Documents / Report
This declassified 1949 Army General Staff file collects Plans and Operations Division routing sheets and memoranda about flying saucers. On 24 February 1949, prompted by radios from Kirtland AFB, P&O asked the Intelligence Division for an evaluation. The ID study found about 20 percent of some 210 incidents explained, mostly as weather balloons. It found no evidence of foreign activity and said the rest were probably natural phenomena. In April the ID said it could not verify Walter Winchell's broadcast claim that the saucers were Russian guided missiles.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 This file contains an Evaluation Study of the Phenomenon (Flying Saucers) prepared at the request of the Plans & Operations Divisions of the General Staff, U.S. Army (P&O, GSUSA) to determine if the origin could be traced to natural phenomena or the activities of a foreign power.
“Jacobs”1 page
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Evaluation Study of Phenomenon Detailed investigations of all incidents reported to involve unusual flying objects during the period June 1945 to date have been conducted by a special project group of Headquarters, Air Material Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The continuing efforts of this project are directed toward establishing the identity of each unusual object reported. Single or seemingly related incidents which appear to involve objects that might represent some unusual man-made device or activity are fully explored by both the AMC project personnel and other specialists, such as those of the RAND Corporation (formerly Project RAND). Of some 210 incidents, approximately twenty (20) per cent have been explained. The majority of these involved misidentification of synoptic weather balloons. Others involved observations of airborne cosmic ray research equipment, bolides, meteors, and in one instance, the daylight observation of the planet Venus. Only two reported incidents were determined to have been hoax. To date there has been no tangible evidence which would support a theory that any incidents are attributable to activity of a foreign nation. There are no highly secret experimental Projects of the U.S. Government that could be responsible. The possibility of foreign devices would represent achievements which defy many well defined limits in aeronautical science. The Air Material Command of the USAF is continuing investigations of each unexplained incident. In addition, they are utilizing the consulting services of a number of agencies and specialists. Results are reviewed on a continuing basis and are used in formulating probable explanations for sightings that still lack positive identification. The ID feels that if complete data were available the remaining 80% of the reported sightings could be eliminated as due to natural meteorological phenomena or domestic weather balloons and the like. The larger number of actual reports of unidentified objects is thought to be primarily due to the publicity given "flying saucers" in the public print and in some official circles.
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Report, from the pursue 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. 25 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.