Documents / Official release

box Incident Summaries 173-233

U.S. Department of War · 144 pages · text by OCR

This Air Materiel Command file, released by the U.S. Department of War, holds Incident Summary Sheets 173 through 233, sent under a 1949 transmittal. Most of the sheets record sightings of unidentified aerial objects in 1948 and early 1949. They cover Santa Fe, New Mexico, San Pablo, California, Honolulu, Kentwood, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi. Each sheet gives the observer's details and the object's size, speed and shape, and often an investigator's note on how reliable the witness seemed. The file ends with a blank guide for investigating reports, including radar sightings.

From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: N/A, N/A. NARA Record Group 38, catalogue id 143685. Each of these incident summaries includes a "Check-List - Unidentified Flying Objects" that contains details about the incident. Many summaries also include witness lists or statements and other narrative reports or descriptions.

  • p. 10 …Main part of body translucent and of a dirty gray color 10. Shape (Sketch if Possible…
  • p. 11 …object was translucent and of a dirty gray color and that the dark, circular portion appeared…
  • p. 12 …Buff or gray in color 10. Shade (Sketch if Possible) 11. Nature of luminosity: (directed beam…
  • p. 13 …It was buff or gray in color with several darker vertical lines like ribs. (See drawing…
  • p. 54 …an article/which appeared in the first gray light of dawn on Nov 6. It was…
  • p. 57 …15 miles northwest of Grays Harbor. Washington 10 miles off coast 3. Observer's Position: Air…
  • p. 58 …to weather reports for the vicinity of Grays Harbor) No estimation could be made as to…
  • p. 85 …dull gray (whitish grey) 10. Shape (Sketch if Possible) Oblong ball, no wings or tail surfaces…
  • p. 86 …It had a very dull gray glow to it and was oblong in shape as mentioned…
Control tower personnel on duty at Fairfield Suisun AFB, Fairfield, Calif., first sighted object at 1,000 to 2,000 feet north of field in a 5° climb heading southeast over field. Started to climb at about 400 to 500 MPH to 20,000 feet. Climb seemed erratic like change to pace. Tower personnel put 8-power binoculars on object. All that could be seen was a circular light one to 2 feet in diameter. Light had intensity of a Ramp floodlight and was so bright that it blanked out any silhouette (if any) when sighted in binoculars. Weather balloon released 45 to 35 minutes previous to sighting but was lost ten minutes after released. Personnel inside tower could not hear any sound. No exhaust trail.

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About this file

Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 144 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.