UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 01 · MAY 8, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT342 HS1-416511228 319.1 Flying Discs 1949
This is a box file of standardized UFO reports from 1949, filed under decimal 319.1, “Flying Discs.” Most of it consists of incident reports written to comply with Flight Service Regulation (FSR) 200-4, a 1948 regulation on how such sightings were to be reported — which is why so many follow the same pattern.
Who was reporting
The reports come mostly from military sources, with some from the CAA, the federal civil aviation authority of the day, whose staff included airport and airway controllers. Each typically logs the date, place, weather and altitude and then describes the object’s appearance and movement. Mixed in are messages from MATS, the Military Air Transport Service, which flew the military’s transport routes worldwide, and from the Army Airways Communications System (AACS), the Air Force network that handled airways communications at military airfields. One item even comes from a weather station in Japan.
What the file can and cannot tell you
There are also further military intelligence reports and several diagrams. The file is a raw collection of first reports, so most entries carry no final explanation. It shows the reporting system that grew out of Project Sign working at scale, a few years before Project Blue Book took over.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released May 8, 2026, quoted in full
This file primarily contains incident reports on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) written in compliance with the 1948 Flight Service Regulation (FSR) 200-4. The incidents were witnessed by military sources, as well as by some Civilian Aviation Authority (CAA) ones. The reports typically include information such as dates, locations, weather, and altitude, plus detailed descriptions of appearance and movement. Some messages from the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) and Army Airways Communications System (AACS) are also included, as well as additional military intelligence reports, several diagrams, and a report from a weather station in Japan.