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Official reports, hearing transcripts, case files and releases: the paper behind the cases. 2,872 documents, 2,610 mirrored with their text, 53,529 pages indexed, so a search reads inside them and lands on the page.
New in the library The PURSUE files The Department of War's UAP release, mirrored in full: the videos, recordings and images, each beside its case file.Documents448 records · page 1
This file from SHAEF Air Staff, dated between January and March 1945 and closing with an 18 March 1945 letter, collects wartime correspondence about "night phenomena" that 415th Night Fighter Squadron crews called foofighters. It includes the squadron's sortie extracts from December 1944 and January 1945 describing lights that followed aircraft near Strasbourg and elsewhere, plus a report of an aluminum-colored cylinder that pilots attacked. The Air Ministry suggested Me 262s and flak rockets as explanations but admitted the matter remained a mystery.
This U.S. Air Force Project SIGN file from 1947 and 1948 collects correspondence on unidentified flying objects. In it, Headquarters USAF asks Air Materiel Command for its conclusions, and AMC replies on 8 November 1948 after studying about 180 incidents. AMC concludes that observers saw real flying objects but that there is no proof they are aircraft, and it advises against briefing the press. The file also includes letters to the CIA, a citizen's inquiry, a request for a Rand spaceship study and an intelligence analysis of 1947 sightings.
This is a feature article from the War Department Intelligence Division's secret intelligence review, dated January 1947, on the 1946 "ghost rocket" reports over Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. It covers witness descriptions, including one from a Swedish Air Force pilot, and says Swedish Defense Staff statements on the objects contradicted each other. It concludes there were perhaps only 2 to 10 real incidents of low-flying V-1 type missiles. The high-altitude sightings, it says, were probably meteors or fireworks.
This U.S. Air Force file from late 1947 collects correspondence about flying discs among Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Army Air Forces headquarters and the Fourth Air Force. It includes General N. F. Twining's 23 September 1947 opinion that the phenomenon is real and not fictitious, and a 30 December 1947 directive that Air Materiel Command set up a project to collect and evaluate reports. It also covers photographs from Jefferson, Oregon that were judged to be film defects, a theory put forward by Mrs. Merchant, and material on the Horten flying wings.
This is an initial Project Sign progress report dated April 1948, sent from Headquarters, Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to the Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force. It tabulates about 100 unidentified flying object reports received through February 1948, covering shape, size, number of objects, speed and exhaust trails. Dr. Irving Langmuir found the data insufficient for a positive identification. Headquarters judged that a low aspect ratio aircraft using boundary layer control could reproduce many of the reported characteristics.
This U.S. Department of War release compiles 1949 records tied to Sandia Base, New Mexico. It includes a Sandia Base security inspection reply and a W. D. Crozier letter to Lincoln LaPaz. It also contains Crozier and Seely's report on collecting airborne copper particles after the July 24, 1949 fireball near Socorro, which they judged negative or inconclusive. LaPaz's sixth report on green fireballs disputes parts of that finding, and a Fourth Army report describes unusual lights around the Q Area at Camp Hood, Texas, in March 1949.
This 1948 file from U.S. Air Force headquarters holds correspondence on reporting "flying discs." It includes a February 1948 policy directing all sightings to Air Materiel Command for Project SIGN, along with a rejected proposal to keep fighter aircraft on continuous alert. It also contains forwarded reports: an FBI account of a phosphorescent round object seen at Hobson, Ohio, on 8 May 1948, and objects seen falling near Bakersfield, California, in March 1948. Other items cover Horten brothers flying wing material.
This U.S. Department of War file, cleared under NND 843014, collects USAFE intelligence cables dated 4 November 1948 and addressed to General Cabell. One cable relays a 307th Bomb Group report of an unidentified jet-propelled aircraft seen off the west coast of Holland on 5 September 1948. Another says flying saucers keep being reported, including one that hovered over Neubiberg Air Base. It passes on Swedish Air Intelligence's view that the objects may come from an unknown technology, possibly from outside the earth.
This Top Secret Air Intelligence Division Study No. 203, prepared jointly by USAF and ONI intelligence and dated 10 December 1948, analyzes about 210 reported flying object incidents in the United States. It concludes that some type of flying object has been observed, but that its identification and origin cannot be determined. The study weighs domestic explanations such as weather balloons, rockets, flying wing aircraft and celestial phenomena against possible Soviet devices based on German flying wing designs. Its appendices include selected incident reports and descriptions of flying wing aircraft.
