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65 HS1-834228961 62-HQ-83894 Serial 130

Federal Bureau of Investigation · 126 pages · text by GLM-OCR

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.

  • p. 48 …circular, and that they were possible light gray in color. He further stated that it was…

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South Brooksville, Me. July 28, 1947.

Having in mind the ridicule which has been heaped on those innocent or perhaps gullible individuals who have reported disks, I would be a little cautious in interpreting. But it is safe to say truthfully, that something unusual attracted my attention, and I was in a perfectly sober condition, barring the mild stimulation, afforded by cool spring water filtering through North Haven greenstone cracks. It should be easy to determine if the "disks" were a new type jet plane, or bomber, or rocket. The fact that it was July 3, about 2:30 P.M. (summer time) or Greenwich Civil time 1830 might suggest that they were engaged in some naval demonstration from Eastport, Bar Harbor or Belfast. The group appeared to be at an altitude of about 50° — I suffer from a mild cervical arthritis—but my eyes are well corrected for astigmatism and hypermetropia, and I doubt if my cerebral cortical lesions are sufficiently advanced to affect my balance. What first made me look up was the unusually loud roar and I was surprised not to see a well defined group of planes quite near. Instead I had to look rather sharply to see the bunch of very light colored objects, in a general northerly direction and travelling roughly in a NW (true) direction. This was reasonably correct, as I was on Cox's hill, and looked over towards Backwood's Mount, that is the conspicuous flat tep planated hill at Harborside. The group could hardly have covered more than 1½° angular diameter in the sky, and bunched rather closely with no regular formation. There might have been 10, I couldn't say and with 90' of arc spread, would easily be within the limit of visibility for discreet objects. As a group they were going so as to cover 30° of arc, estimated of course, in perhaps 10 or 15 seconds. If one of them, say, subtended 1/10°, with a possible wing spread of 100 feet, it would put it at a distance of over 10 miles, and quite invisible for a light object. Besides, with 30° arc of travel at a 10 mi. distance would be roughly 5 miles in 15 seconds or 20 mi. per minute or 1200 mi. per hour!!—rather fast for a bomber—hi. A 50 ft. object, at 5 miles dist. would be about 600 mi. per hr.—also fast going. The only concrete evidence of form appeared on the left tangent of the group—two dark shaped forms: which may have been tail wings. Doesn't the Douglass bomber have these? And since they were in no regular formation, but seemed among themselves to be moving irregularly like a swarm of bees, why shouldn't all of them have shown wings? The loud roar suggests they may have been much closer, and rather small. The sky background was hazy blue, and the sun behind me. One plane towing a lot of balloons, I believe, would have been easily recognized. Havy any meteorites been reported? At that time of day, has there been any abrupt change of radio field strength? or ionization?

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About this file

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.