A ring of grey deposit found on a lawn in Arlington, Virginia, on the morning of 2 September 1952 and investigated by the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence, recorded in PURSUE Release 06 record DOW-UAP-D105, the Flying Discs File 1952.
After a telephone report at 1600 on 3 September, Maj Fournet of the Directorate called at the house that evening. His summary records a circle 18 feet across and nearly perfectly formed, marked by a band of some unknown grey substance averaging about 6 inches wide: brown, oily and faintly gritty at 0730 on 2 September, and slick, like graphite, by 1700. The householders, it notes, had not recently shown much interest in unidentified flying objects nor discussed the subject with anyone, which it takes as eliminating any obvious motive for a practical joke. Nine samples, three of them fertilisers stored nearby, went through the Counter Intelligence Division for FBI analysis in case the incident was a prank.
On 2 October the office asked for utmost priority, a deposit of the same general kind having been reported from Flat Woods, West Virginia, although its own form of 30 September had recorded that the Flat Woods samples showed no graphite-like deposit. On 27 October it sent the Air Technical Intelligence Center an OSI report of 6 October, noting that the report explains the incident completely. The OSI report and the FBI result are not in the file, which does not say what the explanation was.
Connections
Flying Discs File 1952 · FBI · Air Technical Intelligence Center · PURSUE · Project Blue Book