THE DOCUMENT
DOW-UAP-D105, “US Air Force Flying Discs File September December 1952”, a Department of War record from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 06, published at war.gov/ufo on 18 September 2026. The title is the release’s, taken from the file name. The record has no title page; the nearest thing to a title is the folder tab at p. 1, handwritten and cut off at the left edge, which reads 0.9 FLYING DICSC, with SEPT - DEC and 1952 at the top right, and many working papers carry the file number 000.9 Flying Discs in their margins, all read from the page images. It is 253 pages from Headquarters USAF: the working correspondence file of office AFOIN-2A2 within the Topical Division, Deputy Director for Estimates, Directorate of Intelligence. It holds disposition forms to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), memoranda for record, replies to members of the public, and copies of letters, messages and reports that came in. The office’s own papers are dated from 25 August 1952 (p. 253) to 19 December 1952 (pp. 3 to 5) and filed broadly latest first, with the papers they answer or forward, some older, among them a report of 6 October 1950 (pp. 19 to 24); one reply at p. 45 is typed 10 November 1953 but date-stamped 12 November 1952. Many papers carry a RESTRICTED or CONFIDENTIAL stamp struck through, with SECURITY INFORMATION beneath. The folder cover carries a modern box reading DECLASSIFIED, Authority NND 841508, and a stamp with the same number; the copy of an FBI report at p. 176 carries its own stamp, Authority NW 34267, NARA, dated 7/16/26. No FOIA exemption code appears, and apart from one black marker bar over an unreadable line at p. 199 nothing is blacked out; private citizens’ names, home addresses and telephone numbers are printed in the clear.
Why this one is worth your time
Release 05 Briefing 5 read DOW-UAP-D100, the Directorate of Intelligence’s working file on flying discs for 1947 to 1948. D105 is a file of the same kind four years on, from the same directorate, filed under flying discs, broadly latest first; that the two belong to one series is an inference from those features, not something either file states.
Release 06 Briefing 1 read the Project Blue Book case folder on the Tremonton film, DOW-UAP-D102, and pointed here for the memorandum matching reference (b) of the Navy’s 1953 analysis of that film, which is here. Most of the file, though, is the office’s traffic with ATIC, other agencies and the public, and among the items in which the office does more than forward paper are three this briefing follows: a staff study on a reporting channel, an FBI laboratory’s findings on physical evidence, and an officer’s visit to a circle on a lawn.
What the document says
The office and its traffic. The recurring subject line on the forms to ATIC is “Material for Project Blue Book”. Maj Fournet’s name appears on more than a hundred pages, most often in the drafter line, and Col William A. Adams, Chief, Topical Division, is typed in many signature blocks. A letter of 29 October 1952 to President Truman, copied at p. 49, asks him to unveil the secrecy of an Air Force report said to conclude that flying saucers come from outside this planet; the reply of 12 November (pp. 47 to 48) says no recent report reaching conclusions on their existence has been prepared, no facts have been withheld from the public, and sufficient evidence is not available to support any firm conclusions. The office’s earliest paper (p. 253, 25 August 1952) concerns an object said to have fallen into the sea off Okinawa in November 1950; by 2 October the office judged a recovery attempt impractical (p. 126).
The Navy analysis, from the Air Force end. Pages 26 to 27 hold the office’s coordination copy of the memorandum of 24 October 1952 to the Director of Naval Intelligence, attention Op 322Y5, typed for Col John G. Eriksen; the signature line is blank, and a handwritten Col Eriksen stands in the coordination block, read from the page image. It calls the movies possibly the best documentary evidence yet obtained on unidentified flying objects, says an Air Force photographic laboratory had analysed them, asks for as complete an interpretation as possible by a Navy activity, and gives the sun’s position as 64.5 degrees elevation, 131 degrees azimuth. Six of its seven inclosures follow, all but the film, ending at pp. 35 to 36 with the ten questions headed SUGGESTED POINTS FOR ANALYSIS, pencilled Enc 7, read from the page image. A second coordination copy, of 24 November 1952 (p. 18), typed for Col Adams, asks that a further roll of 16 mm Kodachrome be analysed in the same manner and compared with the first. Filed behind it is a copy of a 1950 report to the 5th District, Office of Special Investigations, on film taken at Great Falls, Montana (pp. 19 to 24), and a form of 14 November says an attempt will be made to have the Navy analyse the film its letters to Great Falls concern with the Tremonton movies (p. 43); the memorandum itself does not name the roll. Release 06 Briefing 1 tells the Tremonton side from D102.
