Documents / FOIA release

FBI file: UFO, UFO Part 16

Federal Bureau of Investigation · 169 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1949 Army intelligence reports of unidentified aerial objects seen around Camp Hood, Texas, forwarded by the San Antonio office, which told the Director it was reviewing and destroying such reports unless they held FBI interest. It also has 1957 FBI liaison memoranda on a radar-tracked object near Montauk Point and Benton, Pennsylvania, judged unlikely to be a Soviet operation. The file also includes a civilian Flying Saucer Researchers release arguing that saucers probably come from Mars.

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

If the ventilation wing window were a perfect mirror the objects causing the reflections would appear therein, as well as all other objects within range, but the ventilation wing being a sort of a semi-mirror, does not reflect the object but only the bright spot, which leaves the impression that the observer is actually looking through the glass and that the object actually appears to be in the sky, or at times a long distance away. These results are best obtained in the late afternoon, or after sun down.

The aviators who reported seeing flying discs or saucers, undoubtedly were seeing the reflection of bright objects in or on their own plane. They saw them as reflected in their canopy or wind shield, but failed to recognize them as reflections. Otherwise they were reflections from other aircraft.

As the aviator traveled along observing the movement of the disc in comparison with the mountains, clouds or stationary objects on the earth, made them appear to be traveling at a high rate of speed. The sloping angle of the aviators wind-shield and his position in the plane made it appear that the discs were in the sky. The position of the discs also depend upon the position of the observer and the angle at which they are reflected in the glass.

Some of the reports stated that where there were more than one flying disc, they appeared to be fastened together and frequently performed a dipping or rising motion and when one would dip, they would all go through the same motion simultaneously. The simultaneous movement is due to the reflections all coming from the same object. For instance, if they

Cases discussed

About this file

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. 169 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.