Alaska UFO Sighting (September 1947) — USAF Files

Background

In September 1947, in Alaska, 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 first wave of “flying saucer” reports that swept the United States after the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 1947 and the Roswell incident of July 1947. The case appears in U.S. Department of Defense documents.

What the document records

An intelligence report mentioned a flying disc incident in Alaska in September 1947. The sighting was reported as occurring at close range, suggesting the need for a more detailed report. A follow-up investigation is requested.

The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.

Type of case

The witnesses described the object as disc- or saucer-shaped.

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.

Sources

• [Original release on war.gov](https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/18_100754_ general 1946-7_vol_2.pdf)
• Department of War UFO Disclosure Portal
• AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office)