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.
“Headquarters”18 pages
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RESTRICTED
and co . the . 61. 54. 7
1. Organization: 1388th AAF Base Unit APC 864, c/o Postmaster, New York, N.Y.
2. Sighting : Flying Disc or other airborne object.
3. Place : Codroy, Newroundland, $ 5 9^{\circ} 0 3^{\prime} $ W Long.; $ 1 7^{\circ} 5 0^{\prime} $ N Lat.
4. Time : 0030Z hours, 11 July 1947.
5. Altitude : Approximately 6,000 feet.
6. Weather : Clear; at dusk.
7. Heading : From northwest heading eastward.
8. Speed : Very high velocity.
9. Shape & Size: Disc shaped; was reported as being the size of a barrel-head, dinner-plate and size of a plane that is flying high. The trail gave the whole object the appearance of a cone.
10. Color : Flame colored with a trail of a lighter flame color.
11. Reported by : Mr. John Legge, Mr. Wm. Evans and Albert Samms of Codroy, Newfoundland.
Mr. Legge and Mr. Evans were standing outside Mr. Legge's store when they both sighted the object. Both men stated that the disc was very bright with an after-glow which made the object look like a cone. It was a very clear night. In spite of the high velocity of the flying object, they said they could not possibly have mistaken it for a plane or a falling star. Besides the two men, the object was sighted by Albert Samms; he reported what he had seen to his mother. Mrs. Samms stated that Albert was in no way alarmed about it, he was alone and on his way home when he sighted it, and watched it while it was in sight. Albert was quite convinced from the color and behaviour of the object that it was not a plane, but definately some flying object.
The informant, Mr. Legge, is believed to be reliable. He is a man of approximately forty; has had considerable experience as foreman of Buchans Mine, Newfoundland, where he was in charge of three hundred men. During the war, Mr. Legge was a mamber of a civilian volunteer Air Detection Corps. With that background, Mr. Legge stated that he felt sure that the object he had seen was something new which he had never seen before. 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.