Published October 25, 2026
| Version v1
Dataset
Open
Project Blue Book UFO Case Files (Geocoded)
Description
# Project Blue Book UFO Case Files (Geocoded)
All 10,622 US Air Force Blue Book case files from the National Archives, with places mapped.
**Home page, documentation and the always-current copy: [encounteratlas.com/datasets](https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/#bluebook)** See the data on a map: [https://encounteratlas.com/ufo/blue-book/](https://encounteratlas.com/ufo/blue-book/)
## About
Project Blue Book was the US Air Force's study of UFO reports from 1952 to 1969 (following Projects Sign and Grudge). The US National Archives holds its case files as the series "Sanitized Version of Project Blue Book Case Files" (naId 597821), but the catalog only gives each file a typed folder title such as "Fort Worth, Texas, July 1952".
This table turns those titles into data: place, state or country, year and month, matched to coordinates with GeoNames. Every row links to the file in the National Archives catalog and to its first scanned page.
## Notes
- One row per case FILE in the National Archives series, not per sighting. The Air Force's own total of 12,618 sightings counts differently (some files hold several reports, some reports have no file in this series). - `location_precision` says how good the map point is: `place` (town matched), `coords` (coordinates in the title), `region` (state or province centre), `country` (country centre) or `none` (not mapped). Use `place`/`coords` for maps. - A few folder titles are blank or illegible in the original ([BLANK], [ILLEGIBLE]); they're kept as typed. - Years outside 1947 to 1969 are older reports the Air Force filed with Blue Book.
## Source and licence
US National Archives, Record Group 341 (Records of Headquarters US Air Force), series 597821. US federal records, public domain. Place matching uses GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).
Our cleaning, matching and summaries are released under CC BY 4.0. Please credit **Encounter Atlas (encounteratlas.com)** and link https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/.
``` Encounter Atlas. "Project Blue Book UFO Case Files (Geocoded)." Encounter Atlas open data. https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/ ```
Corrections and better place matches are welcome: https://encounteratlas.com/contact/?about=data
All 10,622 US Air Force Blue Book case files from the National Archives, with places mapped.
**Home page, documentation and the always-current copy: [encounteratlas.com/datasets](https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/#bluebook)** See the data on a map: [https://encounteratlas.com/ufo/blue-book/](https://encounteratlas.com/ufo/blue-book/)
## About
Project Blue Book was the US Air Force's study of UFO reports from 1952 to 1969 (following Projects Sign and Grudge). The US National Archives holds its case files as the series "Sanitized Version of Project Blue Book Case Files" (naId 597821), but the catalog only gives each file a typed folder title such as "Fort Worth, Texas, July 1952".
This table turns those titles into data: place, state or country, year and month, matched to coordinates with GeoNames. Every row links to the file in the National Archives catalog and to its first scanned page.
## Notes
- One row per case FILE in the National Archives series, not per sighting. The Air Force's own total of 12,618 sightings counts differently (some files hold several reports, some reports have no file in this series). - `location_precision` says how good the map point is: `place` (town matched), `coords` (coordinates in the title), `region` (state or province centre), `country` (country centre) or `none` (not mapped). Use `place`/`coords` for maps. - A few folder titles are blank or illegible in the original ([BLANK], [ILLEGIBLE]); they're kept as typed. - Years outside 1947 to 1969 are older reports the Air Force filed with Blue Book.
## Source and licence
US National Archives, Record Group 341 (Records of Headquarters US Air Force), series 597821. US federal records, public domain. Place matching uses GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).
Our cleaning, matching and summaries are released under CC BY 4.0. Please credit **Encounter Atlas (encounteratlas.com)** and link https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/.
``` Encounter Atlas. "Project Blue Book UFO Case Files (Geocoded)." Encounter Atlas open data. https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/ ```
Corrections and better place matches are welcome: https://encounteratlas.com/contact/?about=data
Files
project-blue-book-case-files.csv
Additional details
Related works
- Is supplement to
- Dataset: https://encounteratlas.com/datasets/ (URL)