18_100754_ General 1946-7_Vol_2
This file contains memorandums and correspondence related to flying disc/saucer sightings and that those are a matter of concern for the Air Materiel Command.
Document Highlights
Note: Highlights are derived from OCR-recognized document passages and file metadata. Please verify important claims against the original scan.
Short overview
A 28-page bundle of Army Air Forces and Air Materiel Command (AMC) correspondence on “flying discs” from August to December 1947, including Lt. Gen. N. F. Twining’s AMC opinion of September 23, 1947, and the December 1947 instruction for AMC to set up a project to collect and evaluate such reports.
Why this is interesting
The central piece is the AMC opinion signed by Twining (included both as the original and as a copy): the phenomenon is “something real,” there are objects, probably approximately disc-shaped, that appear as large as man-made aircraft, some incidents may be natural phenomena such as meteors, and the lack of crash-recovered physical evidence must be considered. Around it the file traces the path to an official project: an August 1947 summary of common characteristics, Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay’s reply that the Army Air Forces had no research project of that kind, Col. H. M. McCoy’s December 19 letter calling the matter still “one of concern,” and Maj. Gen. L. C. Craigie’s December 30 directive assigning the project priority 2A. Smaller cases show day-to-day handling: photos from Oregon dismissed as film or camera defects, a woman’s theory of Russian-made discs launched from Mexico that the Air Force declined to pursue, and AMC material on the Horten brothers’ flying wings and a “Loedding Flying Disc” drawing.
Selected passages
- “The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.”
- “The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects.”
- “The Army Air Forces has no research project with the characteristics described”