Documents / FOIA release
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1947 to 1949 correspondence, memoranda and newspaper clippings about flying disc reports. It includes Hoover's replies to citizens, a Maine woman's account of a drifting object judged probably a weather balloon, a Richmond memo on a cigar-shaped object seen over Radford, Virginia on May 12, 1949, clippings on the Chiles and Whitted sighting near Montgomery, a Flyin' Saucer toy promotion, and agent interviews with witnesses in Vermont and a pilot near Bethel, Alaska.
# jice Mem m UNITED GOVERNMENT ro : Director, FBI DATE: 10/16/47 FROM : SAC, Anchorage SUBJECT: REPORT OF FLYING DISCS This is to advise that we have been able to locate a flyer, who is employed by the Flying Company in Bethel, Alaska. It had been reported to Military Intelligence that and his co-pilot had observed some flying object near Bethel, Alaska, in July, 1947. Efforts previously to contact Mr. were negative until the above instance. He related that the occasion of seeing the flying object near Bethel was on a July day when the sky was completely clear of clouds, and it being during the early part, it is daylight the entire night. The time of his sighting this flying object was about 10 PM and the sun had just dropped beyond the horizon. Flying weather was extremely good and he, with Mr. was coming into the Bethel Airport with a DC-3. He observed the flying object immediately to his left and stated that it apparently was observed at approximately the same time by Mr. and both of them manipulated the controls of the plane making efforts to miss the object inasmuch as they could not tell in which direction it was going. They made a forty-five degree turn in order to get out of the way of the object and then noted that it appeared to be going away from them. He described the object as appearing to be some flying wing and said that it appeared to be about the size of a C-54 without any fuselage. He could not see any propellor or any exhaust from jet propulsion or any vapor trails and could not estimate the size due to his failure to be able to estimate the distance he was away from the object. He was flying at 1,000 feet and stated that he tried to catch up with the object and increased his manifold pressure to approximately 42 inches and was traveling at the rate of 170 miles per hour. He called on his radio to the Civil Aeronautics Administration station at Bethel, asking what aircraft was in the vicinity and they had no reports of any aircraft. The object he sighted was some five or ten miles from the airport before his arrival and stated that the path did not go directly across the airport. He, of course, could not tell whether the object was making any noise and stated that it was flying at a thousand foot altitude and estimated travel at 300 miles per hour. It was traveling in the direction from Bethel to Home, which is in a northwesterly direction. He noted no radio interference and is unable to describe the color other than that it appeared dark but of definite shape and did not blend into the sky but had a definite, concise outline. Both he and Mr. clearly observed the object at this time. Info. A. Kegjin Carlin -I. D. Arroy 60 NOV. 6 14/47 A.M. 214 RECORDED & INDEXED 131 act za naj
FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 129 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.