Nathan Twining

General Nathan Farragut Twining (October 11, 1897 – March 29, 1982) was a United States Air Force general who served as Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1953 until 1957, and as the third Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1957 to 1960 — the first Air Force member to hold that position. Twining rose from private to four-star general during a 45-year military career, exemplifying the so-called "mustang" officer path. In September 1947 he authored a classified memorandum to General Carl Spaatz — the Twining Memo — which formally assessed unidentified flying objects as real, controlled craft of unknown origin, becoming the first official government document to reach that conclusion and providing the documentary foundation for Project Sign.

Early life and military career

Twining was born October 11, 1897, in Monroe, Wisconsin, the son of Clarence Walker Twining. The family moved to Portland, Oregon in his youth; he attended Lincoln High School in Portland. He served briefly in the Oregon National Guard before being appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1918 in the class accelerated for World War I. He earned his pilot's wings in 1924 and served in a series of flying-officer assignments through the interwar period.

In World War II, Twining commanded the Thirteenth Air Force in the South Pacific (January–November 1943) and then the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater (November 1943 – August 1945), responsible for the strategic bombing of southern Europe. In February 1943, Twining and his crew were forced to ditch in the Pacific while flying between bases; they were rescued after six days at sea. In August 1945 he assumed command of the Twentieth Air Force on Guam, from which the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were launched; Twining was directly above Paul Tibbets, Jr. in the chain of command.

Air Force Chief of Staff (1953–1957)

Twining served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force from 1950 to 1953 under Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg. He was confirmed as the third Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force on June 30, 1953, succeeding Vandenberg, and served until June 30, 1957. During his tenure he oversaw a major modernization of Strategic Air Command under General Curtis LeMay, the introduction of the B-52 strategic bomber, and the early integration of intercontinental ballistic missiles into the Air Force order of battle.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1957–1960)

President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Twining as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff effective August 15, 1957, the first member of the Air Force to hold that office. He served until September 30, 1960. As Chairman he advised Eisenhower during the 1958 Lebanon crisis, the Berlin Crisis, and the early period of the Cuban Revolution.

Awards and decorations

Twining was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal (Army and Navy), the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Air Medal, among many U.S. and foreign decorations. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Twining Memo (1947)

On September 23, 1947 — described by researcher Ron Garner as "one of the influential documents" of the authentic declassified record on the UFO question — Twining submitted a Top Secret memorandum as Commander of Air Materiel Command, titled Examination of Unidentified Disc-Like Aircraft. The memo stated unequivocally: "the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious."

Jeremy Corbell described the memo as documenting that the objects "can appear and disappear, we can't detect them on our sensors," that they were not American or Russian technology, and that they could fly circles around the best American aircraft of the era with no defense mechanism available against them. The memo was produced in the same month that the National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency and separated the Air Force from the Army, and three days before James Forrestal was sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense.

Project Sign and the early UFO investigation framework

Twining's assessment formed the basis for the Air Force's formal UFO investigation program. Project Sign was organized in December 1947 as a classified study of the phenomenon, drawing on the nation's top scientific and military resources. In February 1949, the Air Force distributed Project Sign's most extensive technical report on unknown aerial phenomena — coming at the same time as classified conferences at Los Alamos National Laboratories on what was being called "the flying disc problem." Project Sign subsequently evolved into Project Grudge in December 1948, which in turn spawned the public-facing Project Blue Book.

Role in the Roswell recovery

In July 1947, Twining was at Kirtland Army Air Field in Albuquerque — adjacent to the crash zone — when the 1947 Roswell incident occurred. He personally visited the recovery sites and examined the recovered craft and bodies, becoming the senior military officer with direct first-hand knowledge of the materials. On September 26, 1947, Twining delivered his classified report on the crash to President Harry S. Truman, describing a craft with no engines, no fuel, and no apparent propulsion that nevertheless "out flew our fastest fighters." This briefing led directly to the formation of Majestic 12 and the establishment of the permanent cover-up apparatus (see Roswell cover-up).

Brigadier General Arthur Exon, stationed at Wright Field when the Roswell materials arrived, stated that Twining oversaw the analysis and that "the materials from Roswell were from space. They were not manufactured here."

The Schulgen memorandum

The September 23, 1947 Twining Memo was followed on October 28 by the Schulgen Intelligence Collection Memorandum, addressed to Twining's subordinate Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, which directed intelligence agents to investigate "Flying Saucer Type Aircraft" and explicitly assumed a German technological origin (see Schulgen memo).

Role in the MJ-12 structure

The September 1947 period — the same weeks as the Twining Memo — also produced what researchers have identified as the foundational MJ-12 document: a September 19 memorandum titled Examination of Unidentified Disc-Like Aircraft, New Military Installation in the State of New Mexico, which preceded Twining's formal submission by four days. Researcher Garner assessed MJ-12 as "a genuinely real organization" whose documentary record dovetails with the known whereabouts and activities of the named individuals, including Twining, in that specific historical window.

Twining's documented access to crashed disc material, his formal assessment of their reality, and his subsequent rise to the highest military command position in the United States have made him a central figure in the history of institutional awareness of the UFO phenomenon and its management within the national security state.

See also

• MJ-12 documents
• Roswell incident
• Vannevar Bush

References

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This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia article "Nathan F. Twining", as of 2026-04-27, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.