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.
“The Advance”3 pages
in ,,. - '5-ky Devil-Ship' Scares Pilots; Air Chief Wishes He Had One Plane Makers Dubious About Alabama 'Thing' By WILLIAM KEY What was that Thint tbat scared the daylights out of two Atlanta Eastern Air Line pDoa the spooky hours Sa~ morning! Is there some stratospheric Loch Ness fire-breathin g monster on the Milky Way run between At lanta and New Orleans? The :- lots. C:i;>t, C. S. Chiln. of Atlanta, and Co-Pilot ,J. B. Whitted. of Hapeville. would like to know. The Army Strategic Air Command would like to know. Bht airplane manufacturers al•o are curiou~. but slightly dubious. Pilots Chiles and Whitted told their thrillinJt story upon arriv ing at municipal airport here Sat urday on the Houston-AUanta, Boston run. Here i~ what they say they saw, near Mont,tomery: A gigantic plane without winits, !black against the niJtht i;ky, 5treakin1t through the heaven5 at 5,000 feet altitude with a fiery comet's tail 25 to 50 feet in length. It had a 100-foot fuselaae about four times the circumfer ence of a B-29's, and two rows of brilliantlv lighted 1Quare windows. Creepiest ot all, it was a veritable rJyjrs«J)utchman of the Skies. Nt'ry a living soul was , een aboard_!_~~----- EAL FLIERS DESCRIBE WINGLESS AIRCRAFT Copilot J8hn Whitted and Capt. C. S. Chiles (righ t). ATIANTA JOIJRNA.L SUlIDAY • 7/25/48
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.