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.
you may see as many as three flying discs from one electric light bulb, which may have more or less of a bell shape. These discs many times appear as inverted saucers, and if you will change your position slowly you will see that they change their position also. These are best observed in the late afternoon or between sun down and dusk, when it appears to you that you are merely looking through the window pane at the discs suspended in the distance. As darkness comes on, the window pane becomes a more perfect mirror and your discs appear as reflections in a mirror. To watch the discs, through your ventilation wing, sail along with you as you drive through the country, becomes very fascinating, especially if you use a little imagination. It may absorb your thoughts completely, therefore, I would admonish automobile drivers watching the flying discs, to be cautious and not run off the road or into some other car. Some of the reports on flying saucers, heretofore not explained in this article, such as those reported seeing bright flashes in the sky, were no doubt reflected sun-light from planes. These light beams chanced to cross the line of vision of the observer. They frequently appear very brilliant and may more or less blind the observer for an instant. If the plane is very high it may not be seen by the observer, which may be due to impaired vision or the great height at which the plane is flying. We very often get these same blinding flashes from automobile wind-shields. Many of the reports around July 4th. were incited by various forms of fire works.
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.