A staff study on CIRVIS. A form written on 23 September 1952 and stamped out on 25 September sent ATIC a staff study on CIRVIS and flying object report procedures for comment, since it contains revisions which affect Project Blue Book (p. 158). The memorandum for record behind it (pp. 159 to 160) is not in the released text layer; what follows is read from the page image. JANAP 146(B), Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings while Airborne, needed revising: there was confusion over who evaluated CIRVIS reports; the number of reports of unidentified flying objects arriving over CIRVIS channels in the cyclic flurries of sightings had given rise to some concern that the channels might at some time be saturated, giving an excellent opportunity to conceal an air attack on the country; and the restriction to airborne reports was believed questionable. The coordination block carries handwritten marks against Col Smith, Col Adams and Col Morrow; the lines for B/Gen Ackerman and Maj Gen Samford are struck through.
An FBI laboratory report on a cap. Pages 176 to 177 copy the FBI Laboratory’s report of 3 September 1952, over J. Edgar Hoover’s name, on the cap worn by the principal in an alleged sighting near West Palm Beach, Florida, on the night of 19 August 1952. It found no residue around the three burned holes to show what incendiary material caused them, and singeing on the bill and emblem not at all uniform. The heavier scorching of the bill’s front edge suggests the singeing could not have taken place when he was fired upon from almost vertically above him, and the absence of singeing under a fold suggests the possibility that the cap was not being worn; one burn, about 1/32 inch across, was believed too small to have been caused singularly and intentionally by him. On 5 September a request over Col Eriksen’s name told the Directorate of Special Investigations’ Counter Intelligence Division that ATIC’s field investigation had reached no conclusive results but that there were indications of a possible hoax (p. 238). The rest of that page concerns his personal records, unredacted, as does a list of photostats at p. 133; this briefing does not repeat them.
A circle on a lawn in Arlington. At 1600 on 3 September 1952 the Directorate took a telephone call reporting an unusual circle found on the morning of 2 September on a lawn in Arlington, Virginia, and Maj Fournet called at the house that evening (p. 231). The summary records a circle 18 feet across and nearly perfectly formed, marked by a deposit of some unknown grey substance in a band averaging about 6 inches wide. The householder found it brown, oily and faintly gritty at 0730 on 2 September and slick, like graphite, by 1700, when his wife described it as powdery (p. 232). Nine samples, three of them fertilisers stored nearby, submitted for comparison because the incident might be a prank, went to the Counter Intelligence Division for FBI analysis (pp. 230, 235). On 2 October the office asked for utmost priority, a deposit seeming to have the same general characteristics having been reported from Flat Woods, West Virginia (p. 127); its own form of 30 September had recorded that samples from Flat Woods show no evidence of a graphite-like deposit (p. 141). On 27 October it sent ATIC an OSI report of 6 October, noting that the report explains the incident completely (p. 62).
What the document does not say
It holds no answer from the Navy. The Navy’s progress report of 5 December 1952, which Release 06 Briefing 1 found in D102 (pp. 129 to 133), falls within this file’s dates and is not in it: progress and 0263 return no hits. Neither memorandum names the Center that did the work, and Photographic Interpretation returns no hit. The Air Force laboratory analysis mentioned at p. 26 is not here either.
Much of what the file refers to travelled with the originals, marked w/orig only: the staff study, the OSI report on the Arlington circle, and correspondence from the CIA with an attached sighting report, forwarded to ATIC on 9 September (p. 220). The FBI result on the Arlington samples, which the office said it would forward as soon as available (p. 209), is not in the file, which does not say what the OSI report found.
