Documents / FOIA release
This FBI file section collects July 1947 Bureau memoranda, teletypes, citizen letters and newspaper clippings about reported flying discs. They cover recovered objects at Twin Falls, Idaho, Shreveport, Louisiana, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and Laurel, Maryland, many judged to be pranks, plus a Grafton, Wisconsin priest's circular saw blade the Milwaukee office called a hoax. A Dallas teletype reports a disc recovered near Roswell resembling a high altitude weather balloon with radar reflector. Kenneth Arnold's own account of his sighting is also included.
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# Planes Chasing Disks Find Only Empty Sky Jokesters Add Some Comedy to Air Mystery East St. Louis Objects Prove to Be Washers; Chicago Woman Spots One With Legs ## By the United Press Army pilots were ready Monday for another air search for the mysterious "flying saucers" now reported seen in 39 states and parts of Canada as practical jokesters added to the confusion. Equipped with telescopic cameras, 11 army planes searched the Pacific northwest Sunday without finding any trace of the flying disks which had been reported over scores of communities the preceding two days. At Sioux Falls, S. D., a national guard plane already in the air was ordered to investigate a silvery disk with a short tail which Gregory Zimmer said he saw shoot across the heavens. The pilot found nothing but empty sky. The army "camera patrol" over the Cascade mountains Sunday included eight P-51 pursuit ships and three A-26 bombers. ## Illusions Or Jokes There was growing belief that the concentrated aerial search would show the saucers to be optical illusions or the work of practical jokeers magnified by aroused imaginations. A number of "disks" whirled over rooftops in East St. Louis, Ill., Sunday. J. T. Hartley, a locomotive engineer, gathered some of them up and found they were made of pressed white paper, 11 inches in diameter and with a two inch hole in the center. Railroad workers said they looked like locomotive packing washers. radio announcement that disks were flying over Lewiston, Idaho, Sunday sent hundreds into their yards for a look. Weatherman Louis Krezak said the objects were moving eastward with the prevailing wind and probably were treed seeds. Three air transport pilots agreed. ## Searchlights on Clouds A Birmingham radio station was deluged with more than 400 calls in one hour by persons who said they saw fluorescent balls circling over the city and clearly outlined against near-by mountains. A carnival at Alabaster, Ala., was playing searchlights on cloud wisps. An argument raged at Lodi, Calif. over the cause of a spectacular glow in the sky and a roar shortly before electrical power went off. Mrs. W. C. Smith said she heard a noise "like ## Give 'Em Room Newport News, Va.—Peninsula airport here is taking no chances with flying saucers. Pilots reporting Monday to take out planes found this notice on the bulletin board: "Two thousand feet vertical and horizontal clearance required between aircraft operating from this field and any flying saucers." a four motored bomber" just before the lights went off at dawn. Erving Newcomb of the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. offered the explanation that a low flying crop dusting plane probably had struck a power line and burned out a transformer However, no planes were reported damaged and no one could explain what a crop dusting plane was doing in the air at dawn on Sunday. It was the first time any noise had been attributed to flying saucers. J. U. Watts, jr., Darlington (S. C.) attorney, said he saw an army pursuit plane chasing a V-formation of flying saucers at 250 miles an hour 3,000 feet high. However, no pilot reported such a chase. ## Saw One With Legs Meantime, authorities were plagued with reports that bordered on the fantastic. An excited Chicago woman reported that she had seen a flying saucer with legs. "I was standing on my porch and I thought for sure it was coming right down and slap me in the face," she said. George Kuger of Denver said he saw a flying disk with an American flag on it. Francis Howell, Tempe, Ariz. claimed he saw a saucer two feet in diameter disappear behind a row of trees near his home. When he rushed to inspect it, he said, the flat, thin, aluminumlike disk took off at a "high rate of speed" toward Phoenix, nine miles away. -Mrs. Walter Johnson returned to Spokane, Wash., after a vacation near St. Maries, Idaho, and after reading newspaper reports of the flying saucers said she and several others had seen speeding shiny objects "as big as a four or five room house" disappear into the forest coveted mountains. The first of the saucers over New York State was reported by Mrs. Kenneth Wohley of Rochester, N. Y., who said she and her husband saw an object "about the size of an ordinary saucer" flying above her back yard at 8:30 p.m. Sunday. MILWAUKEE JOURNAL MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN RECORDED 7/2/47 3 JUL 16 1943 613
FOIA release, from the fbi-vault 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. 79 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.