Documents / FOIA release
This FBI file section collects July 1947 Bureau memoranda, teletypes, citizen letters and newspaper clippings about reported flying discs. They cover recovered objects at Twin Falls, Idaho, Shreveport, Louisiana, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and Laurel, Maryland, many judged to be pranks, plus a Grafton, Wisconsin priest's circular saw blade the Milwaukee office called a hoax. A Dallas teletype reports a disc recovered near Roswell resembling a high altitude weather balloon with radar reflector. Kenneth Arnold's own account of his sighting is also included.
“FBI”14 pages
Office Memorandum . UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
TO : D. M. Ladd
FROM :
SUBJECT: FLYING DISCS
DATE:
July 11, 1947
SAC hannister of the Butte Office called at noon today and stated that a Twin Falls, Idaho, at 2:45 a.m. Mountain Time today heard a noise in the back of her home. She thought a collision had occurred and investigated and found in the back yard of the home next door an object described as follows:
A disc $30\frac{1}{2}$" in diameter, circular in shape, it is dished like a saucer and actually there is a saucer within a saucer in the manner of cymbals. On one surface there is attached a plastic dome described as about $14"$ in diameter and affixed by 8 bolts in a rather rough manner. The bolts can best be described as similar to stove bolts. On the other surface is another dome of metal which is gold in color on one side and on the inside is silver in color, which looks like tin. Through the plastic dome can be observed three tubes similar to radio tubes and there is some wiring. The disc generally is $10"$ thick and at the point where the domes are located about $14"$ in thickness. There is an object on it similar to electric coil which has some type of an arm on it and bears the words "Inspected TS". Some of the wiring has been burned off and it looks as though something might be missing.
stated that if this were the work of some prankster he went to quite a bit of trouble. He stated the press is aware of this incident. He stated that the disc had been picked up and was now at the Police Department, Twin Falls, Idaho. He was instructed to notify the local Army authorities of the existence of this disc. FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 79 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.