No advisory panel or contractor study appears: Robertson, panel, Scientific Advisory and Battelle return no hits. Radar occurs 23 times on five pages: once in an Air Force report, a 27th Air Division statement that the controlling station, Algiers, sent Swanee Red to investigate a stranger on 19 August 1952 and made no radar pick-up on the sighting at any time (p. 137); and 22 times in two letters to General Samford, from an engineer at CBS Laboratories and an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, proposing that radar beams might ionise the upper air, each filed twice (pp. 154 and 180, 155 and 181). Counts are case-insensitive over the issued text layer and the same whole word or substring.
From the record
However, it is our desire to obtain an independent analysis by a
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 26, paragraph 1 of the memorandum of 24 October 1952 to the Director of Naval Intelligence, after the sentence saying an Air Force photographic laboratory had analysed the movies; the sentence continues: separate laboratory in order that we may better interpret the implications of these data
It is becoming generally known that the Air Force
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 49, the copy of a private correspondent’s letter of 29 October 1952 to President Harry Truman, opening its second paragraph; the sentence continues: has a report concluding that flying saucers originate from sources outside this planet
“flying saucer” incidents. No facts have been withheld from the
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 47, paragraph 4 of the Air Force reply of 12 November 1952 to the same correspondent; the line closes the sentence on the Air Force’s interest in investigating flying saucer incidents and opens the next, which continues: public
that the singeing on these areas is not at all uniform as might be expected
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 176, the second paragraph of the FBI Laboratory’s results on the cap, 3 September 1952; the sentence continues: if the cap had been subjected to a single shot of a “red blob” of a fire of some kind
been obtained. However, there are indications of a possible hoax, viz. the results
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 238, paragraph 1 of the request of 5 September 1952 to the Counter Intelligence Division, Directorate of Special Investigations; the line closes the sentence on ATIC’s field investigation, which had reached no conclusive results, and opens the next, which names the indications as the FBI laboratory’s results on the cap and the man’s actions after the alleged sighting
interest in the subject of unidentified flying objects nor had they
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 233, paragraph 7 of the summary of the Arlington investigation, on the householders; the sentence begins: They stated that they have not recently evinced much, and ends: discussed the subject with anyone, thereby eliminating any obvious motive for a practical joke
reason it is considered impractical to request an attempt at recovery.
DOW-UAP-D105, p. 126, paragraph 2 of the disposition form of 2 October 1952 on the object reported to have fallen into the sea off Okinawa, closing the paragraph after the finding that a search would mean diving operations over an area of approximately one-half square mile or more
Where the case connects
The principal link is Release 05 Briefing 4, on DOW-UAP-D098, the Navy’s report of 4 May 1953, which recorded that its question list and all four of its references were missing. D105 holds the question list, in the same order as the copy at D102 pp. 134 to 135, the memorandum that asked for the work, and the memorandum of 24 November 1952, which matches reference (b) as the Navy’s progress report cites it (D102 p. 129) in date, office symbol and the title in its signature block. Reference (a), a letter of 27 October 1952 from the Director of Naval Intelligence under the symbol OP322Y5, is in neither record. Both memoranda were addressed for attention to Op 322Y5; that the letter carried the October memorandum onward is an inference, as Release 06 Briefing 1 said.
D100, in Release 05 Briefing 5, was kept under the office symbol AFOIR-CO and declassified under NND 57563; D105 under AFOIN-2A2 and NND 841508.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D105, “US Air Force Flying Discs File September December 1952”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 06. The Navy memoranda are pages 18 and 26 to 27 of the PDF, the question list 35 to 36, the CIRVIS memorandum 158 to 160, the FBI report 176 to 177 and the Arlington papers 62, 127, 209 and 230 to 235.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
- PURSUE
- Department of War
- Flying Discs File 1952
- Air Technical Intelligence Center
- CIRVIS
- West Palm Beach Incident 1952
- Arlington Lawn Circle 1952
- Great Falls Film 1950
- FBI
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D105, “US Air Force Flying Discs File September December 1952”, PURSUE Release 06, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 4, on DOW-UAP-D098, the Navy’s 1953 film analysis
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 5, on DOW-UAP-D100, the flying disc file of 1947 to 1948
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 06 Briefing 1, on the Project Blue Book files on the Tremonton film