65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_130

Short overview

Serial 130 of the FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 is a 126-page bundle of Army Air Forces intelligence material on the “flying disc” wave of summer 1947, with interview reports, sworn statements, base intelligence files and press clippings from July to September 1947.

Why this is interesting

The file gathers reports forwarded by the Air Defense Command, the Fourth and Fifteenth Air Forces, the Newfoundland Base Command, Williams Field in Arizona, Tinker Field, the Naval Research Laboratory and others, among them a Pan American crew’s orange cylinder near Boston on August 4, 1947, and a sworn statement by Major Archie B. Browning about a bright disc seen from a B-25 on July 6, 1947. It also contains a prospector’s letter about a formation of flying discs he says he saw in the Mt. Adams district on June 24, 1947, which the Fourth Air Force on August 25, 1947, referred to the FBI in San Francisco, and a memo from Richmond, Virginia, on a metallic disc seen through a theodolite during pilot-balloon observations. Its most striking page is an unsigned assessment that, based on reports judged reliable, concludes the phenomenon is not imaginary and describes metallic, circular objects the size of a C-54, flying in formations of three to nine at over 300 knots. Alongside are skeptical items, such as a citizen’s written statement of July 1947, forwarded from Tinker Field, explaining many discs as reflections in car windows.

Selected passages

• “From detailed study of reports selected for their impression of veracity and reliability, several conclusions have been formed:”
• “too much in some natural phenomenon. Something is really flying around.”
• “until I started to turn into it, then it completely disappeared.”