Alaskan Air Command Regulation 200-5 (1953): How Alaska Reported UFOBs

What this record is

This is a command regulation: Alaskan Air Command Regulation (AACR) 200-5, “Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting”, issued by Headquarters Alaskan Air Command at Elmendorf Air Force Base on 24 December 1953. It is in the Intelligence series of regulations and applied to every unit assigned or attached to the command. The PDF has eight pages. Pages 1 and 2 are cover and declassification sheets, and the regulation itself fills pages 3 to 8. It was unclassified. It went out by order of the commander over the signature of Brigadier General Hugh A. Parker, Deputy Commander, and was authenticated by the command’s executive officer, a colonel whose name is not legible in the scan.

A note at the foot of page 3 of the PDF says this edition superseded an earlier AACR 200-5 dated 16 July 1953, so the command had revised its UFO instructions twice within six months. The entire document concerns UFOs, which is why it is in the transfer.

What it says about UFOs

Every page is about UFOs, and the regulation uses the Air Force’s term of the day, “UFOB”. Nine numbered paragraphs cover purpose and scope, a definition, background, responsibilities, exceptions, material evidence, reports, references and exemption from reports control.

The definition on page 3 of the PDF calls unidentified flying objects any airborne object that, by performance, aerodynamic characteristics or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type. The background paragraph is notably even-handed. It says the Air Force had analysed UFO reports continuously for several years, that the analysis had “neither proved nor disproved” that such objects existed, and that the possibility of a future flying object unconventional by present standards created a continuing need for reports. Unit commanders had to make sure their personnel knew what to report and how. The Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson AFB was named as the office responsible for the final study and analysis of all UFOBs.

Page 4 sets out the exceptions and the rules on evidence. Sightings made from an aircraft in flight were first to be radioed under the military’s CIRVIS procedure (JANAP 146(B)) and then followed up with the full report this regulation required. Anyone in the command who came into possession of material that might be connected with a UFO incident had to safeguard it against defacing or alteration and notify ATIC and Alaskan Air Command headquarters at once for shipping instructions.

The reporting rules take up pages 4 to 7. Reports were to go out immediately by electrical message, with the priority set by the originator according to apparent intelligence importance. Each report was to cover a single incident and to be confirmed by a written report within three days. Electrical messages had to begin with the word “UFOB”. Reports were not to be classified unless the required details made it necessary. Local publicity was reserved to the command’s Public Information Office.

The message format is the familiar Air Force checklist: shape; size compared with a known object held at arm’s length, chosen from a fixed list running from the head of a pin through pea, dime, nickel, quarter, half dollar, silver dollar, baseball and grapefruit to basketball; colour, number and formation; features, trail or exhaust; sound; how the object was first noticed; elevation and azimuth at first sighting and at disappearance; flight path and manner of disappearance; time in sight; whether it was seen from the ground or the air, by eye or by radar; optical aids; the Zulu time and light conditions; observer locations; names, ages, occupations and a reliability estimate for each witness; weather and winds aloft at set altitudes from the surface to 80,000 feet; any physical evidence; any interception attempted; other air traffic in the area; and the preparing officer’s own preliminary analysis.

The written follow-up was to be made on AF Form 112 or by letter, with photographs, sketches and signed narrative statements from witnesses attached. Angles, locations and flight paths were to be drawn on aeronautical charts or maps (page 7 of the PDF). Messages went to the Director of Intelligence at Headquarters USAF, to ATIC, to Air Defense Command at Ent AFB, Colorado, and to Alaskan Air Command’s intelligence directorate. The references on page 7 are AFR 200-2 and JANAP 146(B).

Context

AACR 200-5 is Alaska’s local implementation of Air Force Regulation 200-2, the service-wide UFO reporting order first issued in August 1953 and reissued in August 1954. Its definition matches the one in the 1954 edition of AFR 200-2 word for word, and so do its size-comparison list and much of its reporting format. The regulation sent the analysis to ATIC, whose UFO desk was Project Blue Book. For how the service-wide regulation developed, see the transfer’s copy of the 1962 edition of AFR 200-2. Alaska had its own reasons to take reports seriously: it faced the Soviet Union across the Bering Strait, and sightings there had been circulating through Air Force intelligence since the late 1940s, as the Fifth Air Force’s September 1948 digest shows.

Status

This is a procedure, not a sighting. It shows how a frontline command wanted UFO reports handled at the end of 1953, the year of the Robertson Panel: quickly, in a fixed format, with physical evidence protected and publicity kept in official hands. Its statement that the evidence had “neither proved nor disproved” the existence of such objects is a fair summary of the Air Force’s official position at the time. The regulation does not reveal how many reports Alaska actually sent, or what became of them.

Sources

• National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/659965412
• PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/656595571/00508197_HDQ_Alaskan_Air_Command_Reg_200-5_Intell.pdf
• Series: Records from the Department of the Air Force Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/656595571
• National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615