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
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Statement of David N. Johnson at Boise, Idaho, July 12, 1947 To Whom It May Concern: On the sixth day of July, 1947, I received from James L. Brown, general manager of the Statesman Newspapers, incorporated in Idaho as The Statesman Printing company, an assignment which was in substance: "Conduct an aerial search of the northwest states in an effort to see and photograph a flying disc. Conduct this patrol for so long a time as you believe reasonable, or until you see a flying disco." In accordance to these instructions, I took the Statesman's airplane, and with Kenneth Arnold as passenger, flew a seven and one-half hour mission on the seventh day of July, 1947. This mission was without result. It covered an area embracing the confines of the Hanford plant in Washington, and territory between and around Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams, where Arnold first reported seeing objects henceforth described as saucers or discs. On the eighth day of July, 1947, I took an AT-6 of the 190th Fighter squadron, Idaho National Guard, of which I am a member, and flew to northern Idaho, into northwestern Montana briefly, to Spokane, Washington, and back to Boise by way of Walla Walla, Washington, and Pendleton, Oregon. This search also was negative. On the ninth day of July, 1947, I continued the search, again using a national guard AT-6, this time centering my efforts over the Owyhee mountains west and southwest of Boise, a portion of the Mountain Home desert on a track southeast of the Mountain Home army air base, thence into the Sawtooth mountains, and back in the general direction of Boise on a line carrying me well to the north of the Shafer butte forest service lookout station, into the Horseshoe Bend area, and thence back in a southwesterly direction to a point
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.