Oak Ridge, Tennessee UFO Sighting (January 16, 1951) — FBI Files (D6P109)
A first saucer wave case from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. On January 16, 1951, multiple observers near Oak Ridge, Tennessee reported a bright, descending airborne object.
Background
On January 16, 1951, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S. government investigators recorded an unidentified-object incident later released to the public on May 8, 2026 as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The incident is one of the first wave of “flying saucer” reports that swept the United States after the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 1947 and the Roswell incident of July 1947. The case was filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose Knoxville, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and other field offices routed UFO reports to headquarters under the Bureau’s standing protocols for the protection of vital installations.
What the document records
On January 16, 1951, multiple observers near Oak Ridge, Tennessee reported a bright, descending airborne object. Initial observations described it as brighter and larger than a star, at approximately 6,000 feet. An F-82 aircraft was scrambled to intercept, but ultimately the object was identified as a star by both the aircraft and ground observers.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Verbatim from the file
“An unusual airbourne object was sighted approximately 10 miles WwW of the station”. “the lighted object was very similar to a star but mech brighter and slightly larger than other visible stars at the time”. “Visual observation reported by Oak Ridge Ground Observers, 12 miles southeast of K-25 area”
Type of case
The case is a pilot or aircrew sighting, observed from the cockpit during flight.
Status
All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) by default. The federal government has not concluded that the events were anomalous, has not concluded that 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 in the late 1940s), atmospheric optical phenomena such as sundogs and lenticular clouds, and astronomical objects including Venus, the Moon, and meteors near the horizon.