Documents / FOIA release
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1947 records on flying disc reports, including field office memoranda from Butte, Seattle, Salt Lake City and San Francisco on sightings in Washington, Montana, Utah and Idaho. Several were attributed to burnt paper or weather balloons, and Wright Field judged debris from a Danford, Illinois farm a hoax unconnected to Project Mogul. After the Army Air Forces described FBI work as chasing "ash can covers, toilet seats and whatnot," the Bureau discontinued its flying disc investigations and referred reports to the Air Forces.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Office Memorandum . UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO : Director, FBI SAC. Butte DATE: September 27, 1947 SUBJECT: FLYING DISCS SIGHTED MAY 5, 1947 BETWEEN ELLENSBURG AND SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 22112 Montana State Prison, Doer Lodge, Montana, has advised the writer that while driving between Ellensburg and Seattle, Washington, about 3:30 P.M., on May 5, 1947, he sighted a silver object streaking across the sky. This was also seen by convict chauffeur, and This object went into a nose dive and they thought it would crash. However, before reaching the earth it disintegrated, leaving a long pillar of "gas" hanging in the sky. It was particularly odd because this remained in form and did not blow away. It was observed by these three people while they drove from twenty to thirty miles. This smoky, gaseous pillar was a long ways off and remained high in the air. said that this silver object was traveling at an excessively high rate of speed and when it disintegrated it was still a long way from the earth. said when he first saw it he thought it was probably a jet propelled plane but that he couldn't tell except that its motions were erratic. He said he had not reported it until he had noticed so much in the papers about these discs. Although three people saw it, they decided that they must be "seeing things". The Seattle Office is requested to advise Mr. 4th 67C Air Force, S-2, McChord Field, Washington. No further action is being taken by the Butte Office due to the time elapsing between the sighting of this object and the report.
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. 77 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.