1949 UAP Sighting — FBI Files (D16P56)
In December 1949, an official American body established to investigate 'saucers' was disbanded after two years of operation and 375 investigations. The group concluded that the phenomenon was caused by misinterpretation of conventional objects, mass hysteria, or hoaxes.
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 56 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 December, 1949 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
In December 1949, an official American body established to investigate ‘saucers’ was disbanded after two years of operation and 375 investigations. The group concluded that the phenomenon was caused by misinterpretation of conventional objects, mass hysteria, or hoaxes.
Witnesses on file: official body investigating saucers.
Status of the case
The page-level assessment recorded in the file is: identified as hoax. 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.