Government and military
What the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA and ODNI collected, concluded and released. 148 events, newest first.
Military20 Sep 1952
During the NATO exercise Mainbrace, a U.S. reporter aboard a carrier in the North Sea photographed a silver sphere that pilots and deck crew were watching. Naval Intelligence found no ship that had launched a balloon, and witnesses split over whether it was one.
Photo: AFC J.J. Swartz, U.S. Navy, Public domain
Government23 Aug 1952
A CIA foreign-documents report translated a Greek newspaper story about Oskar Linke, a former East German mayor who fled west and gave a sworn statement that he and his daughter saw two men in shiny clothing beside a landed, frying-pan-shaped object that then rose and flew off.
Government1 Aug 1952
Reporting for a CIA study group formed after the 1952 sighting wave, Edward Tauss of the Office of Scientific Intelligence found most sightings easily explained but advised continued monitoring with the Air Force, while keeping CIA interest from the press and public.
Sightings31 Jul 1952
Photos of a domed disc said to be taken in Passaic, New Jersey were widely printed. Air Force intelligence (ATIC) found no independent witnesses and judged the pictures suspicious and easily faked, though it said they were never proven a hoax.
Government29 Jul 1952
Maj. Gen. John Samford, Air Force Director of Intelligence, held a Pentagon press conference on the Washington sightings. He said the reports showed no threat to the U.S., that temperature inversions might explain the radar returns, and that the objects were not U.S. tests.
Photo: US Gov, Public domain
Government29 Jul 1952
Days after the Washington radar sightings, Ralph L. Clark, acting head of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence, sent the Deputy Director for Intelligence a memo on recent unexplained sightings. The CIA's own history says the agency then formed a special OSI study group on the reports.
Government28 Jul 1952
Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a minute to the Secretary of State for Air asking what the flying saucer stories amounted to. The Air Ministry replied on August 9, 1952, citing a 1951 intelligence study that found conventional explanations for the reports.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Government29 Apr 1952
Air Force Letter 200-5 told every Air Force base to wire UFO reports to the Air Technical Intelligence Center and the Pentagon, followed by fuller reports by mail. Edward Ruppelt wrote that it also let Project Blue Book contact any Air Force unit directly.
MilitaryMar 1952
A CIA report translated a Vienna newspaper story that two fiery discs maneuvered over uranium mines near Elisabethville, Belgian Congo, and that a fighter pilot from the local airfield chased them without success. The CIA marked it unevaluated; it was never confirmed.
Photo: CIA, Public domain
GovernmentJun 1951
A small Ministry of Defence scientific intelligence working party set up in 1950 delivered a secret report concluding that saucer sightings were misidentified aircraft, balloons, astronomical objects, illusions or hoaxes, and advised against further study without material evidence.
Photo: Bernard Hailstone, Public domain
Military10 Feb 1951
Crew of a Navy R5D flying from Keflavik to Argentia, including Lt. Graham Bethune, reported a glow that rose toward them and turned into a large circular object before leaving. Five aboard filed Air Force intelligence reports. The Air Force suggested the aurora or a meteor; Bethune disputed this.
Photo: USAAF, Public domain
Government22 Mar 1950
A one-page memo from FBI Washington field office head Guy Hottel to J. Edgar Hoover relayed a third party's story that three saucers with small bodies had been recovered in New Mexico. The FBI says it never investigated the claim and that the memo is unrelated to Roswell.
Photo: Guy Hottel, Public domain
Government16 Feb 1949
Los Alamos lab staff met with FBI, Atomic Energy Commission and military representatives to discuss green fireballs seen over New Mexico. The meeting judged them no serious threat and led to Project Twinkle, a camera watch that was never fully set up and ended about two years later.
Government31 Jan 1949
A confidential FBI San Antonio memo to J. Edgar Hoover, filed under 'Protection of Vital Installations', said the Army and Air Force treated flying saucer reports as a top-secret matter and that recent sightings were concentrated near the Atomic Energy Commission site at Los Alamos.
Government10 Dec 1948
A Top Secret Air Force and Navy intelligence study reviewed about 210 sighting reports. It found something was being seen but its nature was unknown, and said that if the objects were foreign, a Soviet source would be most logical. Copies survived a 1950 order to destroy it.
Military4 Nov 1948
A top secret U.S. Air Forces in Europe intelligence cable reported recurring saucer sightings, including an object over Neubiberg Air Base, and relayed Swedish officers' view that some reflected advanced technology. The Pentagon included it in its May 2026 UFO records release.
Photo: USAAF, United States Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB Alabama., Public domain
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
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
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
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
