Black Forest, Austria UFO Sighting (November 1944) — FBI Files (D1P65)
A foo fighters era case from Black Forest, Austria. While working as a test pilot on a top-secret project, Paul Peyerl observed a saucer-shaped aircraft approximately 21 feet in diameter.
Background
In November 1944, in Black Forest, Austria, U.S. government investigators recorded an unidentified-object incident later released to the public on May 8, 2026 as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The incident is one of the foo-fighter-era reports from the Second World War, when allied aircrews repeatedly described unexplained luminous objects pacing their bombers. The case was filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose Knoxville, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and other field offices routed UFO reports to headquarters under the Bureau’s standing protocols for the protection of vital installations.
What the document records
While working as a test pilot on a top-secret project, Paul Peyerl observed a saucer-shaped aircraft approximately 21 feet in diameter. The craft was radio-controlled and featured jet engines around its exterior, with a revolving outer section around a stationary central dome. Peyerl photographed the object at an altitude of 7,000 meters (20,000 feet) and retained a negative.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Type of case
The case includes photographic or video evidence of the unidentified object.
Status
All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) by default. The federal government has not concluded that the events were anomalous, has not concluded that they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Conventional candidates for sightings of this period include experimental aircraft, weather balloons (especially the Project Mogul series in the late 1940s), atmospheric optical phenomena such as sundogs and lenticular clouds, and astronomical objects including Venus, the Moon, and meteors near the horizon.