1949 UAP Sighting — FBI Files (D6P114)
Sightings of flying saucers continued through 1949, correlating with the ongoing Skyhook balloon program. The balloons, equipped with instruments to study cosmic radiation, were often observed as strange, lighted disks in the sky.
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 1949 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
Sightings of flying saucers continued through 1949, correlating with the ongoing Skyhook balloon program. The balloons, equipped with instruments to study cosmic radiation, were often observed as strange, lighted disks in the sky.
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.