1947 UAP Sighting — FBI Files (D8P194)
A Bureau Bulletin established a policy of not investigating unidentified flying objects but instead referring all facts to the Air Force. This policy was reiterated in subsequent SAC letters in 1949 and 1952. The Air Force assured the Bureau it would be advised of any development
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 194 of 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_9, 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 October 1, 1947 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
A Bureau Bulletin established a policy of not investigating unidentified flying objects but instead referring all facts to the Air Force. This policy was reiterated in subsequent SAC letters in 1949 and 1952. The Air Force assured the Bureau it would be advised of any developments of interest.
Witnesses on file: FBI.
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.