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.
“Adams”5 pages
6. Although I could not accurately judge the time, I seem to recall the object or light was visible for a couple of seconds. Taking this figure literally and applying it to the sketch, No. 2, one could roughly compute the speed of the object at 1350 mph; however, I did not sense that it was moving with such great speed as this. It rather appeared to move with the speed of a jet-powered airplane. It did not deviate from a straight course while I observed it, and did not perceptibly lose altitude. 7. In color, the subject had the appearance of a reflected white light, a cool, bright white light with no red in it, like the moon on a clear night. There was no train visible to me, in the form of fire, smoke, or sparks. The weather at the assumed time and date was checked through records of the Bolling Field weather office, and consisted of scattered to broken clouds with visibilities of 10 - 12 miles. The cloud condition is further indication that the object was not necessarily a meteor, since it might have been impossible to see a meteor. I do not personally remember the weather condition, except that I am sure it was not raining. 8. At the time of this occurrence, I was not inclined to think of it seriously enough to wake my wife and describe it to her, nor by any reasoning to make official report. As time passed, I thought considerably about the fleeting glimpse I had of whatever I saw, and am still somewhat confused, but feel that it was some natural phenomenon which occurs but rarely. I have flown approximately 2500 hours during the past seven years and being generally familiar with aspects of aviation can emphatically state that (a) it was no weather balloon, (b) it was not the flash of a beacon on the cloud-base, (c) it could hardly have been an airplane on fire, since it would have at least crashed in this general area, (d) it was not entirely a result of imagination, and (e) it was not spending much time in one place. JAMES O. COBB Lt Colonel, Air Corps
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 126 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.