British activity in the Field of "Unidentified Flying Objects"

This two-page memo for the record, dated 18 December 1952, was written by H. Marshall Chadwell, the CIA’s Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, at the moment his office was deciding how seriously to take UFOs. It passes on what a messenger just back from Britain had learned from R. V. Jones, the physicist who headed British scientific intelligence.

What the British told the CIA

According to the memo, Britain had set up a standing committee on flying saucers roughly sixteen months earlier, apparently now under Jones, and it had concluded that the sightings were not enemy aircraft. Things had been quiet until about ten to twelve days before, when during a demonstration at an RAF airfield in Yorkshire a “perfect flying saucer” was seen by visiting senior RAF officials and pilots. The press picked it up, which troubled Jones because correcting public opinion was part of his job. Jones also pointed to the Swedish reports, presumably those of 1946, and to Chladni’s classic work on the origin of meteorites. The messenger told him about the Navy film from Tremonton, Utah (see the Blue Book file), and Jones might ask for a copy.

The real worry

The second page explains why the CIA cared even without believing in visitors. It says nothing suggested the objects were a direct threat, but lists three risks: slow identification could weaken early warning of an attack; an enemy could stir up mass hysteria with faked reports; and floods of reports could jam military communications. Chadwell planned to raise these with civil-defense and communications bodies. The same worries shaped the UFO review panel the CIA convened a month later.