Documents / Official release

65 HS1-834228961 62-HQ-83894 Serial 130

Federal Bureau of Investigation · 126 pages · text by OCR

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.

  • p. 13 …from their home in Ensley Highlands. "I never shot at anything moving as rapidly as they…
  • p. 19 …sure that the object he had seen was something new which he had never seen before.
  • p. 20 …he was very definite that he had never seen anything like it before. His mother, Mrs…
  • p. 30 …It definately was not a shooting star; I'd seen several stars shoot before, but never…
  • p. 31 …If it was a shooting star, I'd never seen one as large before, and it…
  • p. 41 …such machine was built and that it never left Connecticut. "These planes were flying high, maybe…
  • p. 43 …UNIL and his two boys maintained that they had never seen one of the discs. UNIL…
  • p. 67 …thought came to me that I had never seen such an object before, and that although…
  • p. 79 …Sun reflected from top side, but never from underside, even when turning 11 Unexplained None 12…
  • p. 90 …pressing the search, that I probably would never see the disc-like objects referred to by…
  • p. 93 …Arnold has never consulted astronautical charts of the type the Army uses. Mr. Arnold stated that…
  • p. 94 flying through the air I would never say a word about it, due to the fact…
  • p. 97 …I never asked nor wanted any notoriety for just accidently being in the right spot at…
  • p. 98 …I watched these objects with great interest as I had never before observed
  • p. 102 …John Joe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about…
  • p. 108 …t be coming towards us, because we never approached them. I don't believe they could…
Package received from Sheriff Merle T. Wilmoth, Watseka, Ill. His letter states the instrument in the package was found by a farmer at Danforth, Ill. It landed in the middle of a section of his farm land and burned weeds 212 feet tall to fine ash an area of 112 feet in diam. around where the object dropped.

The instrument consists of:

(a) Plaster of paris body having an oval cavity thru it.

(b) A power microphone which screws over one end of the oval cavity. The power microphone carried the name, "Bathaniel Baldwin Inc." Salt Lake City, Utah. Pat May 10 1910 & Sept 14, 1916. Pat Nos 957403 (second number not readable)

(c) A small "Polymat" filter condenser.

(d) Two bakelite cylinders to which is attached a net work of fine copper wire. These were obviously coils and the impact has torn the wire from the core. (Our radio section definitely states that this is old stuff, or the coils were used quite some time ago, since having been replaced by smaller more efficient coils)

(e) A piece of metal having magnetic properties obviously broken off the power microphone as a result of the impact.

The plaster of paris body was broken up by the impact but some of the pieces were held together by wire reinforcement inside the plaster of paris.

Mrs. Whedon 3B 274 Ext 73909 (Sig C) was shown this object by Mr. Zimmer of the FBI. Mrs "hedon claims she knew what it was, but couldn't tell Zimmer.

Mayor . Vitali

Cases discussed

About this file

Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 126 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.