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.
“King”2 pages
• •.. Lynch,..ur Advance 5/13/A9 Th&se Aying Discs Are at It Again, Virginians Report Zounds! Here we go again! Inler planetory space-ship? Visitor from Mars? A new Russian rocket ship? Airgoing submarine? Just take your choice, your guess is every bit as good as the next qne according to reports from various sections of Vir ginia and Tennessee on last night's strange phenomenon. What it was, where it came from and where it was going, no one knows, but even Civil Aeronautics Administration officials were puzzled and had no answer. Whatever the thing was, it re sembled a long cigar, with a bright red nose and trailing smoke. Re- \ rorts coinciding with that descrip• tion came from localities along an almost direct line through Tennessee and Virginia and seemed sufficient to convince even the most skeptical that what the callers said they had seen was no figment of imagination. The descriptions generally Jn oicated the object came over the couthwest horizon and resembled a ctreak of fire. There seemed to be 1ed lights or a powerful red glow in the nose of the object. Far, back at the tail there was fire and smoke. The first report came from Roa noke about 8 o'clock when ,J. S. Mays and W. F. Mullins. both of that city, said they noticed the object. "It looked like a streak of fire," said Mays, "and appeared to be go ing almost straight up and was stepping on it." Suddenly, he said, it appeared to level off and head eastward, re sembling "a snake wiggling on water." Other reports followed from Kingsport, Tenn., Bristi Pulaski, Chrt·tiansburg and poin s west of Roa ke.1 w liam C. Flanik, ch t aircraft c-om unicator, CAA, ' Preston Gle airport, said none of the Lyn burg tower men had sighted Iany unusual objects in the sky. FBI - RIC'-'t'O!m M?W 141949 l lJ - i3~11 -11r E'NCLOSURf
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.