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.
“Anderson”1 page
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The attached newspaper clipping appeared in the "Morning News" of Wilmington Delaware, July 8, 1947. It reports that a FORREST PERIYON. 123 Rehoboth Avenue, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, an aircraft pilot, had disclosed that in the past ten months he had twice seen flying discs which he was reported to have described as "flying mayonnaise jars." He was reported to have seen the first flying disc during September, 1946, and to have noted another such object on June 2, 1947. Mr. WENYON was quoted as having called the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was advised that the Bureau was not interested, whereupon he notified the Eastern Airlines and the Civil Aeronautic Authority of the objects he had seen. Both agencies are reported to have accepted the information stating they would investigate. The clipping further stated that Mr. WENYON had received no answer to date from either agency. This clipping was submitted to me by the resident agents' office at Wilmington together with the advice that no agent in Wilmington had been contacted by Mr. WENYON. I directed Mr. WENYON be interviewed to determine the full facts. Mr. WENYON was interviewed and it was determined that his correct name is HORACE P. WENYON. Mr. WENYON advised that he had been an airplane pilot approximately thirty years. He stated that in September of 1946, while flyi at an altitude of 1,000 feet, two or three miles south of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he noticed a projectile approximately fifteen inches in diameter which crossed his course at right angles and was moving in a west-to-east direction. According to Mr. WENYON, several jets of flame were spurting from the object and it was traveling at a very high rate of speed, 1,000 to 1,200 miles per hour. He stated that in October of 1946, he observed a similar projectile while flying over Rehoboth Beach at 1,400 feet. This was also traveling from west to east. Mr. WENYON stated that there is little question in his mind but that what he saw was some sort of rocket being tested. He stated that he wished to call the matter to the attention of the appropriate authority inasmuch as he thought that the series of airplane crashes that have occurred recently might in part be explained by what he had observed. He stated that he had reported the information to the Civil Aeronautics Authority and had been telephonically interviewed by a reporter from the Wilmington "Morning News". IES DESTROYED 0 NOV 18 1964 Invoices Magistrate RECORDED & INDEXED 62 = 8.3894 - 100
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.