This 1949 FBI file holds a January 31, 1949 letter to J. Edgar Hoover from Reverend Charles C. Barnes of the First Presbyterian Church in McMinnville, Oregon. Barnes wrote that the previous May he had seen four beams in the sky converging on the Cascade mountains, with clouds forming and an explosion effect rising about ten thousand feet. The file also contains Hoover's reply acknowledging the letter and a memo passing the report to Air Force Special Investigations and the Atomic Energy Commission.
This declassified Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79 is a Top Secret study by the Directorate of Intelligence, Headquarters USAF, and the Office of Naval Intelligence, dated 10 December 1948. It looks at about 210 reported flying object incidents and concludes that some type of flying object has been observed, though what the objects are and where they come from cannot be determined. It considers domestic devices or Soviet aircraft based on German flying wing designs, and its appendices cover selected reports, explained cases and flying wing aircraft.
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, distributed 31 July 1950 and acquired in Santiago, Chile, forwards a translated article by Dr. Eduard Ludwig submitted to Condor, a German-language magazine in Chile. Ludwig rejects the idea that flying discs come from beyond Earth. He links them to Junkers research on Flettner rotors and boundary layer effects driven by gas turbines. The article suggests the discs may be products of advanced German science that possibly fell into Russian hands.
This confidential progress report, dated 4 May 1953 and signed by L. W. Keith, went from the Navy's Photographic Interpretation Center to the Director of Naval Intelligence. It analyzes movies of unidentified objects filmed in Utah on 2 July 1952 and in Montana in 1950, which the U.S. Air Force had asked the Navy to interpret. Using plots, density readings and velocity estimates, the analysts judged the objects to be probably light sources that were disk shaped and moved at high speeds. They concluded the objects could not be identified as natural phenomena or commonly known man-made objects.
This 1949 War Department file 319.1, Flying Discs, is a set of U.S. Air Force Flight Service Center reports on unidentified flying objects sent to the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson. The reports cover sightings over Kansas City and Olathe, Rome, Seattle, Greenville, Spokane, Medford, Columbus, Portland, Mountain Home, Jackson and Chanute AFB. Most remain unexplained, but the Greenville object was found to be a weather balloon. The file also holds a 1948 order telling units to report disc sightings.
This Central Intelligence Agency file gathers the 1953 Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, dated January 17, 1953, and the papers that went with it. The panel was chaired by H. P. Robertson. It found no evidence that the phenomena were a direct threat to national security. It recommended stripping UFOs of their special status and aura of mystery and starting a public education program. The file also holds F. C. Durant's account of the meetings, 1952 CIA memos proposing research, and transmittal letters.
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum for record, dated 18 December 1952 and signed by H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, reports a messenger's account of British activity on flying saucers. It says a British standing committee, now apparently under Dr. R. V. Jones, had concluded the observations were not enemy aircraft. The memo also covers a recent Yorkshire incident where RAF officials saw a "perfect flying saucer", and the Tremonton film. An attached page lists potential dangers such as mass hysteria and communications overload.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation Newark Field Office file covers 1952 to 1967 and mostly holds memos recording phone calls from New Jersey residents about unidentified flying objects. Agents usually passed these reports to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. It also includes a 1952 OSI request to look into the backgrounds of photographer John H. Riley and witness George J. Stock of Passaic, a 1963 Air Force letter to Hoover enclosing a Saucer News item, NICAP correspondence, and newspaper clippings about flying saucer clubs.
This 1952 file of U.S. Air Force intelligence correspondence on flying objects comes from the Directorate of Intelligence at Headquarters USAF. It records the return to the Coast Guard of a negative of objects photographed at Salem Air Station on 16 July 1952, and requests to Naval Intelligence to analyze the Tremonton film by Delbert Newhouse and the Great Falls film by Nicholas Mariana. It also holds Strategic Air Command report transmittals, letters from members of the public, and an Okinawa object said to have fallen into the sea.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation Seattle field office file (100-18945) gathers flying saucer material from 1952 to 1960. It holds newspaper clippings, citizen complaint forms and agent memoranda about sightings over Pasco, Kennewick, Seattle, Richland and the Hanford reservation, Spokane and other Washington locations. The file records 1952 agreements with military intelligence on passing reports to OSI and the Air Force. One Hanford sighting from 1953 was attributed to a meteorological balloon. The FBI itself carried out no investigations.
