FOIA: Memo; Flying Objects Incidents in the USA November 1948

Ltr_Flying_Objrct_ Incidents_in_the_United_States.pdf
Memo: Flying Objects Incidents in the United States November 1948
Fair Quality Scans of letters from Maj. Gen. Cabell and Col. H. M. McCoy regarding the Flying Objects Incidents in the U.S. report.
Document date: 1948-11-03
Department: USAF Air Intelligence Division
Author: Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, Col. H. M. McCoy
Document type: Memorandum, Letters
pages: 4


Archivist's Notes: Letter from Maj. Gen Cabell advises the need for a study and for information on Flying Objects incidents over the US. Letter from Col. H. M. McCoy responds to the request with information on the ufo phenomenon

This document is about the creation of Project Sign, the forerunner of Project Grudge and later on the well known Project Blue Book. Air Force headquarters in Washington send this classified document to the Air Force command of Wright Patterson AFB in a response of a earlier report/request from this AFB into the regards of unidentified flying objects. Is worth noting that at the beginning the government and the military had the tendency of informing the American public about the phenomena and their origin, if they were friendly or hostile. (As we all know this attitude later was to change).

In the report is stated that till the moment this document was created they were 180 cases identified and investigated by the Air Force classifying them in four groups:

1. Flat disc of circular or approximately circular

2. Torpedo or cigar shaped aircrafts with no wings or fins visible in flight

3. Spherical or balloon shaped objects

4. Balls of light with no apparent form attached

After this the document goes on explaining some of the cases investigated by Air Force pinpointing that the possibility that this flying objects are of non terrestrial origin has been taken in consideration. The documents concludes that at the moment no results or conclusions were meet due to the unknown nature of the phenomena and the lack of more detailed datas.

Short document and not very clear to go through but interesting nonetheless.

I've got to make a correction about the Project Sign. Since I wasn't clear in my previous post I want to specify that the date when Project Sign was established is january 22, 1948 with the proposal of Nathan Farragut Twining, general of the Air Force. The document in this thread is about a report sent to Wright Patterson AFB as part of the Project Sign.

Here is the estimate of the situation, part of the same document which I found it online:

Air Materiel Command (Project Sign) Estimate of the Situation

An Estimate of the Situation is just as the name implies: how intelligence personnel perceive the situation to be at the time the Estimate is written. An EOTS is a common intelligence document for informing the command and staff of current thinking on an intelligence topic. Staff intelligence is supposed to be able to give the commander and his subordinates an assessment of the situation at all times. Ten minutes after an EOTS is prepared it may be superseded and made irrelevant by new information. As new information is added, such estimates are constantly revised or completely rewritten.

Ruppelt dates the start of work on the AMC EOTS, which concluded that UFOs represented interplantery craft, from about the end of July, with completion and dispatch about the end of September. His description of the physical appearance of the document and the contents of the EOTS are similar to the "Analysis." When the "Analysis" was found, some felt this document was the one to which Ruppelt referred and he had "hyped" its contents. Former Major Dewey Fournet confirmed the EOTS as described by Ruppelt did exist, and a copy survived in the USAF Intelligence files. From the _Memorandum for Record_ by Fournet it would seem that as late as June, 1952, he was not aware of the existence of the EOTS. Several other knowledgeable persons have referenced the EOTS or alluded to it. Fournet has said that the EOTS could probably be found in the Current Intelligence Files or the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) files at the HQ, USAF.

Several incomplete searches have been made for this document. I recently searched the Directorate of Intelligence, TOP SECRET Current Intelligence Files Branch 1946-1954, and all available ATIC documents at National Archives II. Current Intelligence files are not in chronological order. Most everyone who has visited the archives has gone through these. I estimate about 40% of the material was withdrawn at time of declassification in 1987. Everyone had a say on withdrawal, CIA, DOD, USN, British Government, etc.

For more check the link: 1948 UFO DOCUMENTS: Background

Lines 7and 8 were most interesting to me:

**"All information that has been made available to this headquarters indicates that the disks, the cigar shaped objects, and the balls of light are not of domestic origin".**

At this point they were still not being told to squash the story and remember these reports were Classified so they were more apt to speak honestly and plainly.

**"Engineering investigation indicates that disk or wingless aircraft could support themselves in flight by aerodynamics (?mean). It is probable that the problems of stability and control could also be solved for such aircraft. However according to current aerodynamic theory in this country, aircraft with such configurations would have relatively poor climb, altitude and range characteristics with power plants now in use."**

Sounds like they were more interested at this point about the back engineering challenge than whether or not they actually existed. And what do power plants have to do with it?

**"The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet have not been ignored."**

This is awesome work, thank you for putting these up.

This caught my eye from line 12:

A report summarisingthe results obtained from analysis of the data and a technical investigation of the engineering aspects of the object described, is nearly complete, and a copy will be forwarded to your headquarters in the near future.

Please tell me you have this document somewhere