Documents / Official release
This U.S. Air Force file from late 1947 collects correspondence about flying discs among Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Army Air Forces headquarters and the Fourth Air Force. It includes General N. F. Twining's 23 September 1947 opinion that the phenomenon is real and not fictitious, and a 30 December 1947 directive that Air Materiel Command set up a project to collect and evaluate reports. It also covers photographs from Jefferson, Oregon that were judged to be film defects, a theory put forward by Mrs. Merchant, and material on the Horten flying wings.
From the source: Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: 12/30/47, N/A. NARA Record Group 18, catalogue id 100754. This file contains memorandums and correspondence related to flying disc/saucer sightings and that those are a matter of concern for the Air Materiel Command.
SECRE'r..... ...., Basic Ltr fr CG, AMC, WF to CG, AAF, Wash. D. C. subj "AID Opinion Con cerning • Flying Discsu. (2) Absence of trail, except in a few instances when the object apparently was operating under hi gh perfor mance conditions. (3) Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top. (4) Several reports of well kept f ormation flights varying from three to nine objects. (5) Normally no associated sound, except in three instances a substantial rumbling r oar was noted. (6) Level flight speeds norma~ above 300 knots are esti- mat ed. , f. It i s possi ble within the pr esent u. s. knowledge - pro vided extensive detailed development is undertaken - to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in sub paragr aph (e) above which would be capable of an approximate r ange of 7000 miles at subsonic speeds. g. Any developments in this country along the lines indicated would be extremely expensi ve, t ime consuming and at the considerable ex pense of current projects and t herefore, if directed, should be set up in dependently of existing projects. h . Due consideration must be given the follovring:- (1) The possibility that these objects are Qf domestic origin - the product of some high seclll1.ty project not known t o AC/AS-2 or this Cormnand. (2) The Jack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which 'WOUld undeniably prove the existence of these objects. (3) The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge. 3. It is recomnended that~- a. Headquarters, Arn\r Air Forces issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and Code Name f or a detailed stucy- of thiS matter to incl ude the pr eparation of complete sets of all available and pertinent data "flhich will then be nade available to the ArrfU~ Naq, Atomic Energy Commission, JRDB, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Group, NACA, and the RAND and NEPA projects for comments and r ecoDDJ1eniations, -,dth a preliminary r eport to be forwarded within 15 days of receipt of the data and a detailed report thereafter evecy- 30 days as the 1nvesti- SE.CRQ -2- U-39552
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 28 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.