This audio file records a March 1952 presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, outlining the U.S. Air Force’s reorganized investigation into unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The presentation previews prospective technical methodologies, such as diffraction-grating photography and radar-scope synchronization, that were subsequently incorporated into Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force program active from 1952 to 1969 that investigated the nature and origin of UFOs. Ruppelt explains that out of approximately 800 historical cases reviewed by the Air Force, approximately 20% remained unexplained after technical analysis. These unresolved reports were sourced from credible military personnel, commercial pilots, and other qualified technical observers. He highlights geographic report concentrations around sensitive national security and nuclear weapons installations (including Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories) and notes recurring anomalous characteristics, including silent high-speed flight and radar detections indicating unconfirmed air speeds between 1,000 and 3,500 miles per hour. Emphasizing that the Air Force found no conclusive evidence regarding the nature or origin of the phenomena, Ruppelt underscores the national security need for a systematic physical data collection effort to better evaluate these sightings.
This declassified transcript, released by the Office of the Under Secretary of War, records a March 1952 presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt on the Air Force's reorganized UFO investigation. Ruppelt reports that about 20% of roughly 800 cases remain unexplained and notes clusters of reports near Los Alamos, Albuquerque and Oak Ridge. He discusses the Lubbock lights photographs, the Phoenix 1947 photograph and the Mantell case. He concludes that the Air Force has no firm evidence about what the objects are.
This archival footage is a digitization of a 16mm print of Kodachrome color motion-picture film shot on a handheld Bell & Howell Auto Master camera near Tremonton, Utah, on July 2, 1952. U.S. Navy Chief Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse reported observing and filming a group of bright airborne objects and shortly thereafter submitted the footage to the U.S. Air Force. The film later became one of the visual cases reviewed by Project Blue Book, the 1952–1969 U.S. Air Force program that investigated the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The film’s limited detail and lack of fixed reference points prevented a conclusive resolution. From the 55-second mark onward, the film transitions to unrelated footage appearing to show a demonstration of sewing equipment. The presence of unrelated sewing-equipment footage suggests that the surviving footage may be a composite or reused print, though the available record does not establish how or when the materials came to be combined. As documented in records submitted with the film, contained in this collection under the title DOW-UAP-D102, the footage originally was paired with mountain scenery from Idaho, which is not preserved in this digitization.
This U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book file compiles 1952 and 1953 messages, memos and reports on the movie film Navy Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse shot on 2 July 1952 near Tremonton, Utah. It records interviews with Newhouse's family, requests about the film, and Navy and General Mills balloon experts judging that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons. It also covers internal debate about releasing the film to the press. Unrelated reports from Phoenix, Lexington and Highland Park sightings are included too.
This Project Blue Book photo file, covering Files 1377 and 1415 and dated July 7, 1952, deals with two photos taken by CPO Delbert C. Newhouse. He took them at 1110 MST on 2 July 1952, about 7 miles north of Tremonton, Utah, after his wife noticed a group of objects milling about in rough formation. The file notes there were no reference points for speed, distance or size. It gives the explanation as pillow balloons or birds and includes a General Mills Research Laboratories photo of 2 by 2 foot pillow balloons.
This U.S. Department of State file contains two memoranda dated July 28, 1952. A cover note tells Mr. Armstrong that Paul Nitze had asked for the Air Force view on flying saucers. The attached memorandum records General Samford's answer that the subject remained "a complete enigma" and that "credible observers are reporting the incredible." Samford linked the rise in reports to better radar and pilot reporting and to publicity. He also indicated that the saucers being man-made was a remote possibility.
This memorandum, dated 17 December 1953, went from the CIA's Chief of the Physics and Electronics Division, Office of Scientific Intelligence, to the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence. It reports the status of the unidentified flying objects project, which had been limited to following other agencies' work and keeping files. It says Air Force interest was declining and that ATIC's Project Bluebook had only a small staff and no longer did field investigations. About ten percent of sightings were unsolved, and Bluebook was being transferred to Air Defense Command.
This declassified file from the U.S. Department of War, dated March 1953, contains a Secretary of Defense routing slip and a 13 March 1953 CIA cover letter from Richard D. Drain of the Intelligence Advisory Committee. The letter sends the Secretary of Defense a report by a panel of scientists on "Unidentified Flying Objects." General Smith convened the panel. The letter says its conclusions point to potential dangers to national security, including the cultivation of a morbid national psychology that hostile propaganda could exploit.
This is a Secret History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach of the Central Intelligence Agency, published in 1992. It gives a history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, covering the development and operation of the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART aircraft. It covers overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers, and later operations. One section is titled "U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK."
