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.
“Charles Fort”1 page
'Aying FloOr Lamp~ Again Sighted Here B ;v CHARLES P OU she did see "a great ball of fire I lamp" is atThat "flying floor it again! cantaloupe An . Illuminated rolled over the city! And a newspaperman saw "great balls of fire! What's more, two Richmond Va., i;choolteachers say they saw the "fl rt· ,, k same . ame-spu mg 5 Y mon- st~r "".h1ch ~as spotted by Eastern Air Lines pilots near Montgomery. Like Red F loor Lamp "I i;aw Halley's comet-and it was nothing like what I saw last 'night," declared Ml·s. W. R. Dell<. of 914 Hemphill a\'e., N. W. Breathlessly, Mrs. Delk continued: . "The front end of it looked like a flying floor lamp-a fiery-red floor lamp. Then it trailed of1 in llittle square sections. "Oh, Halley's comet was nothing like that." 1 \ And Mrs. Delk was joined by al least 15 other Atlantians who saw a Thing which banked and rolled and breathed fire over the city Monday night between 8 p. m. and 9:45 p. m. In the downtown section, Mr. and Mrs. Richard P. Sellers were 1minding their own business when Ia "reddish-white ball of fire about the size of a cantaloupe with a tail on it" da~ed over buildings. I Mrs. A. C. ~•bY, or'Carey Park, has never seen a purple cow but with a great long purple tail on it." That was about 9:40 p. m. "Bluish Streak of Light" An attendant at the naval air station thought he was watchi:i.'I a falling star, until it started climbing and banked away from Atlanta. To him, it looked like a "bluisdh streakb of ltihght." An now a out e newspaper- man. John Batlle, city editor of the Augusta Chronicle, hung up the telephone after a dozen calls about weird goings-on in the Augusta skies. He looked 8':i+' 1:,o=A:11ifl 1/IJI He summoned his st11;Y,.ffl:.i '1'reat balls "' 'ire,._.~ ATIANl'A JOURNAL , 7/27/48
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.