65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_164

Short overview

Serial 164 of the FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 holds Air Intelligence Requirements Memorandum Number 4, “Unconventional Aircraft,” issued on February 15, 1949, by Major General C. P. Cabell, Director of Intelligence, U.S. Air Force, and distributed among others to the FBI Director.

Why this is interesting

The memorandum sets out what information the Air Force wanted on sightings of unconventional aircraft and unidentified flying objects, including the so-called flying discs, and how reports were to be sent quickly to the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Its checklist runs from time, place and number of objects through shape, exhaust, lights, propulsion, sound and manner of disappearance to radar observations. It also asks for checks on the observer’s reliability, including with neighbors, police, FBI records and the employer, and for soil samples where an object touched the ground and, if the object came close to other aircraft or known objects, Geiger counter checks of their surfaces. The document shows how systematically the military was collecting such reports by 1949; the serial contains seventeen identical copies of the eight-page memorandum.

Selected passages

• “To enunciate continuing Air Force requirements for information pertaining to sightings of unconventional aircraft and unidentified flying objects,”
• “If object contacted earth, obtain soil samples within and without depression or spot where object landed (and then presumably departed) for purpose of making comparison of soils.”
• “If object came sufficiently near other aircraft or known objects check surfaces with Geiger counters for possible radioactivity.”