This October 1955 memorandum from Herbert Scoville Jr., Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence at the CIA, discusses a Prague dispatch reporting two flying saucers seen from a train in Russia. An interview with Mr. Efron, one of four observers, did not confirm several details, and Scoville found his testimony alone insufficient. The memo recalls the Robertson group's conclusion that U.S. sightings posed no security threat and describes a USAF-supported saucer-like aircraft project at Avro Aircraft Ltd. in Canada.
This is a Central Intelligence Agency information report on the USSR, marked as unevaluated information. It records a sighting on 4 October 1955 by a US corporate executive traveling by train from Baku to Tiflis in the Azerbaijan SSR. The source and his companions watched a searchlight follow a triangular object about the size of a jet fighter as it spiraled up from an airfield near the Caspian coast and then climbed steeply. The report adds that an MVD officer had the train's blinds drawn.
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, based on information acquired in November 1955, relays unevaluated information about Hungary from a naturalized US citizen of Hungarian extraction. The source says a niece in Budapest wrote that so-called flying saucers had kept people nervous for several weeks and kept scientific groups busy, with a speed estimated at 12,000 km per hour. A sketch in the letter showed the objects' formation and suspected course between Budapest and Moscow. A translation of the letter is attached.
This 1954 to 1955 file of U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence correspondence gathers letters and memos about the Unidentified Flying Object Program. In one memo, the Air Force says an object that fell at Sylacauga, Alabama was identified as a meteorite at the Air Technical Intelligence Center. Donald Keyhoe questions the Office of Naval Research about the Navy's analysis of the Tremonton film, and the Navy says data are insufficient and it sees no danger. Most of the replies to the public enclose the Air Force UFO summary.
This 1954 to 1955 U.S. Air Force file brings together records on the Avro Canada "flying saucer" project and on UFO reports. It includes a December 1954 Scientific Advisory Board report, sent by J. H. Doolittle, which found the project warranted only limited support. It also holds a July 1955 intelligence committee evaluation of KC-97 crew sightings and radar returns over Newfoundland, which tentatively blamed electrical phenomena and misinterpretation and recommended fighter scrambles. A November 1955 memo on the CIRVIS reporting program closes the file.
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence, dated 31 October 1955, was signed by Herbert Scoville, Jr., Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence. It summarizes debriefings of four observers, including Senator Russell and Colonel Hathaway. From a train traveling from Baku to Tiflis, near Alyaty, they saw glowing, rotating objects rise steeply. The memo finds that only Colonel Hathaway's testimony supports unconventional aircraft and that the evidence does not show the Soviets have a radically new aircraft type.
This U.S. Air Attaché report from Prague (IR 193-55), with a cable sent to USAF headquarters on 13 October 1955, records the debriefing of Senator Richard Russell's party after their travel through the USSR. Lt. Col. E.U. Hathaway and Ruben Efron said that on 4 October 1955, near Atjaty in the Trans Caucasus, the party saw two disc-shaped aircraft take off almost vertically from their train. The report also covers the jet aircraft seen at Dnepropetrovsk, a radar site near Moscow and the railway gauge change at Cop.
This is a Central Intelligence Agency information report, number 00-B-93674, titled "Report of Unusual Flying Object Sightings and Attendant Scientific Activity." It concerns Hungary. The source acquired the information in November 1955, and the CIA distributed it on 17 April 1956. The extracted text holds only the one-page cover sheet and a notice limiting distribution to CIA, AEC, FBI and some State and Defense intelligence staff. The text does not include any details of the sightings or the scientific activity.
This 1957 U.S. Navy personnel file was released under the U.S. Department of War name. It covers Chief Photographer Delbert Clement Newhouse, CWO-4, USN. It holds Records of Emergency Data from 1955 to 1957, a 2 May 1957 request that changed his home of record to Pensacola, Florida, and vouchers for his dependents' travel. It also includes fitness reports from his time as Photographic Officer at the U.S. Naval Base at Santa Elena Bay, Ecuador, and with the Fifteenth Naval District in 1942 and 1943. The file contains no UFO material.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation Detroit file on unidentified flying objects opens in November 1957. The Director ordered an interview with Wladyslaw Krasuski, who had written to presidential assistant Robert Cutler about the rocket in Texas. Krasuski said that in 1944, as a prisoner of war near Gut Alt Golssen, Germany, he saw a circular vehicle rise from a walled enclosure while a tractor engine stalled. Agents noted no sign of mental instability. The file also holds a 1966 inquiry from an Oklahoma UFO group, which was referred to the Air Force.
