1947 UAP Sighting — FBI Files (D16P19 var 2)
On December 30th, Pfc. Viets and Sergt. Salinder observed a red light that was not an airplane or weather balloon. A 13-man detail searched the area where the light was seen, but found nothing. Later, Pfc. Viets' relief also reported seeing the same red light.
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 19 of 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_SUB_A, a declassified FBI vault file released by the Department of War on May 8, 2026 as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The incident is dated Dec. 30 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
On December 30th, Pfc. Viets and Sergt. Salinder observed a red light that was not an airplane or weather balloon. A 13-man detail searched the area where the light was seen, but found nothing. Later, Pfc. Viets’ relief also reported seeing the same red light.
Witnesses on file: Pfc. Viets and Sergt. Salinder.
Verbatim from the file
“That was no airplane. I first thought it might be a weather balloon, but it wasn’t.”. “A 13-man detail arrived (at 11:15 p. m,, Dec. 30) from Camp Barrett and made a search of the area in which the light was first seen, The search proved fruitless.”
Status of the case
The page-level assessment recorded in the file is: no agency assessment. All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office unless otherwise stated, meaning the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded 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), atmospheric optical phenomena, and astronomical objects.