1952 UAP Sighting — AARO Records (D214P17)
H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, briefed the DCI, Walter Bedell Smith, regarding UFOs. Chadwell believed that unexplained objects observed at high altitudes and speeds near U.S. defense installations were not attributable to natural phenomena or known aerial vehic
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 17 of dopsr hrrv1 march2024, an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) document published in 2024-2025. The incident is dated December 1952 and located in Unknown location.
What the document records
H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, briefed the DCI, Walter Bedell Smith, regarding UFOs. Chadwell believed that unexplained objects observed at high altitudes and speeds near U.S. defense installations were not attributable to natural phenomena or known aerial vehicles and required immediate attention.
Witnesses on file: H. Marshall Chadwell.
Verbatim from the file
“something was going on that must have immediate attention”. “sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.”
Status of the case
The page-level assessment recorded in the document is: no agency assessment. AARO designates unresolved cases as those for which the agency 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 recent periods include drones, classified test platforms, satellite re-entry, balloon traffic, atmospheric optical phenomena, and astronomical objects.