Documents / Official release
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section, compiled in 1947, collects newspaper clippings, memoranda, teletypes and letters about the summer's flying disc reports. It includes a July 1947 memo on a Grafton, Wisconsin priest's reported disc, which the Milwaukee office learned was a circular saw with wires, possibly a prank. Other items cover a disc found at Black River Falls, reports from Texas and Oregon, a San Diego memorandum on visitors, and Hoover's acknowledgments forwarding information to the War Department.
From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: N/A, N/A. The FBI's 62-HQ-83894 case file includes investigative records, eyewitness testimonies, and public reports concerning Unidentified Flying Objects and flying discs documented between June 1947 and July 1968. The records include high-profile incident accounts, photographic evidence from sites like Oak Ridge, TN, and technical proposals regarding potential propulsion systems. Additional topics include convention programs, researcher accounts, and extensive media coverage from the period. This file is partially posted on FBI vault with more redactions and some pages missing. Included here is the complete case file with several newly declassified pages and only minor redactions.
.,. e , •a.WI • , . • I Planes ChaSing DisKS Find Only Empty Sky Jokesters Add--•-••"'"a,dio announcement ufti'.t 61S" were flying over Lewiston Idaho Sunday sent' hundreds into thei; Some Comedy yards for a look. Weatherman Louis , Krezak said the objects were mov ing eastward with the prevailing t wind and probably were •~reed seedR. tOAIr• Mys ery Three air transport pilots agreed. Searchlights 011 Olouds Ea t St L • Qb• Birmingham radio station wasIS • OUIS Jee • deluged with more th~n 400 call in Prove to Be w ashers, one hour by persons who said t ey • W S saw fluorescent balls circling o er ICago Oman pots the city and clearly outlined aga st 5h W. h L ne It egs By the United Press Army pilots were ready Monday for another air search for the mys terious "flying saucers" now report ed seen in 39 states and parts of Canada as practical jokesters added to the confusion. Equipped with telescopic cam eras, 11 army planes searched the Pacific northwest Sunday without finding any trace of the flying disks which had been reported over scores of communities the preceding two days. At Sioux Falls, S. D., a na- ' tional guard plane already in the air was ordered to investigate a silvery I disk with a short tail which Gregory Zimmer said he saw shoot across the heavens. The pilot found noth ing but empty sky. The army "camera patrol" over the Cascade mountains Sunday in cluded eight P-51 pursuit ships an three A-26 bombers. Illusions Or Jokes There was growing belief that the concentrated aerial search would show the saucers to be optical illu sions or the work of practical j~ke stcrs magnified by aroused imagi nations. A number of "disks" whirled over rooftops in East St. Louis, Ill., Sun day. J. T. Hartley, a locomotive en- eer, gathered some of them up d f o u n d they were made of p essed white paper, 11 inches in meter and with a two inch hole ln the center. Railroad workers near-by mountains. A carnival at Alabaster, Ala., was playing search- lights on cloud wisps. n argument raged at Lodi, Calif., o r the cause of a spectacular glow • the sky and a roar shortly before lectrical power went off. Mrs. W. C. Smith said she heard a noise "like Give 'Em Room Newport News, Va.- Peninsula airport here is taking no chance$ with flying saucers. Pilots report• ing Monday to take out planes found this notice on the bulletin board: ''Two thousand feet ver tical and horizontal clearance re quired between aircraft operat ing from this field and any fly• ing saucers." four motored bomber" just before the lights went off at dawn. Erving Newcomb of the Pacific Gas & Elec• tric Co. offered the explanation that a low flying crop dusting plane probably had struck a power lin and b u r n e d out a transforme However, no planes were reporte damaged and no one could explain wlf!C"\i Ciut> dusting plane was do ing in the air at da,;,,a bH i-.;Iay. It was the first time any noise had ' been attributed to flying saucers. J. U. Watts, jr., Darlington (S. C.) attorney, said he saw an army pur sui~ plane chasing a V-formatio\l of flying saucers at 250 miles an hour 3,000 feet high. However, no pilot reported such a chase. Saw One With Legs Me an t .i m e, authorities were plagued with reports that bordered on the fantastic. An excited Chi cago woman reported that she had seen a flying saucer with legs. "I wrs standing on my porch and I th ught for sure it was coming right vn and slap me in the face," s~ 8 i. leorge Kuger of Denver said h 8 , a flying disk with an America fl~ g on it. Francis Howell, Te m p e, Ariz., claimed he saw a saucer two feet in diameter disappear behind a row of trees near his home. When he ru~hed to inspect it, he said, the flat, thm, alumlnumlike disk took off at a "high r a t e of speed" toward Phoenix, nine miles away. Mrs. Walter Johnson returned to Spokane, Wash., after a vacation near St. Maries, Idaho, and after reading newspaper reports of the flying saucers said she and several others had seen speeding shiny ob jects "as big as a four or five room house" disappear into the forest covered mountains. he first. of the saucers over New Y rk State was reported by Mrs. K nneth Wohley of Rochester,f,. Y who said she and her husb dIsaw an object "about the size of n ordinary saucer" flying above r ba_ck yard at 8:30 p.m. Sunday. ENCLOSU L 16 said they looked like locomotive packing washers. i
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 185 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.