Garrett's suspicion of secret U.S. tests (1947)

Garrett's suspicion of secret U.S. tests (1947)

Officer	Lt. Col. George D. Garrett, Collections branch (AFOIR-CO), Air Intelligence, the Pentagon
Superior	Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen, Chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division
FBI liaison	Special Agent S. W. Reynolds
Study	Informal "mini estimate of the situation", late July 1947; 16 cases (later 18), 22 June to 12 July 1947
Suspicion	Silence from senior officials suggested "a domestic project, about which the President, etc. know"
Outcome	Every service denied owning the discs; Twining's letter of 23 September 1947 led to Project Sign; the FBI withdrew on 1 October 1947
Date	19 August 1947
People	Kenneth Arnold, George Garrett, George Schulgen
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 38
Year	1947 in UFO history
Timeline	1947 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	11

In the summer of 1947, after Kenneth Arnold's sighting set off a national wave of "flying disc" reports, Army Air Forces intelligence in the Pentagon asked the FBI to help investigate. The officer gathering the reports, Lieutenant Colonel George D. Garrett, came to suspect that the discs might be a secret American project. In that case, he and the FBI's liaison agent agreed, their own inquiry was a waste of effort.^[2][6] Garrett set out the idea in a short study of 16 selected cases, later called the "mini estimate of the situation". When it was sent up the chain of command, every service denied owning the discs. General Nathan Twining's reply of 23 September 1947 led instead to Project Sign, the Air Force's first formal UFO project.^[2][6]

The inquiry

In July 1947 Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, Chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division, asked the FBI to help locate and question the people who had first reported discs.^[3][7] FBI memos from that month record Schulgen's reasoning:^[7]

• Hoaxes or subversion. The first reports might have been prompted by publicity seekers or "political reasons", or by people of "Communist sympathies" hoping to cause "hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon".
• No American projects. Schulgen "assured" the FBI that there were no War Department or Navy Department research projects "which could in any way be tied up with the flying disks".
• Military intelligence. An officer of the Military Intelligence Division, named in one transcription as Colonel L. R. Forney, said it had been established that the discs were "not the result of any Army or Navy experiments", so the matter was of interest to the FBI.^[7][10]

The FBI official D. M. Ladd recommended staying out, noting that most of the "discs" reported found had been pranks. J. Edgar Hoover overruled him by hand: "I would do it", but only with "full access to discs recovered". In "the La. case", he complained, the Army had taken the object and would not let the FBI examine it.^[7][10] Schulgen promised full cooperation, and Bureau Bulletin No. 42 of 30 July 1947 told field offices to investigate all disc reports.^[7]

Garrett and Reynolds

The historian Michael Swords describes Garrett as the right-hand man of Colonel Robert Taylor, executive officer of the Collections branch of Air Intelligence (AFOIR-CO), and as its "chief collector" of UFO information. Garrett stayed in the post until at least the end of 1949 and, in Swords's account, was sympathetic to the idea that the discs were real, technological objects.^[6] Garrett, Taylor and Schulgen pressed bases to investigate notable cases and forward the reports. The FBI assigned Special Agent S. W. Reynolds as liaison.^[6] The researcher Kevin Randle notes that Reynolds appears to have investigated at least one case, a June 1947 sighting in Greenfield, Massachusetts, "secretly". At the time the FBI was publicly questioning whether the sightings mattered.^[2]

The silence from topside

Through July and into August, Swords writes, Garrett, Schulgen and Reynolds were puzzled by the lack of interest from the top of the Pentagon.^[6] A year earlier the "ghost rocket" reports from Sweden had brought continuous pressure from senior officers for an answer. Now there was none, a gap since called "the silence from topside". Garrett and the FBI suspected that the highest officials already knew what the discs were.^[6]

That led to the suspicion recorded in the FBI's file:^[1][6]

• Reynolds. He thought a nationwide "goose chase" to find out what the Pentagon's senior officers already knew was a waste of personnel and resources.
• Garrett. He agreed that it was no more useful for the Air Forces to waste their time.
• The plan. Garrett and Schulgen decided to put the question directly to the people who should know, through Garrett's study of the discs.

