Documents / Official release
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section (62-HQ-83894, Section 4) collects 1947 to 1949 correspondence on flying discs. It includes Portland police officers' accounts of a silvery object over the city on September 11, 1947, an Alaska pilot's July 1947 sighting near Bethel, citizen letters answered by J. Edgar Hoover, and a 1948 Air Defense Command directive on disc investigations. The FBI replied that it was conducting no flying disc investigations. Later items concern William Albert Rhodes's disc photographs and a Los Angeles letter judged a probable prank.
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.
“Headquarters”7 pages
• • --- .. Z/ ~4ew Data, Ideas About Flying Saucers And Death of Pilot Who Chased One a, l:nllff Prtt1 DAYTON, Ohio, April 27.-Tbe only airman who ever got near a nnnr saucer c1·ashed and died be fore he could describe It, the D&7• ton Journal-Herald said today. Tbe newspaper printed a lengtby dlapatch on the mysterious flyinc dlaca, based, it , aid, on hitherto un-. publlahed reports assembled at the W rlr\lt-Patterson Air Force base. Tbe AJr Force Investigation hu proved that the flying saucers "are not a joke." Neither "are they a cauu for alarm to the popula- tion," the newspaper said. The CIC>ftst any airman came to the myatery discs was on Jan. 7,, 19'8, when one was sighted over/ Fort Knox, Ky., the dlspatch said. Four fighter planes were sent aloft to Intercept It, but only Capt. Thomas F . Mantell wu able to get close. "I'm closing In to take a good/ look," the newepaper quoted him as ( reporting by radio. "It looks metal- lic and of tremendous size. It's go- Ing up now as fast as I am. Th~t•s 360 miles an hour. I'm golnz up after It. At 20,000 feet, It I'm no closer, I'll abandon cha.se." , Mantell's plane crashed a few / 'l - minute later and he was kllled. The paper said 11. report now on - -~------------- flle at Wright-Patterson Air Force on t he other hand It wu not lm-1are I Base lists 240 domestic and 30 for- pos:-ible that they were. Later the consr elgn accounts of flying discs as Air Force announced it was not form having been investigated. Of these, mi:.klng any further comments on to a 30 per cent seem to have been the discs. proa weather balloon, and the like and The Dayton paper says the report not ~ 30 per cen t more are perhaps ex- on which ita story ls based said the 1• plal•ble conventlonally-Ieavln&' 40 "evaluation teams" stated: far per cen t maa plalned. "We can't prove or dlsprove the • The Air JI' o r c e recenUy ■aid existence ot aoni,.• ot the remaining ? 'l there wu no evidence that the unJdentlfled objects as real aircraft a '\ dlsca w •re ,aided missiles fired of unconventional design. Iv trom some other country, but that "The possibility that the sau~ ....
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 214 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.