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.
# CONFIDENTIAL # FINAL REPORT OF SIGHTING Kidneyeee 1. Organization: 1388th AAF Base Unit APO 864, c/o Postmaster, New York, N.Y. 2. Sighting : Flying Disc or other Airborne Object. 3. Place : On board Steamship "BURGEO" enroute from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, about one hour out from Sydney. 4. Time : 00152 20 July 1947. 5. Altitude : 30° off the horizon at an estimated quarter mile range. 6. Weather : Clear and dark. 7. Heading : NNE (30° East of True North) on horizontal plane. 8. Speed : High velocity, stated to be faster than a tracer bullet. 9. Description: Observers did not see the object, they saw its flashes and all four observers agreed there were four (4) or five (5) flashes approximately one (1) second apart and equidistant. The flashes were said to be silvery to reddish in color, and were described by two observers to be like those of a Fire Fly only larger and at equal intervals, and did not look like a shooting star or airplane. 10. Reported by: Messrs Maitland, Larkin, Douglas and Hamilton of Hamilton, Metcalfe and Kansas City Bridge Companies which concern is doing the construction at Harmon Field. 11. General : The four gentlemen (noted in Par.10) and Captain Gullage, Master of the "Burgeo", were standing on the starboard deck, and as the Captain was trying to describe a previous sighting, he saw the flashes; the other four gentlemen also saw them as described herein, and believed that it was not a meteorite or airplane because of its speed, color, and evenly spaced discharges or flashes. Captain Gullage told the four gentlemen that he had seen the same thing at approximately the same time and location (ship's position) on the evening of 15 July 1947, except at that time, the object or flashes were traveling faster and frequently changing course (he said it changed course abruptly several times) and was headed generally to the RESTRICTED
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.