Comprehensive Catalog of 1,700 Project Blue Book UFO Unknowns: Database Catalog (Not a Best Evidence List) – NEW: List of Projects & Blue Book Chiefs Work in Progress (Version 1.27, Dec. 20, 2016) Compiled by Brad Sparks © 2001-2016 The main purpose of this catalog at present is to help identify and fill in where possible missing or difficult-to-obtain U.S. Air Force documentation on better quality Unexplained UFO cases, not to present any so-called "proof" of UFO reality nor to discuss and argue possible IFO identifications (usually too voluminous to include in a mere catalog). These are subjects reserved for later analysis once full files can be examined (with a few exceptions on IFO’s noted below). This is not a list of official USAF designations of “Unexplained” or “Unknown” cases as it has proven to be almost impossible to establish when such evaluations were considered final or definitive and many more cases misdesignated IFO’s have turned out to be Unexplained UFO’s based on recent analyses. Here the goal is preliminary and to compile more complete documentation, not the perfection of the analysis or categorizations. Many cases here are merely placeholders for later work to fill in more info from the BB files or other sources. This catalog will be used eventually to produce another catalog of UFO Best Evidence, after a screening process based on Hynek's and on other criteria. For that reason columns for data on Duration, No. of Witnesses, Angular Size and "Instrumentation/Scientists etc." have been separately presented from the available case data and/or calculated where possible. Proper Definition of “UFO” = “Unknown” or “Unidentified” Proper scientific investigation and its standard protocols require defined terms. Hynek defined "UFO" to mean cases found to be "Unidentified" or "Unknown" (interchangeable terms*) after scientific screening where there is sufficient data for the scientific screening to eliminate IFO's and conventional explanations, and thus by definition there is not Insufficient Data**. (*Interchangeable terms: Hynek's UFO Experience 1972 p. 294; Hynek UFO Report 1977 pp. 58, 258.) (**Sufficiency of data: Hynek 1972 pp. 12, 42; Hynek 1977 p. 286.)
Hynek explained that the mixing of Insufficient Data cases with other categories was an improper and invalid statistical and scientific procedure, since Insufficient Data should be “excluded” from the outset as bad or inadequate data (Hynek 1977 pp. 259, 292). This Catalog cannot possibly present all of the essential data of a UFO case, which would require many thousands of pages for all of the cases cataloged here – this is, after all, just a catalog, a guide to the larger BB database, paper and digital, as well as to missing BB data available from other sources or which need to be searched for. Some would like to hairsplit a difference between “unknown” and “unidentified” in order to confuse the situation and make “unknown” to imply alien spacecraft (it does not mean that and does not imply it). They further wish to adulterate the term “unidentified” – which means the