THE DOCUMENT
(Unchanged: a US Air Force intelligence cable, teletype message TT 1524 from the Directorate of Intelligence, United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), dated 4 November 1948, addressed to General Cabell, the Director of Intelligence at Headquarters US Air Force. Three numbered items survive in the released file: a covering note and two intelligence items. The released pages are marked “Secret” and were held in a Top Secret control file series, “Records Relating to the Collection and Dissemination of Intelligence, 1948 to 1955”. Released in PURSUE Release 01, hosted at war.gov.)
Why this one is worth your time
November 1948: the flying saucer era is barely a year old, and the intelligence directorate of US Air Forces in Europe puts into a classified cable to Washington the line every enthusiast of this period knows by heart, that the saucer reports “cannot be disregarded”. Not a memoir written decades later, not a crank letter, but a serving Air Force intelligence directorate, in the founding years of the phenomenon, telling its own headquarters in writing that the reports were too many and too widespread to ignore. It also breaks a pattern this series has tracked: it is the first genuinely classified record briefed here, marked “Secret” and held in a Top Secret control file, where the earlier documents carried only the lowest “Official Use Only” handling caveat.
What the document says
The cable is teletype TT 1524 from the Directorate of Intelligence, US Air Forces in Europe, to General Cabell, the Director of Intelligence at Headquarters US Air Force, dated 4 November 1948. The released file holds three numbered items, and each sits at a different distance from anything confirmed.
The covering note. It forwards a complete set of reports from a European Command intelligence organisation for Washington’s “inspection and final disposition”, argues they support a case for Air Force funding, and adds one caveat: “Advise caution in utilizing these reports as most of them were forwarded as received.” The directorate is marking its own bundle as raw, unevaluated intelligence, and the caveat applies to everything the cable carries.
The 307th Bomb Group sighting. On 5 September 1948, during an exercise, three aircrews of the 307th Bomb Group saw an unidentified aircraft off the west coast of Holland at 30,000 feet. It was first seen at normal jet speed, then left smoke and condensation trails, accelerated sharply and climbed with what the observers called “tremendous reserve power”, faster than the jets of the period, and never came within identification range. The directorate logged its evaluation as “B-2”, a code in which the letter graded the source and the number graded the information, so “B-2” meant a usually reliable source reporting something judged probably true. The observers and the directorate both read the object as “a single jet propelled” aircraft.
The flying-saucer item. The directorate writes that recurring flying saucer reports had concerned it “for some time”, that one had hovered over Neubiberg Air Base for about thirty minutes the previous week, and that the reports had come “from so many sources and from such a variety of places” that they “cannot be disregarded and must be explained”. It then relays what the Swedish Air Intelligence Service told visiting directorate officers: that “some reliable and fully technically qualified people” had concluded the phenomena were “obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth”, and were assuming the objects came from “some previously unknown or unidentified technology, possibly outside the earth”. The cable then relays a specific account: a Swedish technical expert watched an object crash or land in a lake near his home and noted its bearing; Swedish intelligence sent a naval salvage team, and divers found a previously uncharted crater on the lake floor, absent from current hydrographic charts. No salvage result is recorded; the cable says only that the Swedes had promised to share what they found. The directorate closes by handing the question upward: accepting the theory “poses a whole new group of questions” and changes “much of our thinking”, it is “inclined not to discredit entirely this somewhat spectacular theory” while “keeping an open mind”, and it asks General Cabell directly: “What are your reactions?”
What the document does not say
That the flying saucers were extraterrestrial, or that the Air Force had concluded they were. The cable floats the theory, calls it “somewhat spectacular”, keeps an open mind, and ends with a question rather than a finding.
That the lake crash was a real event. That account reaches the page through three relays, the US directorate from Swedish intelligence from unnamed experts, under the cable’s standing caveat that its reports were forwarded “as received”. The uncharted crater is recorded; no analysis of it is, and the promised salvage results never appear in the file.
That the classification marks the document as special. Theatre intelligence cables were classified as standard practice, regardless of subject, because they carried unit names, locations, exercises and source-handling detail. The “Secret” marking records that this is a genuine, protected Air Force document; it does not attach to the saucer theory the document is asking about.
From the record
“Advise caution in utilizing these reports as most of them were forwarded as received.” The covering note
“From so many sources and from such a variety of places … cannot be disregarded and must be explained.” The directorate, on the flying saucer reports
“Obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth.” The directorate, relaying the Swedish Air Intelligence Service
“Inclined not to discredit entirely this somewhat spectacular theory … What are your reactions?” The directorate, closing the cable to General Cabell
Where the case connects
This is the first genuinely classified record in the series, where Briefing 6 (the Mexico cable) and Briefing 14 (the 1963 Space Council memo) both turned on the lowest “Official Use Only” marking; set alongside them, this cable shows the Air Force routing its flying saucer reporting as ordinary classified intelligence traffic. Briefing 1 covers the release and its tier system.
The file also leaves three live threads. The released portions are items 2, 10 and 14 of TT 1524, so the cable carried more items than the file shows, and it sits in a control series spanning 1948 to 1955. The Swedish salvage divers’ promised result is never delivered. And the cable ends with a direct question to General Cabell, “What are your reactions?”, while the released file holds the question, not the reply. Any later tranche that releases more of that series, the crater follow-up, or Cabell’s answer lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
The cable, items 2, 10 and 14 of teletype TT 1524, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 01.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and the publisher behind this briefing.
References and further reading
- Primary document: US Air Forces in Europe intelligence cable, teletype TT 1524, items 2, 10 and 14, Directorate of Intelligence USAFE to General Cabell, 4 November 1948, held in “Records Relating to the Collection and Dissemination of Intelligence, 1948 to 1955”, PURSUE Release 01, hosted at war.gov
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- Briefing 6 in this series, on the “Official Use Only” marking and how a document’s handling caveat signals how seriously it was treated
- Briefing 14 in this series, on the 1963 Space Council memo and the same low-marking question
- Briefing 1 in this series, on PURSUE Release 01 as a whole and the evidence tier system