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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Objects seemed to take no definite course but flew in a general easterly direction in a gradual descent. A few came close enough to cause the pilot & co-pilot to duck as it appeared they might come thru the nose of the plane. Maj Smartt's analogy is as follows: Take about 1/2 gallon of water and dump it 200 yards in front of an approaching aircraft about 200 feet above it, with the water taking the shape of a teardrop. These objects appeared to travel in a straight line toward the aircraft and gradually descended, passing from view under the wing of the C-17. The apparent speed of these objects appeared quite high as they remained in view for only a second. They were sighted one at a time at intervals of three or four minutes. Discrepancies noted: In first report Maj Smartt reported seeing 15 to 20 objects. Later he reports seeing three or four. In first report he states that they pursued no definite course in that some traveled downward and some traveled upward. In last report he does not mention that any pursued an upward course. The analogy of comparing sighting of these objects to 1/2 gallon of water dumped approximately 200 yards in front of his aircraft and that teardrop objects were formed seems to indicate an impression of a group of objects seen at one time (as first reported) and not singly at intervals of three or four minutes.
Not linked to a story yet.
Official release, 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. 144 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.