Documents / Official release

box Incident Summaries 173-233

U.S. Department of War · 144 pages · text by GLM-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…

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When Lt Kunsman saw the objects they appeared as a very small compact group. At that time they were at 1000 o'clock position. Later at a 1:00 o'clock position they seemed to string out to an in-line formation. At first Kunsman could not identify anything. At the time there were clouds up and down the coast but none in the observer's vicinity. The first color Kunsman noticed was yellow. At 1:00 position the color appeared white. At that time Kunsman thought they were seagulls. Thought there were from 10 to 20. At no time did Kunsman identify any object. He saw something and mentioned it to Maj Morris the pilot who was fairly busy at the time and didn't see the objects. Objects came around to a 3:00 o'clock position in approximately the same type formation and white in color, then made a turn back to a 2:30 position, paralleling the course of the F-82-F and then faded much as an exhaust fume from an airplane would. At first the object appeared yellow then changed to white. The shape seemed to change slightly. He thought that they looked egg-shaped. Part of the time they appeared rather translucent - immediately before disappearance. (In this respect it is pointed out that there was fog and smoke in the vicinity according to weather reports for the vicinity of Grays Harbor) No estimation could be made as to size. Objects disappeared on a northerly course. No evidence of aggressive or evasive tactics. Speed could not be estimated.

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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.