Documents / Official release
This FBI file serial collects 1947 Army Air Forces reports on flying disc sightings. It includes Air Defense Command interviews from September 1947 with Pan American pilot Alpheus Powell and navigator Walter White about orange objects seen near Boston on 4 August 1947. It also holds a Birmingham, Alabama report with a photograph, newspaper clippings and a sergeant's sworn statement, Newfoundland and Alaska sighting reports, notes on an instrument found in Illinois, and a Weather Bureau memo on a metallic disk.
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 Pentagon”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# INTERVIEW REPORT SUBJECT: Interviews with Capt. E. J. SMITH and Ralph Stovens, United Air Lines pilots, who reported seeing flying disks. Captain E. J. SMITH was interviewed at 1500, 9 July 1947, concerning the "flying disks", and stated substantially as follows: We left Boise, Idaho, at 2004 Pacific Standard Time. At approximately 2015, the co-pilot, Ralph STEVENS, called my attention to the first object seen. We were then in the vicinity of Emmet, Idaho, our altitude was approximately 6500, and we were climbing to our proposed cruising altitude of 3000 from there to Pondleton, Oregon. The heading of the plane at that time was 300 degrees Magnetic North, and the object (one) was sighted at approximately 290 degrees, or ten degrees to our left. Then an additional four objects appeared to the left of the main, or first, object. These four objects appeared slightly smaller than the first object sighted, but all of the objects appeared on the same plane. I estimated the altitude of the objects to be about 8500. They were within our sight for approximately two minutes, then they disappeared. "Shortly after the first group disappeared, probably one or two minutes later, the second group appeared about 310 degrees, or to the right of the plane. Their altitude was the same as the first group. Three of the objects appeared to be on the same plane, and one object appeared slightly higher and to the right of the others. The second group stayed within our sight twelve to fifteen minutes, then disappeared. We had levelled off by the time the second group disappeared. "The objects were flat on the base, the top slightly rough in contour. The dimensions appeared the same as a DC-3 approximately five miles from us. In other words, it could have been ninety miles away if it would be possible for an object as large as that would have to be to be flying, but since we didn't know what we were looking at or how large it was, we decided that if it were the size of a DC-3 wing span (90 feet), it was about five miles distant. Actually, we have no idea just how large it was since we could not determine its distance from us. When we first sighted the objects, we decided they were either going away from us or coming towards us. After a short while, however, we knew they couldn't be coming towards us, because we never approached them. I don't believe they could have been going a great rate of speed and still stayed in sight for as long as they did. I would judge they might have been travelling about 300 miles per hour. My personal opinions regarding the objects are - that their speed varied, was not constant. When first sighted, they were going slow and stayed within sight for quite some time. However, when we lost sight of them, they seemed to disappear practically immediately. I think they either put on a tremendous burst of speed and disappeared from sight, or else they dissipated. Also, it appeared that only one object, the large one, was controlled, and it in turn controlled the other objects, and I think they were ground controlled.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 126 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.