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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Office Memorandum . UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DATE: July 11, 1947 TO : MR. E. A. TAMM FROM : D. M. LADD SUBJECT: SAC Johnson cf the Milwaukee Office called to advise he had just received a telephone call from Colonel Reserve Officer with the Civilian Air Patrol, Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Colonel reported that at 3:30 p.m., July 10, one at Black River Falls, Wisconsin, had found a large 17" disc which appeared to have been possibly made out of cardboard painted with silver airplane dope. In the center was a tube and a small motor with a propellor attached to the side. Colonel expressed the opinion that this disc would not be able to fly by itself. He advised it would be taken to the Air Corps Headquarters. Colonel advised, however, that did not want to release the disc without FBI approval. I instructed Mr. Johnson to advise the Air Corps officer to get in touch with Colonel and tell him he saw no reason for the Bureau to attempt to secure the release of the material since it was not in our custody and we had no control. He stated the press was also calling concerning this matter. I instructed him to make no comment to the press. 67c DML:cxw
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.