65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_004

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⬇ Download HD (36.2 MB) 📖 Deep dive: FBI Case 62-HQ-83894 in full The Bureau's 21-year UFO investigation (1947-1968), all 18 PDFs walked through READ →
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Agency
FBI
Category
fbi
Type
PDF
Event Date
n/a
Released
2026-05-08
Size
36.2 MB
Original Filename
65_hs1-834228961_62-hq-83894_section_4.pdf

The FBI's 62-HQ-83894 case file includes investigative records, eyewitness testimonies, and public reports concerning Unidentified Flying Objects and flying discs documented between June 1947 and July 1968. The records include high-profile incident accounts, photographic evidence from sites like Oak Ridge, TN, and technical proposals regarding potential propulsion systems. Additional topics include convention programs, researcher accounts, and extensive media coverage from the period. This file is partially posted on FBI vault with more redactions and some pages missing. Included here is the complete case file with several newly declassified pages and only minor redactions.

The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.

Text of the document

Machine-extracted from the PDF war.gov published (its text layer or OCR), so expect errors, especially in names, numbers and handwriting; the PDF is the authoritative copy. Lines that did not extract as readable text are left out. Showing about 997 words from pages 2, 4, 5 of 214.

PAGE 2

TO : DIRJYJTOR, FBI DATE: October 9, 1947 Reference is made to Portland teletype dated September 13, 194?. Records of the Radio Dispatcher, Portland Police Department, reflect that first notice of unidentified objects in flight over the city on September 11, 1947 was received from officers in District 18, which is in the extreme north­ east section of the city, at 5:21 P.M. The log further reflects that at 5:23 P.M. the radio requested District 14, which is further south, to attempt to locate and identify the objects and that at 5:24 P.M. a report was received from the car occupied by Chief of Police JENKINS, reporting that they had sighted some objects. District 14 at 5:27 P.M. reported seeing nothing unusual in the sky. ROBERT D. ADAIR; 4325 S.E. Madison Ave., Portland, advised that he was one of the two officers on duty in District 18 on September 11. 'lhe car was in the vicinity of N.E. 25th Avenue and Saratoga Court when ADAIR and his fellow officer noticed a number of people looking upward and pointing. Upon looking at the sky ADAIR observed the very bright reflection of the sun on some object which was apparently made of silvery metal. The object was coming from the east and made a wide turn over the city and disappeared to the south. ADAIR estimated its speed at about 150 miles per hour and its altitude at about 5,000 feet. He watched it for a period of about two minutes and during that time it gradually disappeared in such a manner as to appear that the angle was slowly changing, so that the sun was no longer reflected into ADAIR's eyes. He says that the shape appeared to be round but that the glare was so bright that it could have hidden the true outline of the object. '!here was no oscillation visible - only steady flight. ADAIR believes it was an ordinary metal airplane reflecting light of the afternoon sun. , , partner in District 18 on September ll. CALDWELL states that the object appeai­ red to him to take the same course as that described by ADAIR. He pointed out that the speed, height, and size of the object were difficult to judge, because of the interdependence of the three factors. However, he believes that the object vrhen first sighted was about three miles away and about two miles high. He believes it was traveling at a much greater speed than a conventional aii­ plane and was a great deal larger. It appeared t o him to be elliptical in shape, and inasmuch as it did not bank or tip he could not judge its thickness. It was of a very bright silver o~ ~ su tanco. COPIES DESTROYED

PAGE 4

Chief of Police LEON V. JENKINS advised that he was travelling south on N. Williams Avenue near Russell St., when he and Officer H. s. RANEY, his driver, received a call on the police radio requesting District 14 to attempt to observe an unknown object in the sky reported by officers in District 18. JENKINS observed what appeared to be a round silver object, about 10,000 feet high, travelling northeast to southwest. It was directly to JENKIN's left ffllen observed first. He thought it was a weather balloon. Further observation con­ vinced him that it could not be a balloon because of its speed which was extreme­ ly great. As JENKINS watched, it turned gradually until it was travelling due south, and as it did so, its shape seemed to change until it appeared to be egg-shaped. It disappeared in· about 30 seconds. Patrolman H. RANEY stated that when he first observed the object it was straight ahead of him and travelling straight away from his car. RANEY was driving south on N. Williams Avenue. To RANEY it appeared to be just a glare of sun on some object, and he was unable therefore to tell its shape. It appeared to be very high and travelling extremely fast. It was out of sight after he had travelled 4 or 5 city blocks at a speed of about 25 mph. RANEY stated that he has never seen an object at such an extreme height before and that if the sun had not reflected from it he could not have seen it at all. He believes it could possibly have been a reflection from a large airplane at great altitude. ROBERT W. SHAYLOR, 4810 N. Fessenden St., Portland stated that he was on duty in District 14 with Officer DONALD r'l. CO,JLit{G on September 11, 1947 and received the call to watch for the object flying over the city. SHAYLOR and COWLING-immediately scaMed the sky f rom a vantage point in open territory where they could see the entire sky. They saw nothing in the sky at that time, SHAil.OR stating that they did not even see any airplanes. A short article in "'lhe Oregonian", Portland daily newspaper, for September 12, 1947, describes the object as seen by Chief of Police JENKINS and also states that 11The Oregonian" received several calls from other persons reporting the object. FRED M. WHITE, Assistant City Editor, advised that the paper has no record of the identities of the people making the calls.

