1947 UAP Sighting — FBI Files (D6P114)
Reports of strange objects in the sky began in 1947, coinciding with the start of the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) experiments with Skyhook balloons. These balloons, designed to carry instruments for cosmic research, were often observed as lighted disks, especially at dusk. T
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 114 of 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_6, 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 1947 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
Reports of strange objects in the sky began in 1947, coinciding with the start of the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) experiments with Skyhook balloons. These balloons, designed to carry instruments for cosmic research, were often observed as lighted disks, especially at dusk. The objects were described as round, cup-shaped, and sometimes trailing an exhaust.
Witnesses on file: civilian observers.
Status of the case
The page-level assessment recorded in the file is: identified as balloon. 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.