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.
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SUBJECT: Evaluation Study of Phenomenon (Flying Saucers) TO: CSGPO FROM: CSGID DATE: 18 APR 1949 COMMENT NO. 2 Lt Col Ligon/5509/fnl 1. The "Evaluation Study of Phenomenon" at Inclosure 1 hereto represents the current Intelligence Division, GSUSA, evaluation of the "flying saucers." 2. With reference to paragraph 2 of Comment No. 1, CSGID recognizes the interest of defense planners in any object capable of being "shot all the way from Russia," and will continue to keep the matter under scrutiny. Any change in the evaluation contained at Inclosure No. 1 will be promptly transmitted to CSGPO. 3. CSGID is unable to verify Mr. Winchell's statement that "flying saucers are now definitely known to have been guided missiles shot all the way from Russia" and has no information as to the basis for the statement or "information" on which it may have been based. It is, however, possible that Mr. Winchell published this item in an attempt to obtain some official statement from the NHE on the subject. FOR THE DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE 2 Incls n/o E. J. TREACY, JR., Lt. Col., GSU Acting Assistant Executive
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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.