This is a confidential CIA memorandum dated 9 January 1958. The Chief of the Chicago Office sent it to the Chief of the Contact Division, Support Branch, about closed Case 17708 and Dr. Leon Davidson. It reports that Davidson was told by telephone that his question about a space message and its transmitter could not be resolved, because the evaluating agency had destroyed the records. The memo calls this answer evasive and unfair to him. It notes that Davidson apparently knew he was dealing with CIA and expects to hear more from him.
This FBI office memorandum, dated April 17, 1958, was sent from Special Agent Robert Ross Reynolds to the SAC in Detroit. It records a 4:08 A.M. telephone report from David Weaver, 23. Weaver said he saw a circular object with a crystal-type dome reflecting lights pass northward over Detroit near Six Mile and Lamphere Street. He had tried and failed to reach the Air Force at Selfridge Field. The memo recommends advising the proper Air Force authorities.
During the recovery of the fourth launch and second crewed spaceflight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) Liberty Bell 7, the recovery team discusses a dye pack in the water that did not activate.
This NASA file of astronaut scientific debriefing papers from 1962 collects internal Office of Space Sciences material on the science observations made on early Mercury flights. A February 1962 memo from Maurice Dubin asks for more detail on John Glenn's report of luminous particles and the atmospheric horizon layer. A draft memo concludes that the particles were tied to the spacecraft and were not extraterrestrial. The file also holds a Los Alamos letter that attributes the high haze layer to nitrogen peroxide, and notes on Carpenter's airglow observations.
In November 1962, journalist Walter Cronkite interviewed astronaut Gordon Cooper. In this excerpt from that interview, Cronkite asks Cooper about his views regarding the nature of unidentified flying objects, having previously expressed an interest in the subject. Cooper opines that “a large number of exceptionally well-qualified people have seen objects” without a “logical explanation” and speculates on the existence of other planets with “a livable atmosphere” and that maybe there are “some type of human life” out there. Interview was conducted in November 1962.
During the fourth crewed spaceflight and second orbital flight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 7 (MA-7), Aurora 7 pilot Scott Carpenter describes white particles in view that appear to move at “random” and “look exactly like snowflakes.” He describes these phenomena as reflective, and that some seemed to move faster than the Aurora 7 spacecraft.
During the Mercury Atlas 8 mission, Sigma 7 pilot Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. describes observing “little white objects that tend to come from the capsule itself and drift off.” Schirra later also refers to those objects as “particles” and “lathe shavings.” Schirra also describes seeing a burst of light in the window, whose source he cannot identify. He speculates that his observation corresponds with the moment the sun passes below the horizon during sunset.
Approximately one hour and 41 minutes into the final and longest flight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 9 mission (MA-9) Faith 7 Pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. notes that he sees “John’s fireflies,” referring to John Glenn’s term from the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. NASA later determined that the “fireflies” are attributable to frozen condensation separating from the spacecraft body. The white, green-hued appearance of this phenomenon results from sunlight reflecting off frozen condensation.
During the final and longest flight of Project Mercury, Mercury-Atlas 9 mission (MA-9) Faith 7 Pilot L. Gordon Cooper Jr. describes the brilliant blue of sunrise beneath the haze layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. As he approaches sunrise, he describes small, luminous, brilliant white particles drifting away from the spacecraft. Cooper describes observing “fireflies” after deploying beacons, which are spherical mission-related equipment with xenon strobe lights.
This July 18, 1963 memorandum from Maxwell W. Hunter II of the National Aeronautics and Space Council staff, Executive Office of the President, went to Robert F. Packard of the State Department's Office of International Scientific Affairs. Titled "Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question," it considers policy if an alien intelligence were discovered. It notes that flying saucer advocates exist but sides with scientists that contact is unlikely. It concludes that any alien race's level of space flight should be determined quickly, since that would drastically affect policy.
This FBIS transcript, released through the National Archives under authority NND968063, relays a Rio de Janeiro Radio Tupi broadcast of 8 November 1963. The broadcast said a large metal sphere had fallen in the center of the municipality of Conde, in Bahia, and gouged a hole four meters deep. The sphere reportedly had window-shaped openings covered with thick glass. Inside was a human body in heavy clothing bearing inscriptions nobody could decipher, and the authorities had been informed.