Report of Unusual Flying Object Sightings and Attendant Scientific Activity

This is the short version of a CIA Information Report that also appears in this collection as CIA-UAP-018. Both carry the same report number. This copy is a single page: the agency’s summary of what a source told it, without the translated letter that the longer copy attaches.

What the report records

The source was a naturalized U.S. citizen of Hungarian background who corresponded with nieces in Hungary. He quoted a passage from a letter received in November 1955: so-called flying saucers, which the writer also called rockets, had kept people on edge for several weeks, were keeping scientists busy, and had been estimated at 12,000 kilometers per hour. The page reproduces the niece’s sketch of the objects’ formation and suspected route, drawn between Budapest and Moscow.

The report notes that she had never mentioned such objects before and that the original Hungarian letter, with an English translation, could be borrowed from the CIA library. It is marked as unevaluated information, and the dates on the form put the information in late 1955 and the report itself early in 1956.

Reading it today

Nothing here was investigated. The CIA did not name a date, a place or a witness for any sighting; it simply logged a relative’s secondhand account of public excitement in Budapest. Reports like this were gathered during the Cold War largely for what they might hint about Soviet aviation and rocketry.