Project Second Storey, also known as Project Second Story, Project Flying Saucers and also Project Theta, was a committee set up on April 22, 1952 in Canada, to deal with material concerning Flying Saucers.
In 1952, in connection with the establishment of Project Magnet by Wilbert Brockhouse Smith at the Department of Transport, the committee was formed by members of other government agencies and dedicated solely to dealing with “flying saucer” reports. This committee was sponsored by the Defence Research Board. Its main purpose was to collect, catalogue and correlate data from UFO sighting reports.
The government wanted to establish an official position on UFOs. To this end, the Defence Research Board set up Project Second Storey (1952–54). This short-lived committee was chaired by Peter Millman, an astronomer with the Dominion Observatory. Millman was skeptical of UFOs. In his opinion, they were not extraterrestrial in origin and the project was a waste of time and resources. The committee did not investigate any sightings; it acted as an advisory body only. It worked to standardize a UFO sighting form. It also attempted to debunk sightings as nothing other than misidentified natural phenomena, such as meteorites. Project Second Storey concluded that UFOs, if they were real at all, were “not amenable to scientific inquiry. ”Military intelligence decided that the Soviet Union was likely not responsible for the objects. UFOs then became a scientific question. From the mid-1960s onward, the RCMP was the main agency responsible for collecting reports from witnesses. Government scientists, however, were reluctant to engage with the issue. Most reports were filed away and forgotten.
Resources:
- https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ufos-in-canada (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Second_Storey (Wikipedia)