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.
“Anderson”2 pages
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Original report was classified top-secret. Strategic Air Command requested original messages be destroyed. At 10:40 A.M. on 3 Nov 48 two Mustang fighters of the 82d Fighter Wing were dispatched to investigate the sighting reported by Lt Com Pain, a Coast Guard pilot, who reported the original sighting. The pilots upon reaching 22,000 feet sighted the unidentified object. They kept on climbing until they reached 37,000 feet. They estimated the object to be another five or six thousand feet above them. At this height the object resembled an intestine that had been inflated and it appeared 5 to 6 times higher than wide. Sketches were not available. Speed was estimated to be about 2 mph. Heading approximately 45°/ First report by Strategic Air Command identified the object tentatively as a heavenly body. Subsequent information received by Lt Roherkemper, Coast Guard Officer stationed at Salem identified the craft as a cosmic ray equipment carrier used by MIT. Later it was definitely established that the craft sighted was a cluster of eight balloons used by MIT for cosmic ray research. This incident is considered closed in that definite identity has been established.
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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.