The Twining Memo: AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs'

Summer 1947. America was seeing flying discs. The wave broke after the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 24 June and filled the press for weeks. In Washington, Brig. Gen. George Schulgen of AC/AS-2, air intelligence, ordered an inquiry and asked the FBI to help question the first witnesses. His office also asked Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, today part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, for its considered opinion.

23 September 1947. Lt. Gen. Nathan F. Twining, commander of Air Materiel Command, signed the reply. It was marked SECRET. The opinion came from a conference of technical staff from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, the Engineering Division and several laboratories. Their first finding was blunt. "The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious."

The letter set down what the reports had in common. Objects "probably approximating the shape of a disc," as large as man-made aircraft. A "metallic or light reflecting surface." "Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top." Usually no trail. Normally no sound, though three times witnesses noted "a substantial rumbling roar." Level flight above 300 knots. Formations of three to nine objects, well kept.

Then the behaviour. "Extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll)," and motion "which must be considered evasive" when approached by friendly aircraft and radar. That, the staff wrote, lent belief to the possibility that some of the objects were "controlled either manually, automatically or remotely."

The letter weighed ordinary answers too. Meteors. A secret domestic project. A foreign nation with propulsion "possibly nuclear." It noted "the lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits." And it recommended a priority, code-named study, with data shared across the Army, Navy, Atomic Energy Commission, NACA and RAND.

Washington moved. On 28 October 1947, Schulgen issued intelligence requirements for "Flying Saucer type aircraft" that echoed Twining's description. In December, Army Intelligence in Berlin interrogated the Horten brothers. On 30 December 1947, Maj. Gen. L. C. Craigie ordered the investigation into being with priority 2-A. First called Project SAUCER, it became Project Sign.

Edward J. Ruppelt, who later headed Project Blue Book, wrote in 1956 that Sign staff drafted a Top Secret "Estimate of the Situation" favouring an extraterrestrial explanation, and that Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg rejected it. No copy has ever surfaced.

The letter reached the public as Appendix R of the Condon Committee's 1969 report. Its source is the National Archives. Its authenticity is not in dispute.

One clause still burns. Skeptics read "crash recovered exhibits" as proof that nothing extraordinary was recovered at Roswell two months earlier. Stanton Friedman replied that a SECRET letter would not mention material classified above Top Secret. Kevin Randle took up the question in 2016. His later book concluded that no alien craft crashed at Roswell.

It should not be confused with the "Cutler/Twining memo," a supposed 1954 document naming "Majestic 12" and widely regarded as a forgery. The 1947 letter is genuine. It is a signed statement that the Air Force's own engineers took the discs seriously. And it set in motion the first official study.