Bath Township

Wright-Patterson and Hangar 18

The Air Force base outside Dayton where Project Blue Book ran from 1947 to 1969 — the official American programme for working through reports of unidentified objects. In twenty-two years it handled 12,618 cases, of which 701 were left unexplained. That is the factual half. The legendary half is Hangar 18, where by persistent rumour the Roswell wreckage and the bodies are kept. No building of that number exists on the base, and the rumour traces to the late 1940s, when anything unusual — captured German equipment included — really was brought here to be studied. The Blue Book files were declassified in full and sit in the US National Archives.