Swords writes that they fully expected to be told, in effect, that the reports were understood and that they need not pursue them.^[6] Randle agrees that they expected to be told to end the investigation.^[2]

The mini estimate

In late July 1947 Garrett selected 16 reports from his files, with two more added later, covering 22 June to 12 July 1947.^[2][6] This informal estimate is distinct from the better-known "Estimate of the Situation" of 1948.^[2] Its conclusions, as Swords quotes them, were:^[6]

• Real objects. The situation was "not all imaginary": "Something is really flying around."
• A domestic project? The lack of senior inquiries, compared with the "prompt and demanding" ones over earlier events, gave weight to "the possibility that this is a domestic project, about which the President, etc. know".
• Appearance. The objects had a metallic surface and were circular or elliptical, flat on the bottom and slightly domed on top. They were roughly the size of a C-54 or a Constellation, and some had two tabs at the rear.
• Propulsion. A light blue-brown trail resembled rocket exhaust. One report suggested the fuel could be throttled, which pointed to a liquid-fuel rocket.
• Flight. Three to nine flew in good formation at speeds always above 300 knots, oscillating sideways as they went.

The cases

Randle reviewed Garrett's cases in order against newspaper reports and Project Blue Book files. He found that Garrett's own entries held little detail, and that Garrett favoured witnesses with flying or technical experience.^[2] Among them:^[2]

• Manitou Springs, Colorado. Seven railroad workers watched a silver object manoeuvre for about twenty minutes. The 15th Air Force investigated and concluded "possible birds".
• Oklahoma City. A businessman pilot reported a round, flat, silent object in May 1947. Randle classes the report as insufficient information.
• Greenfield, Massachusetts. A small, silvery object was seen for eight to ten seconds. This was the case the FBI investigated.
• Kenneth Arnold. His sighting of nine objects near Mount Rainier on 24 June 1947 was the case that started the wave. Garrett gave only the bare facts.
• Maxwell Field, Alabama. Two pilots and two intelligence officers watched a light zigzag across the sky on 28 June.
• White Sands, New Mexico. Three scientists, one described as a rocket expert, saw a bright, silver, elliptical object on 29 June.
• United Airlines. Captain E. J. Smith and his first officer reported discs near their airliner.
• Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base. An officer reported a fast object that rolled from side to side, on 6 July.
• Wisconsin. Civil Air Patrol members reported two sightings on 7 July, which Garrett listed separately.
• Newfoundland. Reports came from Grand Falls on 9 July and from Harmon Field on 10 July. At Harmon, airline staff photographed a disc with a bluish-black trail that "seemed to cut clouds open".
• Elmendorf Field, Alaska. Two officers saw a grayish, balloon-like object follow the mountain contours on 11 July. Garrett dated it 12 July.

One case, a civilian pilot at Bakersfield, California, has almost no surviving record. Randle calls it "useless" as evidence.^[2] He judges that, seen today, several cases are weak and not particularly puzzling.^[2]

Secret weapon or Soviet craft?

Randle reads the selection two ways. On one hand, Garrett and Schulgen appear to have chosen cases that would lead to the conclusion that the discs were "a classified project then in development in total secrecy".^[2] On the other, the Pentagon's reaction to the Harmon Field photographs suggested a terrestrial but foreign answer. After a detailed report reached him on 21 July, Schulgen ordered Wright-Patterson's intelligence unit, T-2, to send a top team to Harmon. With sightings in Canada and Alaska, one theory was that the Soviets were flying something along the great-circle route.^[2][6] McCoy, the chief of T-2, was also considering German aeronautical technology. That included the disc-like aircraft of the Horten brothers.^[6]

The denials

Garrett's study went to the FBI and to Schulgen's office, which used it to ask the research and development branches of the armed services whether the discs were their own technology.^[6] Each said no:^[6]

• The Army Air Forces. Schulgen passed on the assessment of General Curtis LeMay, chief of research and development: a full survey had found "no project with the characteristics similar to those which have been associated with the Flying Discs".
• The Army. The FBI's own Army sources gave the same answer.
• The Navy. No document survives for the Navy, Swords notes. But Donald Keyhoe later wrote that Admiral Calvin Bolster, the Navy's chief of aeronautical research, told him that no such naval project existed.

