18 6369445 General 1948 Vol 1

This file shows the reporting machinery the Air Force put in place in 1948, once Project Sign was running. Units were told to submit flying disc reports in a fixed format and copy them to the Air Materiel Command and Air Defense Command, and several pages here are those standardized reports moving up the chain.

The Ohio railroad sighting

The clearest example came from Eleventh Air Force headquarters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, citing a command letter of 25 March 1948. It passes on a report received from an FBI special agent in Cleveland about a sighting on the night of 8 May 1948 at Hobson, Ohio. The witnesses were New York Central railroad employees — a car inspector, a yard clerk and a railroad patrolman.

The form’s headings show what the Air Force wanted to know: weather, witnesses, photographs, sketches, number, shape, size, color, speed, heading, maneuvers, altitude, sound and exhaust trail. Here the object was round and phosphorescent, looked about nine inches across from the ground, moved at great speed on a heading of 90 degrees and left a glowing trail; the altitude was put at 6 to 8 miles. Many fields read “unknown,” and the headquarters said it was not opening an investigation of its own.

Other pages

Other routing slips concern a report on a German flying wing designed by the Horten brothers, which Air Force headquarters kept, and other routing paperwork. The scan is rough in places, so some names and details cannot be read.