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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## FLYING DISCS Information was received from the Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Michigan, that on July 10, 1947, one an employee of Dow Chemical Company since about 1922, brought some material to their Physics laboratory. He stated that about 5:15 p.m., July 9, he and his wife, Laura, were walking in a field when they heard a puff noise about one hundred feet away. They turned and saw a ball of white about the size of a bushel basket burning approximately a foot off of the ground. The fire died out immediately and later Lane scooped up a three inch area of fused sand into a can for examination at their laboratory. Upon interview by FBI Agents, told substantially the same story, but was reluctant to talk and very indefinite about what happened. There were marked discrepancies in their stories. Dow authorities considered the story fantastic but have examined the material and state contents are ordinary sand, not radio active; but giving off ammonia gas; a small silver nugget almost pure except for sand mixed in it, not radio active; molted or fused sand which gives off ammonia odor and little droplets of silver melted in sand and some grayish color material which is radio active. The level of radio activity in this material is extremely low. An employee of Dow, formerly employed by the Government at Los Alamos Project, stated the fused sand has some characteristics of Los Alamos sand but he does not believe it is the same. is known to have in his possession a small quantity of luminous paint, radio active, to be an amateur photographer and to have a limited knowledge of chemistry and physics. He is described as very peculiar, surly, antagonistic to plant protection officers and interested in photography and electricity. Lane is white, was born May 7, 1902, at Freesoil, Michigan. He is 5' 91 " , weighs 145 pounds, has dark brown hair, partly bald, served in the U.S. Army from 1918 to 1923. Neither will admit their story is a prank. However, neither are able to point out the exact location of this incident. 67c The Army Airforce Intelligence at Selfridge Field, Michigan, has been advised and the material has been turned over to them. Ournea RGF:mae Harbo Nehr ---
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.