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.
## INTELLIGENCE OFFICE HEADQUARTERS 1356TH AAF BASE UNIT NEWFOUNDLAND BASE COMMAND, ATLB-ATG APO 864, e/o Postmaster, New York, N. Y. 16 July 1947 Interrogation of ROBERT W. LBIDT, Station Mechanic, Pan American Airways, Harmon Field, Newfoundland, taken at 1450 HPT, 16 July 1947, by Captain William N. Smith, AO, Intelligence Officer. Q. Were you with Mr. Woodruff and Mr. Nehrman on the evening when they saw an object or flying disk passing over the sky on 10 July 1947? A. Yes, I was. Q. Were you or any members of the party drinking? A. No, I had one can of beer, that was about half hour before that. Q. Can you tell me the circumstances under which you saw the object or its trail? A. Well, Mr. Woodruff saw it first and said he saw the thing travelling through the sky. We did not believe him at first but when he was so concerned about it we stepped the car and got out. I had my camera so took a picture of it. There was a blueish streak left in the sky which could not have been a cloud formation. It was a definite trail and caused the clouds to break open as it went through. Q. Did it cut a path through the cloud? A. Yes, it was very clear, and you could see the trail right through the cloud, it looked to be travelling in a big circle and it left sharp edges to the clouds. Q. What was the trail like? A. I would not say it was exhaust, it looked as if an object passed through similar to that of a pebble leaving a ring in the pond. Q. Was there any difference in the color? A. No, it looked as if the object broke the cloud and left this opening. Q. Was the trail horizontal, going up, or coming down? A. It looked horizontal. Q. What was the altitude of the clouds? 4. I don't know, sir, they were pretty high though. Q. What time was this? A. I don't know exactly air, but it was between three and five o'clock in the afternoon, we were coming back from fishing. CONFIDENTIAL R W L
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.