65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_2

Short overview

Section 2 (serials 53–100) of the FBI’s flying disc file 62-HQ-83894, covering late July to early October 1947: field office reports on sightings and alleged discs, liaison memoranda with Army Air Forces intelligence, letters from the public and copies of Fourth Air Force investigation files.

Why this is interesting

A central thread is the FBI’s attempt to find out whether the discs were a U.S. government project: a memo of September 16, 1947, records that Lieutenant Colonel George Garrett of Air Forces intelligence agreed with that possibility, and the file contains Brigadier General George F. Schulgen’s letter of September 5 stating that a survey found no Army Air Forces project with similar characteristics. The Seattle office reports on the Maury Island affair: two men from Tacoma state in writing that their “fragments” were rock from a gravel pit with no connection to a disc, after the two AAF officers who had collected samples were killed in the crash of their B-25 at Kelso. The section also holds copies of Fourth Air Force file 4AF-1208-I, including the private pilot’s own account of nine objects near Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947, and statements from Boise. Further items cover Hackensack, New Jersey, Twin Falls, Idaho, photographs from Phoenix and reports from Portland and Alaska.

Selected passages

• “a complete survey of research activities discloses that the Army Air Forces has no project with the characteristics similar to those which have been associated with the Flying Discs.”
• “Mr. Reynolds pointed out to Colonel Garrett the possible embarrassing position of the Intelligence Division of the Air Forces if it was subsequently ascertained that this was the truth”
• “The following story of what I observed over the Cascade mountains, as impossible as it may seem, is positively true.”