Documents / Official release
This undated Federal Bureau of Investigation record, Serial 153 in file 62-HQ-83894, comes from the Knoxville office's file on "flying saucers" seen over the Oak Ridge area, handled as an internal security matter. It sent the Bureau two photographs of supposed flying saucers seen at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in July 1947. A photostat of a Knoxville News-Sentinel clipping was also enclosed. The clipping reports that resident W. R. Presley photographed a flying saucer over the town.
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”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# KNOXVILLE NEWS SEVEN NEL JULY 1947 FLYING SAUCER' OTOGRAPHED AT OAK RIDGE FLYING SAUCER NOTOGRAPHED AT OAK RIDGE W. R. PRESLEY had snapped several pictures of his family and his house a 218 Illinois Avenue, Oak Ridge, the other afternoon and, noticing he had one Avenue, Oak Ridge, the other afternoon and, noticing he had one film left on the roll, he turned and snapped it for a picture of the mountain. He had the roll developed, and look what he got on that last shot! Now don't start trying to explain it off. Just go ahead and say what it looks like. Sure Sure. You're right. It is a Flying Saucer. A lot of folks have reported seeing the things. This however, is the first time that one has ever been photographed over Oak Ridge. Mr. Presley says this picture has all of Oak Ridge talking.
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. 9 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.