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.
“Socorro, New Mexico”1 page
STAN0...~0 ~OR,-, "° 6A • Office M emor! ndum • uNtrno sTATEs GovERNMENT DATE , December 28, 1948'¼..ITO , MR. D. M. LA: _& ~ IC'". Tolson__ FROM : H. B. FI.ETC~ Jlf llr. ~legg wr. Glavin_ _ ::: ~~~:~1~·=== Yr. Rosen Mr. Tr&CY__ SUBJBCT: O FLYING DISCS __ ::: =:=..=---=---_-Mr. Harl>o__ Mr. ll<>hr.~......-- wr. Pennlngtori_ Mr. QU!llll tam_ Tele . Roo• At J..0':bo a .m. today, SAC Willis, Houston, called in and stated llr. Nease__ WISS llolJIIJO__ that Full~ackwell, a busin?ss man~ Housto~, Texas, had furnished WleO Go.nc!y__ certain pictures taken by a friend of his, Lo~ack of the Humboldt Oil Company, Houston, Texas, and had related that Noack had been flying with a friend in a private plane from California to Houston and that at a point about 30 miles east of Lone Pine, California, some object lying on the ground made a very strong reflection and they made a check to determine what would cause this bright reflection. They finally landed the plane and found an object which could be described as being 8 1 in diameter with wings about 4' long. The object is about 1 1 in thickness and in the center there appears to be some type of gyroscope. The wings apparently are fitted with some type of jet propulsion. An examination was made by Noack and his friend and they could find no identi.f.'ying marks and took photographs of the object they observed. SAC Willis stated he had informed Lieutenant Robert Fleming of the ill', Ellington Field, and Captain Bush, the Army representative in Houston, of this object and that Noack would be interviewed that morning in the Houston Office with Lieutenant Fleming being present. Lieutenant Fleming wanted the statements of Noack taken down by a stenographer and he will furnish the stenographer for that purpose. I instructed SAC Willis to funti.sh complete details of this matter by idr mail special delivery, including a copy of the photograph. I further instructed that he furnish the same details to the proper field office because unquestionably the Bureau would want to run this thing out. After talking with you, I phoned SAC Willis back and told him to insure the presence of a Bureau Agent at the time this object was examined by the Army Air Forces and that he should make proper arrangements with the office in California to see that an Agent was present. I also told him to adVise me /I _ of the developments. f ~ HBF:cmw
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.