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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# 'LIKE BIG FLOOR LAMP FLYING 'ALONG Everybody's Seeing 'Things' Whizzing Through Night Sky By CHARLES POU Is that Thing no more than wayward floor lamp? Mrs. Noah Atkinson, of Brookhaven, saw it. And what did that Thing look like? "A great big floor lamp, all lit up. Oh, it was beautiful!" And C. M. Bowles, an Exposition Mills painter who lives near the Municipal airport, Sunday night saw a "huge, brilliantly lighted object" streaking over Atlanta skies at maybe 30,000 feet. Mr. Bowles thinks the Thing was straight from Moscow. Two air line pilots first were startled by the newest astronomical "what-is-it" near Montgomery early Saturday: To them, it was "a wingless craft, spurting flame like a Buck Rogers rocket ship." Elsewhere, all over the country, that Thing was variously identified as: 1. An aluminum covered balloon. 2. A ball of fire. usually bright light. 4. A red and blue flame that burst in mid-air. 5. A flash of cherry red fire. 6. A meteor. Mrs. Atkinson kept her Flying Floorlamp secret three weeks. But she knew she wasn't seeing things when she saw the Thing. She and her husband, who also saw it, kept mum. The story really sounded a little silly until the two air line pilots saw their Thing gamboling and fire-breathing through air-line skies early Saturday morning. After that, she decided her tale could be told: "My husband and I were sitting on our front porch the night of July 5, and at a quarter to 9 o'clock we saw this Thing. Our front porch doesn't have a screen, and we were sitting near the edge where we could see good. "I saw it first. It was not high up—about 200 feet, I guess, but it looked like it was right above the treetops. 'Looka thera', I yelled to my husband, and he saw it too. "It looked like the top part of a floor lamp, and it was the prettiest thing I ever saw. It came and passed so quick-I guess it must have been 500 miles an hour or faster." And how about the two airline pilots, C. S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, of Atlanta? Well, they took off today, armed with a camera. And they hope to bring back a picture of that Thing. ## Beach Throngs Crane At 'Silver Cylinder' ASBURY PARK, N. J., July 28. (AP) Boardwalk throngs at this resort city craned their necks Monday at a "silver cylinder" they reported flying high overhead. They described it as "way up in the air," and like a blimp "only blunt at both ends." Officials, recalling "flying saucers," asked Fort Monmouth personnel to see if they could identify it. ATLANTA JOURNAL. 7/26/48
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. 129 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.