Documents / FOIA release
This FBI file section, from 1947, gathers Army Air Forces counterintelligence reports and FBI memoranda about the summer's flying disc reports. It includes a Boise newspaper pilot's sworn statement describing a black object he filmed on 9 July 1947, interviews with a United Air Lines captain and a Hamilton Field soldier, and a Pan American crew's orange object near Boston. Other items cover the Tacoma disk fragment story, which was admitted to be false, the fatal B-25 crash at Kelso, a coded "Radio Ham" message dismissed as a hoax, and an Air Defense Command assessment that "something is really flying around."
“Wilcox”1 page
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# Office Memorandum UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO : DIRECTOR, FLI DATE: August 13, 1947 FROM : SAC, NEXARK SUBJECT: FLYING DISC REPORTED AT HACKENSACK, NEW JERSEY AUGUST 3, 1947 - MISCELLANEOUS Reference is made to the teletype from the Newark Division to the Bureau dated August 4, 1947 stating that a "Flying Disc" had been reported to have been seen at Hackensack, New Jersey on August 3 last by one interview by Special Agent of this Division, stated that on August 3 he had been standing with a soldier stationed at Fort Dix, observing a "ham" radio rig atop a two-story house on Simons Avenue, Hackensack. It was approximately 7:45 p.m., and they were in this vicinity for the purpose of meeting girlfriend, one commented to that a child had apparently lost its balloon. looked and about a block or a half block away noticed a round, black object moving from south to north and east of the stop where he and were standing. noticed that it was moving too fast to be an ordinary balloon, but he could not discern whether it was globular in form or a disc. He said it was about thirty to forty inches in diameter moving north in a horizontal plane about two hundred yards above the top of the hill at Summit Avenue and Simons Avenue. It proceeded at a steady rate, emitted no rays, and was moving fast enough to require them to turn their heads steadily in order to follow it. Girlfriend came out about fifteen seconds after they first sighted it. They pointed it out to her, and she said that it looked like a bird on the horizon so small. It faded out of sight shortly thereafter. said that a line drawn along its apparent course of flight would go from the vicinity of Bendix, New Jersey to a point west of Westwood, New Jersey. 67c also said that a man on the porch across the street also noticed it and pointed it out to the women. said that this man seemed excited but did nothing about it. said that he was positive it was no optical illusion. He was not facing into the sun and saw the object clearly. He also said that he would have thought nothing of it except for the speed at which it was traveling. RECORDED SE1 67c AFW:EMC 62- : FXED 62-83894-57 COPIES DESTROYED 270 NOV 18 1984 R.
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. 111 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.