UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 07 · OCTOBER 23, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D157Air Intelligence Information Report, Italy, 1952
This five-page Air Intelligence Information Report (IR-700-53) from the Air Attaché in Rome is dated 15 December 1953 and rated D-4, a low grade for both source and information. Lt. Col. Joseph A. Woida, acting air attaché, prepared it after interviewing the source, Prof. G. B. Sias of Sassari, Sardinia. It went to the Aerial Phenomenon Section at the Air Technical Intelligence Center.
The sighting as Sias told it
Most of the file is a translation of Sias’s own text, signed at Sassari on 19 November 1953. It reprints his article from the local paper Corriere dell’Isola of 28 August 1952: walking in a courtyard of the Sassari Brigade’s war-orphans institute at 2145 on the 27th, he says he saw a small isolated cloud, then a brilliant sphere seem to leave the Milky Way and race east to west, vanishing and reappearing with a thin glowing ribbon behind it, for three to five seconds in all. He cites two other witnesses.
He then reports calculations attributed to Father Junkes of the Vatican Observatory, which put the object far above the earth and kilometers wide, and suggest its colors came from iron and nickel. The closing “personal remarks” turn religious and political, praising America, and he offers to transfer “the secret” of his measuring method to the embassy’s air office.
The attaché’s view and what is missing
Woida found Sias intelligent, pleasant and keen to talk, but “very intense” and close to fanatic, convinced the object was either a secret U.S. device or supernatural, or else the work of another government. A sketch by Sias is listed as an enclosure but is not among the five pages released. Nothing in the file tests the account; the three-to-five-second, east-to-west flash it describes fits a bright meteor at least as well as anything else, though the report does not say so.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released October 23, 2026, quoted in full
This document is an Air Intelligence Information Report (AIIR), a standardized U.S. Air Force reporting form used to record raw information of potential intelligence value for later analysis. The form served as a primary vehicle for U.S. Air Force field intelligence collection throughout the early Cold War, until defense-wide reporting standards were established in the early 1960s.
This AIIR records an August 27, 1952, incident near Sassari, Italy, that was reported in the local Italian press the following day. The U.S. Air Attaché in Rome relayed the translated newspaper account to the Air Force in November 1953 and later interviewed the individual who made the initial report, Professor Giovanni Battista Sias. Sias described observing a brilliantly luminous sphere, slightly larger in apparent size than the full moon, with a green-blue color, silvery brightness, and metallic streaking on its right side. He reported that it moved from east to west at very high speed, intermittently disappearing and reappearing while leaving behind a narrow luminous trail or ribbon. The preparing officer characterized Professor Sias as intelligent, pleasant, and eager to share his account.
All descriptive and estimative language contained in this report reflects the reporter’s subjective interpretation at the time of the event. Such characterizations should not be interpreted as a conclusive indication of the presence or absence of any intrinsic object features or performance characteristics.