America’s Secret UFO Files

REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana

Wondery | Ballen Studios

True Crime, History

4.3 • 668 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early 1950s, the US Air Force launched a top-secret program to investigate reports of UFO sightings and determine whether they posed a national security threat. Dubbed Project Blue Book, the program examined nearly 12,000 accounts of UFO activity before it was shut down and classified in 1969. But as rumors spread about the nature of the investigation, the public began to wonder what the government was hiding.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Redacted, declassified mysteries early and ad-free right now.
0:07.0	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:15.1	On a sunny summer morning in 1952, a pilot on a U.S. Air Force base sprinted across the runway to his F-86 jet.
0:28.8	Radar had picked up a potential threat, an unidentified target blazing through the sky at 700 miles an hour.
0:36.5	When the target slowed down near the airfield, the pilot had been ordered to scramble,
0:40.9	meaning to take off immediately and intercept a potential threat.
0:45.2	As he hopped into the cockpit, the pilot wondered what might be waiting for him.
0:49.4	He hoped it wasn't the worst-case scenario, a Soviet bomber carrying nuclear weapons. If this was a Soviet
0:55.6	attack, he could be witnessing the first strike of World War III. But by the time he got high
1:02.0	enough in the air, the target he'd been sent to check out had disappeared. He thought it might be a
1:07.7	fluke. Perhaps it was just a flock of birds, or there was an issue with the radar equipment.
1:12.6	Ground control radioed to drop his altitude, while another F-86 cruised above to search for the mystery target.
1:19.6	As the pilot began to descend, he saw a strange flash of light below him.
1:23.6	He couldn't make out what it was, and he felt himself tense with anxiety. Whatever it was,
1:29.8	it was moving fast. As he got closer, he realized it looked like a saucer or some kind of circular
1:37.3	object, and incredibly it was speeding up. The pilot's stomach lurched. He was flying at Mach 1, the speed of sound, and it was
1:47.3	outpacing him. The pilot radioed the F-86 above him, but got no answer. He couldn't get through
1:53.3	to ground control either. He locked the target in his machine gun sites and considered his options.
1:59.2	If it was a Soviet craft, shooting at it could kick off
2:02.4	a deadly firefight, maybe even a war. Or if it was one of those flying saucers that had been
2:08.6	all over the news lately, it might be even worse. He remembered how terrified he was listening
2:13.9	to the War of the World's broadcast on the radio when he was a kid. It was about an alien invasion.
	...

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