Documents / Memo
This FBI office memorandum from the San Antonio Special Agent in Charge to the Director, dated January 31, 1949, reports on Fourth Army intelligence talks about unidentified aerial phenomena. It describes a July 1948 Eastern Airlines sighting over Montgomery, Alabama, and a run of green light sightings near Los Alamos in December 1948 and January 1949. According to the memo, the objects are either unknown natural phenomena or man made, and G-2 and OSI are investigating while the San Antonio office is not.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Office Memorandum . UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
TO DIRECTOR, FBI
January 31, 1949 DATE:
FROM SAC, SAN ANTONIO
SUBJECT: PROTECTION OF VITAL INSTALLATIONS DUREU FILE # 65-50300
CONFIDENTIAL
2010
8/31/77
at recent Weekly Intelligence Conferences of G-2, ONI, OSI, and F.D.I., in the Fourth Army area, Officers of G-2, Fourth Army have discussed the matter of "Unidentified Aircraft" or "Unidentified Aerial Phonomena" otherwise known as "Flying Discs", "Flying Saucers", and "Balls of Fire". This matter is considered top secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and the Air Forces.
It is well known that there have been during the past two years reports from the various parts of the country of the sighting of unidentified aerial objects which have been called in newspaper parlance "flying discs" and "flying saucers". The first such sightings were reported from Sweden, and it was thought that the objects, the nature of which was unknown, might have originated in Russia.
In July 1948 an unidentified aircraft was "seen" by an Eastern Airlines pilot and Co-Pilot and one or more passengers of the Eastern Airlines Plane over Montgomery, Alabama. This aircraft was reported to be of an unconventional type without wings and resembled generally a "rocket ship" of the type depicted in comic strips. It was reported to have had windows; to have been larger than the Eastern Airlines plane, and to have been traveling at an estimated speed of 2700 miles an hour. It appeared out of a thunderhead ahead of the Eastern Airlines plane and immediately disappeared in anoth cloud narrowly missing a collision with the Eastern Airlines plane. No sound or air disturbance was noted in connection with this appearance.
During the past two months various sightings of unexplained phenomena have been reported in the vicinity of the A.E.C. Installation at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where these phenomena now appear to be concentrated. During December 1948 on the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 13, 14th, 20th and 25th sightings of unexplained phenomena were made near Los Alamos by Special Agents of the Office of Special Investigation; Airline Pilots; Military Pilots, Los Alamos Security Inspectors, and private citizens. On January 6, 1949, another similar object was sighted in the same area.
a meteorologist of some note, has been generally in charge of the observations near Los Angeles, attempting to learn characteristics of the unexplained phenomenon.
Up to this time little concrete information has been obtained.
JEJ:md
S. -100-7545
El Paso {2}
Dallas (2)
Houston (2)
RECORDED - 101 622 F B T 127
Little Rock (2)
Oklahoma City (2)
43 MAR 16 1949.. Memo, cited by the archive. 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. 4 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.