Documents / Official release
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.
“Sea”7 pages
On 23 Sept 1948 Mr Sylvester Bentham was talking to Col Eakins when the Colonel called Bentham's attention to a single object in the sky. Object first appeared in the northeast and was moving faster than any airplane that Bentham had ever seen. Object appeared very high. Both Eakins and Bentham watched it for at least 3 minutes. It moved toward the northwest in a straight line at a constant speed finally turning to the North and faded from view. To Bentham the object appeared to have a regular rectangular outline with sharp corners. It was buff or gray in color with several darker vertical lines like ribs. (See drawing attached.) Object appeared like a "vegetable crate" flying thru the air and seemed to be covered with a translucent material. It made no noise and left no exhaust or trail. Apparent size was approximately 2 inches by 1 inch by 1 inch. Mr Benthem's description as to the shape, direction and overall appearance of this object is in direct contradiction with statements made by Col Horace Eakins. Mr Bentham further stated that neither he nor col Makina were wearing glasses at the time and that he wears glasses only for reading. Mr. Bentham is 70 years of age. He is a retired butcher.
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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.