Portland, Oregon UFO Sighting (July 7, 1947) — FBI Files
A first saucer wave case from Portland, Oregon. Two patrolmen and licensed pilots observed three flat, round, white discs flying at high speed in a southerly direction.
Background
On July 7, 1947, in Portland, Oregon, 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
Two patrolmen and licensed pilots observed three flat, round, white discs flying at high speed in a southerly direction. The objects maintained a straight-line formation, with the last disc exhibiting rapid, erratic movement. The witnesses estimated the altitude at 40,000 feet and noted the absence of any visible means of propulsion or trails.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Verbatim from the file
““three flat round disos, having a white color to them.””. ““flying at a terrific speed in a Southerly direction away from Portland.””. ““They saw no evidence of any motivating j powers and vapor trails or smoke trails.””
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.