342_HS1-416511228_319.1 Flying Discs 1949
This file primarily contains incident reports on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) written in compliance with the 1948 Flight Service Regulation (FSR) 200-4. The incidents were witnessed by military sources, as well as well as by some Civilian Aviation Authority (CAA) ones. The reports typically include information such as dates, locations, weather, and altitude, plus detailed descriptions of appearance and movement. Some messages from the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) and Army Airways Communications System (AACS) are also included, as well as additional military intelligence reports, several diagrams, and a report from a weather station in Japan.
Document Highlights
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Short overview
A U.S. Air Force file, decimal 319.1 “Flying Discs,” collecting reports on unidentified flying objects from October 1948 to January 1950, most of them sent by Air Force flight service centers to the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB under Flight Service Regulation 200-4 of November 2, 1948.
Why this is interesting
The file runs in reverse order, from a Lowry report of January 9, 1950, on two brilliant white spheres over Kansas City back to the 1948 directives that set the reporting rules, including the Headquarters USAF letter of February 6, 1948, with its checklist of number, shape, speed, sound and exhaust trail. In between are reports from McChord, Maxwell, Olmsted, Carswell, Hamilton, March and Fairfield-Suisun, among them a silver ball over Fort Worth estimated at over 1,000 mph, an airliner pilot near Portland who turned to intercept a light, and an object over Hickam Field that a witness believed was under absolute control. Other pieces come from a Navy intelligence report on a luminous object over Kodiak, Alaska, a ship’s officers’ account of three objects near the San Andres Islands, and translated Japanese weather-station telegrams of January 1949 that mostly describe a bright glow as probably a meteor. Many forms also record the officers’ checks against radar, balloon releases and flight schedules.
Selected passages
- “Witness stated that it was his opinion that this object was under absolute control at all times and that definite gyrations were being executed.”
- “It did not appear to burn out, but suddenly disappeared.”
- “Suming up the reports by eye-witnesses this phenomenon might be the explosion of a meteor.”