PAGE 5

UNITED ST/i JVERNMENT TO Director, FBI DATE: 10/18/47 c:!Jr--aoM SAC, Anchorage SUBJECT: REPORT OF- FLYIN-G DISCS This is to advise that we have been able to locate a .flyer, JA~K, who is employed by the Al Jones Flying Compa.cy in Bethel, .Alaska. It bad been ~ported to Military Intelligence that Mr. PECK and his co-pilot VIN AJJi bad observed sane flying object near Bethel, Alaska, in July, 194 Eff or ts previously to contact Mr. PECK were negative until the above instance. He related that the occasion of seeing the flying object near Bethel was on a July day when the sky was completely clear of clouds, am it being during the early part, it is daylight the entire night.

Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive

This file is one of FBI's 104 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the FBI agency block it ranks #33 of 104 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 450-file archive it ranks #197 of 450.

That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (197 of 450 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.

For the broader cluster context, this file is part of FBI Case 62-HQ-83894 - the 18-PDF FBI central case file covering 1947-1968. The cluster page walks through all 18 member files with regional grouping, sensor breakdown, and standout analysis.

Anomalousness Index: 58/100

Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.

🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology

The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.

sensor quality (eyewitness only) 30 × 0.25 = 7.5

No sensor, camera, or instrument backs this observation - it is testimony, relayed through the FBI, and scored on the rubric's lowest sensor-quality tier for that reason. That doesn't bear on the witness's credibility (a separate axis); it reflects only that nothing beyond human perception recorded the event.

witness credibility (federal agent) 90 × 0.2 = 18.0

The witness here is FBI personnel, entering the report into the federal investigative system through standard channels. That's one of the rubric's higher credibility tiers - trained federal investigative staff, weighted level with a trained aviator and below only an astronaut witness - though the posture is reactive (responding to a report) rather than an active operational context.

corroboration (single witness instrument) 60 × 0.2 = 12.0

On corroboration, this file from the FBI - like every single-tier file in the PURSUE archive - is a single-witness or single-instrument capture per the released metadata. The rubric doesn't infer multi-witness confirmation the summaries don't actually establish; this score reflects the honest limit of what was released, not a judgment about the underlying event.

kinematic anomaly (no kinematic data) 30 × 0.15 = 4.5

The released file contains no speed, acceleration, or vector data precise enough to score on the kinematic axis - and that's true archive-wide, not specific to this file. The rubric declines to infer kinematic anomaly from a witness's narrative estimate of how fast something moved; that itself says something about what PURSUE actually released: descriptive accounts, not flight-path telemetry.

mundane explanation available (weak mundane candidate) 70 × 0.1 = 7.0

Every file in the archive, including this one, scores this tier: a conventional explanation was considered in the released record but isn't treated as dispositive. That's a pattern in how war.gov's own summaries are written - they consistently hedge against strong conclusions either way - and the rubric takes that hedging at face value rather than resolving it for them.

official disposition (open after review) 90 × 0.1 = 9.0

This file was released as open by the FBI after a formal review process concluded - not simply logged and left pending. That's a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved, no review': a review actually happened, and remaining open is the FBI's own published conclusion from it, not an absence of one.

Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 58/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.

Related files in FBI

Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.

FBI · VIDEO SCORE 70

FBI-UAP-PR001, “Triangle Orbs,” Northeastern United States, 2021

FBI · VIDEO SCORE 70

FBI-UAP-PR002, “Red Orb Rotation,” Northeastern United States, 2022

FBI · VIDEO SCORE 70

FBI-UAP-PR003, “Orbs Over the Pond,” 2024

FBI · VIDEO SCORE 70

FBI-UAP-PR004, “Northeastern Orb Sighting,” 2025

FBI · VIDEO SCORE 70

FBI-UAP-PR005, Digital Recreation, Narrative Statement 3-1, Western United States Event, 2…

FBI · VIDEO SCORE 70

FBI-UAP-PR006, Digital Recreation, Narrative Statement 3-2, Western United States Event, 2…

BROWSE ALL 450 FILES →

Verification

SHA-256:

c3a722892229c6da31db714aabfbe19ad86b82732258114a596cc076ea69d526

This hash is the SHA-256 of the file body war.gov served on the verification date above. War.gov has re-processed some file bodies since first release (re-compression + OCR, no content removed - see /changes); we re-verify and record the change rather than silently serve a stale hash. How to check this yourself →

Source: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/65_hs1-834228961_62-hq-83894_section_4.pdf

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