Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence from the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, with a routing slip dated 11/1/55. It was approved for release on 2001/04/02. The memo comments on a sanitized report of an unconventional aircraft sighting. It says the few details given do not allow the object to be identified but suggest it was not a flying saucer, and that it may have been a vertical take-off aircraft or a rail-launched missile. It also describes a 1954 Air Force advisory committee that recommended against supporting a flying saucer project.
“Jacobs”1 page
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# Approved For Release 001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R00100080043 Registry 7-5618 MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence SUBJECT Comments on Sighting of 25X1A Unconventional Aircraft 1. The distance and lighting conditions under which the source sighted the unusual object would make it extremely difficult to determine just what was being seen. In some degree, the description fits a vertical take-off aircraft or a missile or aircraft launched from a zero length rail. The zero length launching could most certainly be accomplished only with a rocket which would produce a large flame and smoke which would have been very noticeable. The spiraling of the object as it left the launcher does not fit very well with a vertical take-off aircraft. 2. The very small amount of details given in the referenced report does not permit an identification of the object sighted. It does, however, tend to indicate that it was not a "flying saucer". In 1954, the Scientific Advisory Board to the Chief of Staff, USAF, appointed an ad hoc committee of three scientists to evaluate The committee found that several factors had been overlooked or minimized in their development, such as payload, drag factors, and mechanical design problems, to such an extent that the committee recommended against support for the project. Air Force support of the project now is in basic research concerned with vertical thrust which modifies considerably the flying saucer concept. 25X1A 25X1A Assistant Director Scientific Intelligence Enclosure:
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.