Oak Ridge, Tennessee UFO Sighting (July 1947) — FBI Files
A first saucer wave case from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In July 1947, William Presley took photographs of an unidentified object flying over Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Background
In July 1947, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 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 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
In July 1947, William Presley took photographs of an unidentified object flying over Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The Air Force examined the negatives and determined a flaw in the film caused an apparent trail. They concluded a drop of liquid, either water or developer, rolled across the negatives, creating the observed effect.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Verbatim from the file
““When the negative, containing the sphere, is examined by strong incident light, it is noted that the emlsion is raised at that point above the normal level of the remaining emulsion.”. ““To further substantiate this, it will be noted that when the two (2) negatives are placed side by side with the edges of the film aligned, the so-called “trail” is con- tinuous, that is the two sections match, indicating the drop rolled on from one negative to the next.”. ““Sill further proof is shown on the fogged edge of the negative containing only the trail.”
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.