Unresolved UAP Report, Catalina Island, 1949

The oldest of the four Catalina Island files in this release is not an Air Force report at all but a short handwritten letter. Dated May 1, 1949, and written from Avalon on Santa Catalina Island, it is addressed to Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho, the private pilot whose 1947 sighting near Mount Rainier led to the press phrase “flying saucers” (see our case file). It is signed by an Avalon resident, named in the file, with a post office box in Avalon.

What the letter says

Around 8 p.m. on April 28, the writer says, his wife and a school teacher saw six objects in the sky, passing one at a time rather than in a group. A few minutes later, at his daughter’s home on the next street, his wife, daughter and grandson saw four more, all heading the same way. He offers to “write more in full” if Arnold is still interested in flying disks and adds that Avalon is about 25 miles from Long Beach. The letter gives no shapes, colors, sizes or times in view, and the writer does not say he saw anything himself.

How it reached the Air Force

A routing slip shows the letter came through the 17th District office at Kirtland Field, New Mexico, dated May 20, 1949, and was recorded on May 26. A pencil note says the Air Materiel Command intelligence office (MCIAXS) did not acknowledge it, and “Insufficient Data” is written at the foot. The Project 10073 record card agrees, counting six objects, “each flew by alone,” with length and course not reported; it leaves out the four later lights. Other Catalina files: 1952, 1953, 1955.