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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# 'Saucers' Fly Here; Grafton Disc Joke What was reported as a "flying disc" which struck a church in Grafton early yesterday turned out to be a circular saw with two small tubes and several wires attached to it. Father Joseph Brusky, pastor of St. Joseph's Church, Grafton, holds the "disc" and points to the lightning rod on the church (arrow), which he said was struck by the disc. Bentinel Photo by Ernest Anhauser. The mystery of the "flying uses," strange luminous objects seen speeding across the sky in many states, turned to Wisconsin yesterday when several persons reported them at Milwaukee and Janesville. Mystery was added to mystery when Father Joseph Brasky, pastor of St. Joseph's Church at Grafton, Wis., reported a missile hurtled through the air early yesterday, knocked the ball off the church lightning rod, and landed on the front lawn. VIRES AND TUBES It was a large circular saw— about 18 inches in diameter—and hot when Father Brasky cked it from the lawn. There were wires and two tubes attached to it. The tubes were an inch in diameter and three inches long. One theory was that pranksters or belated Fourth of July celebrants had attached explosives to the saw, and sent it skimming through the air. Father Brasky said he heard a swishing noise and a sizzling at 5 a.m., followed a second later with a thud and an explosion. An excited resident telephoned to Billy Mitchell Field, and said he saw 15 flying saucers, in U formation, heading north over Granville, at 10:05 p. m. He hung up before his name could be procured. A passenger aboard a New York-Detroit-Milwaukee plane, which landed at Billy Mitchell Field at 10:05 p. m., told employes in the office of Northwest Airlines, Inc., he saw a flying saucer bobbing up and down over the airfield just after he had alighted from the plane. Other passengers with him also saw it, he said. He gave the name of J. W. Rowden of Detroit. Despite its bobbing, the saucer was going at great speed, and was out of sight in a few seconds, he said. Rowden is stopping at the Plaza Hotel. ## DISCS HAD TAILS Erwin Rottman, 1328 N. 19th St., said he saw three of them, with tails, flying northwest to southeast, as he stood at N. 18th and W. Villet Sts. They turned from gold to another color and then to silver, he said. Frank Phifer, stopping at the Maryland Hotel, said he saw three balls of fire shoot across Lake Michigan at 8:20 last night, about a mile from shore, and "going at terrific speed." What he described as an illuminated saucer was seen last night by William Humphrey, 3148 S. 20th St., he said. It was zigzagging directly over the Heil Co. plant, said Humphrey, and seemed to land in a wooded area nearby. ## REPORTED IN JANESVILLE Four Janesville residents reported they had seen a flying disc Saturday night. They are Mr. and Mrs. Al Sievert and Mr. and Mrs. Howard Roth. They saw the disc flying in a northwesterly direction from Janesville at a "terrific speed." They viewed it for 20 minutes. It was yellow-golden, and seemed to turn at times to a silvery color, they stated. An oval flight pattern was followed. Then, they said, tails appeared on the disc and shortly afterwards it disappeared. CCCCT1 1947 213 John Bosch, 4377 S. Adams St., Milwaukee, a machinist, insisted he saw two flashing saucer-shaped objects pass over Billy Mitchell Field shortly after midnight yesterday. They were close enough so he could definitely state they were not shooting stars, nor airplanes, he said. Bosch's home is near the airport. ENCLOSURE RECORDED
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.