As a last resort, probably in late August, the estimate went to Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining at the Air Materiel Command, Wright Field. In case something there was so new that even LeMay had not been briefed, Twining passed the question to his senior laboratory and intelligence chiefs, who met in mid-September.^[6]

Twining's letter

Twining replied to Schulgen, and through him to Garrett and the FBI, on 23 September 1947. He judged the phenomenon "something real and not visionary or fictitious".^[3][6] According to Swords:^[6]

• Agreement. Twining's experts essentially agreed with Garrett's description. They added that sound was rarely heard and that the objects' performance indicated they were controlled.
• Feasibility. One of Twining's intelligence divisions, T-3, thought such a craft could be built with long range at low speed, but at great expense.
• No answer. Air Materiel Command admitted it did not know what the discs were and recommended an official project to find out.

It was not the reply Garrett and Schulgen had expected. Randle says it "must have surprised them".^[2] The Pentagon agreed to a formal project, and Pentagon disc files had already been moved to Wright-Patterson after a meeting on 5 September. That project became Project Sign.^[6] An analysis of the Twining letter in Skeptical Inquirer could not be read, as it sits behind a paywall.^[9]

Schulgen's own intelligence requirements memo of 28 October 1947 kept both possibilities open. It noted the "possibility of Russian manufacture" but said "some elements" thought the objects "may in fact represent interplanetary craft of some kind".^[3] The online copy of that memo at Sacred Texts refused automated access.^[8]

The FBI pulls out

The FBI's part ended within days of Twining's letter. A 1958 FBI summary of Bureau policy gives the sequence:^[11]

• The Air Force letter. A letter of 3 September 1947 from Air Defense Command showed that the Air Force meant its own staff to interview credible witnesses. The FBI would chase the discs "found on ground", which had turned out to be "trash can covers, toilet seats and what not".
• The protest. On 27 September the FBI told the Air Force that its personnel "could not be dissipated in this manner".
• The withdrawal. Bureau Bulletin No. 57 of 1 October 1947 told agents to refer all future disc reports to the Air Forces and take no investigative action.

The FBI's current public account of its disc files could not be checked, as fbi.gov refused automated access.^[5] A 2012 Mysterious Universe article on UFOs and secret experiments is paywalled.^[4]

The sources

The episode is documented in the FBI's flying disc file, released under the Freedom of Information Act.^[1][7] The Black Vault's scan of section 3 of that file has no usable text layer, so its contents could not be checked word for word. The account above relies on Swords's history and on the transcribed FBI documents.^[1][6][7] Swords notes that Garrett's polished report does not survive for comparison with Twining's letter. The estimate's text comes from his appendix.^[6]

Assessment

The record shows that the officers running the first inquiry did not know what the discs were. They took a secret American project seriously enough to put the question to the services, and every service denied it.^[6][7] A Soviet craft was the other leading theory.^[2] Randle compares the mini estimate to the 2021 U.S. intelligence report on UAP. In his view both selected cases for their witnesses, offered little analysis and called for more work.^[2] Garrett's suspicion of a secret domestic project was never confirmed. The denials it prompted pushed the Air Force toward its first formal study of the subject instead.^[2][6]

People and topics

• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Kenneth Arnold — Pilot whose 1947 sighting gave rise to the term "flying saucer".
• George Garrett — Air Force intelligence officer who compiled the 1947 "mini estimate" of flying disc reports.
• George Schulgen — Air Force intelligence general who asked for the 1947 Twining memo and issued the Schulgen memo on flying discs.
• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.

On the Timeline

• Robert Shirkey affidavit on the Roswell debris flights (8 July 1947) — Lt. Robert Shirkey's affidavit says he saw debris loaded for flights from Roswell to Fort Worth and Wright Field.
• War Department denial of a U.S. disc program (1947) (19 August 1947) — The War Department says it knows of no U.S. program that could explain the flying discs.

See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “George F. Schulgen”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.