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
• • I -== • Remember Flying SaucersrWe/1 Looks Like Flying Seegars Now Flying saucers are passe. Now people in Bristol are see ing "long, cigar- shaped ob ject" flashing across the sky. But Bristolians were not the only spectators ot the strange craft yesterday evening. The flaming object was re ported sighted at Kingsport, Christiansburg and Roanoke and three at Pulaski. Rex Rainey, 1805 State Street, reported that he saw a "whit ish, glistening m;iss, long and cylindrical like a big cigar," flying from east to west about 7:15 Yesterday. He said be sighted the "cigar" flying very rapidly over Virginia Heights and got out his binoculars to look at it. An unidentified caller in formed the Herald Courier last night that she had sighted something that "looked like white smoke with a blue name that traveled to the north and e~" about the same time. "It d' 't look like an airplane," s said, "only like white smoke. I was just a streak and almost o t of sight it was so high." I Another· local woman reported that she had seen a "silver streak that looked like it was about 100 feet long" flash across the sky shortly after seven o'clock. She estimated the speed at about 200 miles per hour. A traffic controlman at Tri Cities Airport, Who asked that his name be withheld, said that the strange craft had not been seen at the airport although they ha,d had inquires on the "cigar-streak." He said he had checked with the Atlanta Air Route traffic control center after receiving inquiries but they reported no knowledge of any jet aircraft in lthis Yicinity, He speculated that the streaks may have been caused by a jet propelled plane or planes. "The objects were reported flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet," he said. ''If a jet plane were fly ing that high, it would be mov ing so fast the vapor trail would be about all a person on the ground could see." The controlman said that the Pulaski radio reported two seen there. One about 4 p. m., and the other an hour later. He said that Pulaski also had a pi lot's report of the "streak" trav eling northeast at an altitude ot about 30,000 feet. .Reports on the "flaming ob ject" were received at Chris tiansburg and Roanoke but air ports in those vicinities reported no information on the strange craft. - 13 R, I S /i) )- . ti ER /I ;..}) R 1S1.> J.., l/4 FBI - R:C'-if O m M."1Y 1 7;949 l
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.