1949 UAP Sighting — FBI Files (D8P213)
In 1949, the FBI issued SAC Letters emphasizing a policy of not investigating unidentified flying objects received in the field. Instead, field offices were instructed to immediately submit any such facts to the Air Force for review. This policy remained in effect as of 1963.
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 213 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 1949 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
In 1949, the FBI issued SAC Letters emphasizing a policy of not investigating unidentified flying objects received in the field. Instead, field offices were instructed to immediately submit any such facts to the Air Force for review. This policy remained in effect as of 1963.
Witnesses on file: FBI agents.
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.