they first assumed was a shooting star perform seemingly inexplicable aeronautical manoeuvers in the skies above them.

As it was falling towards the Earth the object abruptly stopped, hovered, made “an abrupt right-angle change in direction” and then emitted a long tail, “red like a flame”, before vanishing from view as quickly as it had appeared.

The ship’s second mate (“apparently reliable” according to Blue Book investigators) said “he had never seen a celestial or man-made object which could be compared to this object in performance or to change its appearance from that of a falling star to that of a rocket.”

The Danish seaman stressed the round, orb-like object’s movements made him certain it was not a “a star or meteor conforming to natural flight.”

Nevertheless Project Blue Book’s report concluded this was a meteor sighting.

“Apparent change in course could be caused by passage of object into atmospheric conditions conducive to distortion, such as inversion,” said investigators. “Also burning appeared to be in two stages, initial glow and then burning with tail” (suggesting the entry of a meteor into the Earth’s atmosphere).

On July 15, 1958 numerous Bermuda residents as well as crews aboard US Air Force planes reported seeing multiple UFOs in five separate areas located approximately 75 to 150 miles southwest of the Island.

“All sources described (objects) as green, two sources stated (objects) appeared to disintegrate,” said the Blue Book record card summary of the 1958 sightings. “All were (reported) travelling at great speed.”

The possibility of live-fire exercises being conducted by American or British military vessels operating in the Bermuda area was investigated and discounted as the source of the mysterious “green flare-like objects.”

In an overview of the incident dated August 11, 1958 Dr J Allen Hynek, scientific advisor to Project Blue Book and the man who created the Close Encounters classification system for various kinds of UFO sightings, concluded there was likely an astronomical explanation for the spectacular Bermuda-area events.

“These objects were quite possibly fireballs or meteors (but which would depend on size or brightness, which are not described),” he said. “If they were large objects they could be fireballs and, while it would be remarkable if so many fireballs could be seen in such a short space of time (ten in half an hour), it is not outside the bounds of possibility.”

In September, 1958 another extremely credible local sighting was reported — this time by a senior officer from the luxury liner Queen of Bermuda, a man with a wealth of experience in celestial navigation and a professional familiarity with the local night sky.

According to Blue Book, the officer and four members of his family observed an object “the size and brilliance of Mars” travelling very rapidly and at a high altitude in a north-easterly direction in the skies above their Bailey’s Bay home.

“They watched it for five or six minutes before it disappeared,” said the official summary of the sighting.

Blue Book officials came to the tentative conclusion the bright object “was probably Sputnik III” — a research satellite put into Earth orbit by the Soviet Union in May, 1958.

But they conceded “no confirmation” of their hypothesis was available.

According to a 1985 fact sheet issued by Wright-Patterson, the US Air Force discontinued Project Blue Book after concluding that “no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated (has) ever given any indication of threat to our national security (and) there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ are extraterrestrial vehicles”.

Wright-Patterson also said the Air Force has not seen any evidence suggesting the sightings “represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge”.

One thing you won’t find online are records related to the alleged 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, incident, when conspiracy theorists maintain the US military recovered a crashed alien spacecraft and the bodies of its crew members.

The US National Archives maintains it “has been unable to locate any documentation among the Project Blue Book records which discuss the 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico”.

For some UFO researchers, that would suggest the truth is still out there — and remains just as elusive as ever.

To search the files, please visit www.projectbluebook.theblackvault.com