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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Classification cancelled or Changed to Kestrelct
RESTRICTED FINAL REPORT OF SIGHTING
6 Aug 47
1. Organization: 1388th AAF Base Unit APO 864, c/o Postmaster, New York, N.Y.
2. Sighting : Strange intermittent flashes that may tie in with "Flying Discs".
3. Place : Harmon Field, Stephenville, Newfoundland.
4. Time : 03452, 23 July 1947.
5. Altitude : Approximately 10,000 feet high.
6. Weather : High scattered condition; visibility better than fifteen (15) miles.
7. Heading : From South, heading NNE (approximately $ 3 0^{\circ} $ )
8. Speed : High velocity; stated to be faster than a conventional airplane.
9. Description : The observers saw a light which at first appeared to be a shooting star or airplane. It appeared again, and a number of intermittant flashes were seen for a period of approximately three (3) minutes. The flashes were reddish in color. Observers said it was not a falling star because it did not appear as such; nor was it an airplane, because manoeuvers were too abrupt and there was no noise of a motor.
10. Reported by: Miss Patricia Abbott,(Newfoundland National) Government Employee and Lt. Hammaker, Navigator and Public Relations Officer.
11. General : The informants (noted in Par.10) were walking when they noticed a peculiar reddish light. Both Miss Abbott and Lt. Hammaker stated that at first, they thought it was a falling star, but if left no streak. It appeared again; they thought it might be a plane flying at a very high altitude. After observing its manoeuvers, they concluded, because of the silence (no hum of motor) and abrupt darts of the light, it was definately not an airplane. Neither Miss Abbott nor Lt. Hammaker had seen anything like it before.
William Benton
WILLIAM H. SMITH
Captain, Air Corps,
Intelligence Officer. 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.