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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Military1948
Large plastic Skyhook research balloons, about 100 feet across, were flown in secret for the Navy, unknown to most Air Force pilots. Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt and the Condon report later cited them as the likely cause of many reports, including Capt. Thomas Mantell's fatal 1948 chase.
Photo: US Navy, Public domain
GovernmentDec 1947
The Air Force's first formal study of flying-saucer reports, run by Air Materiel Command at Wright Field. It ran until early 1949, when Project Grudge replaced it.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Government23 Sep 1947
Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining, head of Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, wrote to Army Air Forces headquarters that the disc reports described something real, not imagined, and urged a classified, prioritized study. That study began months later as Project Sign.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Public domain
Close encountersAug 1947
Weeks after Kenneth Arnold's report, a Gallup poll released in August 1947 found that about 90 percent of Americans had heard of flying saucers. Asked what they were, the largest groups gave no answer or called them illusions; others guessed U.S. secret weapons or hoaxes.
Government30 Jul 1947
At the request of Army Air Forces intelligence, FBI headquarters told its field offices to check each flying-disc sighting brought to them and judge whether it was genuine, imagined or a prank. By July 1950 the FBI said the Air Force had taken over and it no longer investigated such reports.
Photo: FBI, Public domain
Government30 Jul 1947
At the request of Army Air Forces intelligence, the FBI told its field offices to check each flying disc sighting brought to them. Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted agents able to examine any discs recovered. The FBI handed the work back to the Air Force in July 1950.
Photo: FBI.gov, Public domain
Military16 Jul 1947
A Fourth Air Force intelligence memorandum dated July 16, 1947 recorded a July 12 interview with Kenneth Arnold in Boise. The interviewer judged that Arnold saw what he described and found his distances consistent with aeronautical charts; copies went to the FBI.
Photo: Associated Press, Public domain
Government11 Jul 1947
A 30-inch metal disc with a plastic dome turned up in a Twin Falls yard during the 1947 saucer wave. An FBI agent alerted his office and Army officers flew in to take it, but police then said four local teenagers had confessed to building it from radio and phonograph parts as a prank.
Photo: Albert William Stevens, Public domain
Military8 Jul 1947
Roswell Army Air Field announced it had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch, and the Army said the next day it was a weather balloon. A 1994 Air Force report concluded the debris most likely came from Project Mogul, a then-secret balloon program.
Photo: Roswell Daily Record, Public domain
Government8 Jul 1947
An FBI Dallas teletype relayed what Eighth Air Force headquarters told agents about the object recovered near Roswell: a hexagonal object hung from a balloon that resembled a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, being flown to Wright Field for examination.
Photo: Roswell Daily Record, Public domain
Military8 Jul 1947
Test pilots, officers and a crew of technicians at Muroc air base in California's Mojave Desert reported round, silvery objects on the morning of July 8, 1947. Edward Ruppelt, later head of Project Blue Book, wrote that this was the first sighting to make the Air Force take a deep interest.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Sightings4 Jul 1947
Shortly after leaving Boise, the crew of a United Air Lines flight reported five flat-bottomed objects silhouetted against the sunset and followed them for about 45 miles. Ten days after Kenneth Arnold's report, it was one of the first airline crew sightings and is cited in a 1952 CIA briefing.
Photo: Crookall, James, Public domain
Sightings4 Jul 1947
During the July 1947 wave, Portland police officers, a harbor patrol crew and residents reported groups of fast, wobbling disks over the city, with sheriff's deputies across the river in Vancouver, Washington, reporting more. Ruppelt summarized the reports from Air Force files.
Sightings4 Jul 1947
Off-duty Coast Guard yeoman Frank Ryman photographed what he called a white saucer from his Lake City home in Seattle. Newspapers ran it the next day as one of the first photos of the 1947 wave; analysts later dismissed it as a weather balloon.
Sightings24 Jun 1947
Private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported nine fast objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Press coverage of his account set off the first U.S. wave of flying saucer reports, and the Air Force later carried the case as unexplained.
Photo: Kenneth Arnold, Public domain
MediaJun 1947
The East Oregonian in Pendleton broke Kenneth Arnold's sighting report and the Associated Press carried it nationally. Within days other newspapers were calling such objects 'flying saucers', a label that stuck for decades. The paper itself says its own reporters did not coin the phrase.
Photo: UPI, Public domain
SightingsJun 1947
Two Tacoma men claimed six doughnut-shaped objects appeared over Puget Sound and one dropped slag-like debris. Two Army Air Forces intelligence officers who looked into it died when their B-25 crashed on the way back. Ruppelt said the official report concluded the men admitted it was a hoax.
Photo: Mark Yasuda, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings12 Feb 1947
A brilliant daytime bolide broke apart over the Sikhote-Alin mountains north of Vladivostok, leaving over 100 pits. Soviet scientist E. L. Krinov investigated; a historian later suggested his mistaken flight path may have led U.S. meteor expert Lincoln LaPaz to suspect a missile.
Photo: H. Raab ( User:Vesta ), CC BY-SA 3.0
Military19 Jul 1946
In summer 1946 Swedes reported hundreds of rocket-like objects; on July 19 witnesses saw one dive into Lake Kolmjarv, but an army search of the lakebed found nothing. A Defence Staff committee attributed many reports to meteors, suspected Soviet tests for the rest, and never found proof.
Photo: Swedish military photo, Public domain
Military5 Dec 1945
Five Navy TBM Avengers with 14 men vanished on a training flight from NAS Fort Lauderdale after the leader reported being lost; a PBM Mariner sent to search was also lost with 13 aboard. The planes likely ran out of fuel at sea. The case later fed Bermuda Triangle and UFO lore.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
