Documents / FOIA release
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.
“FBI file”18 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
On May 25, 1949, about 4:00 a.m., a captive balloon escaped. The balloon was of rubberized nylon fabric, 18' long and 7' in diameter. The balloon was found to have landed on the outskirts of London, Tennessee, before 5:00 a.m. on the same date. An unsuccessful search was made for the balloon by aircraft on the afternoon of May 25. A phone call from an employee of the University of Tennessee reported seeing an object pass over his house about noon on the 25th. It was described as a flat metallic object and was accompanied by a flapping noise. , and myself picked up the preacher at the University's Agricultural Division and began a search for the object which supposedly was our escaped captive balloon. The result of this search was that 5 people living in an area of about ten (10) square miles, each of whom gave a definite time and direction on an object of the same description passing over this section at the time which the preacher had stated he had seen a metallic object. The path of the floating object was traced to the river, at which time the preacher was returned to his work at the University and I crossed the river and resumed the search behind Mentor along the approximate tract described by the previous people interviewed. A family was located, whose names are not recorded, who described the same type of metallic object resembling a sheet of roofing flying through the air at a low altitude, and making a flapping or cracking noise at the approximate time given by the first group of people of people interviewed. As no further reports could be obtained, return was made to the Knorville Airport with a view toward continuing air search in this section. At this time, 3:00 p.m., May 26, 1949, a phone call was received stating that the balloon had been stored in a shed since 5:00 a.m. on the 25th. CERTIFIED TRUE COPY: /ə/ WILLIAM B. GRAY BAC, Knoxville, Tenn.
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.