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
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN P. LEGGE, CORDROY, NEWFOUNDLAND. TAKEN BY MERCEDES BURKE OF THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE, HARMON FIELD, NEWFOUNDLAND. 17 July 1947. At approximately 10 o'clock in the evening of 10 July 1947 I was standing by my store door; I happened to look up and saw what appeared to be a "FLYING SAUCER". It definately was not a shooting star; I'd seen several stars shoot before, but never like this! mor was it an airoplane, it was too "lit up" and traveling at too great a speed. It wasn't an airoplane on fire because it would have fallen in the water. It was a nice clear night, no clouds, it was just getting dark. I would say it was traveling at the rate of a shooting star but much closer. I'd say roughly at 6,000 feet. It was visible for about fifteen (15) seconds. It came from the North West heading Eastward. The circle looked to be about the size of a barrel head, and the trail behind looked to be about fifteen (15) feet long. The trail behind the disc made the whole object look like a cone. Another thing that makes me feel sure it wasn't an shooting star is; a shooting star usually leaves a temporary streak, this object I saw left no streak only the one that appeared to travel behind the circle which looked like an after-glow. The circle was a bright red, nearest I could describe it would be the color of a flame, the after-glow (cone-shaped) was a fainter shade. What I saw last Thursday night resembled a shooting star in no way whatsoever. There was only one. JOHN P. LEGGE Witness: F. W. Towhuis Witness : Mercede Durke 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.