18_6369445_General_1948_Vol_1
This file contains memorandums, correspondence, and forms related to the reporting of information on flying discs and investigations into sightings.
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 U.S. Air Force headquarters file of letters, indorsements and routing sheets from September 1947 to June 1948 on the reporting and investigation of “flying discs,” largely forwarded to Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Why this is interesting
The file documents how the reporting system was set up: a February 1948 comment signed by C. P. Cabell states the policy of collecting such reports, names Air Materiel Command as the responsible office and lists what a report should contain, from location and weather to the object’s shape, speed and exhaust trail. A proposal from Air Materiel Command to keep fighter or night interceptor aircraft with gun cameras on continuous alert at every installation was rejected in March 1948 as too costly and impractical without complete radar coverage. Individual reports include two objects seen falling near Bakersfield, California, in March 1948 and a phosphorescent object with a trail seen by railroad employees at Hobson, Ohio, on the night of May 8, 1948, passed on by the FBI in Cleveland. Several items concern the German Horten brothers’ flying wings, including a 1947 Air Materiel Command letter enclosing a Royal Aircraft Establishment technical note on Horten tailless aircraft and a February 1948 note that contact had been made with the brothers for an interrogation. Index cards refer to Project “SIGN.”
Selected passages
- “It is Air Force policy not to ignore reports of sightings and phenomena”
- “The outlay of aircraft and personnel would be too great consistent with the results to be obtained.”
- “Description of objects similar to falling aircraft with smoke and debris trailing.”