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.
16 July 1947 Interrogation of JOHN E. WOODHUFF, Chief Mechanic, Pan American Airways, Harmon Field, Newfoundland, taken at 1415 HPT, 16 July 1947. by Captain William E. Smith, AC, Intelligence Officer. Q. Did you see one of the so called "Flying Disks" or other object on the 10th July? A. Yes, I did. 4. Can you give the approximate time? A. Approximately 1700. Q. Tell me the circumstances under which you saw this object. A. We were coming back from a fishing trip, and coming over the hill between here and Stephenville Crossing you can see the cloud formation ahead, I saw the object break out where the clouds opened and it left, its trail behind it. Q. Had you been drinking? A. No. Q. You were riding in a car at the time you saw it? A. Yes, in the front seat of the Pan American car. Q. What was the weather like that day? 4. It was very clear and the clouds were very scattered. Q. What was the approximate altitude of the clouds? A. I'd say from 6000 feet to 10,000 feet. Q. Did you see the Disk itself? 4. Yes, what it appeared to be was a translucent disk like a wheel travelling at a terrific rate of speed and opened the clouds as it went through the air. Q. How was this Disk travelling, horizontal, descending or ascending? A. It was horizontal. Q. About how big did it appear to you? A. From the height of it, I'd say it was about the size of a 54 or a Constellation. Q. About how far apart did it break the cloud? A. It spread the clouds out about half mile.
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.