War Department denial of a U.S. disc program (1947)

War Department denial of a U.S. disc program (1947)

Date	19 August 1947
Topics	Government programs (topic)
People	George Schulgen
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 38
Year	1947 in UFO history
Timeline	1947 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	8

The War Department denial of a U.S. disc program refers to assurances given in the summer of 1947, as the FBI and Army Air Forces intelligence tried to work out whether the "flying discs" then in the news could be a secret American weapon. According to Michael Shellenberger's 2024 UFO timeline, submitted to the House Oversight Committee, on 19 August 1947 Lieutenant Colonel George Garrett of Air Forces intelligence told FBI Special Agent in Charge S. W. Reynolds that he suspected the Army or Navy was testing new technology that accounted for some of the sightings. On the same date, the timeline says, General Stephen Chamberlin and the War Department claimed to have no knowledge of any government or contractor program responsible.^[8] Garrett and his chief, Brigadier General George Schulgen, had expected their inquiry to end with a secret U.S. project, and the answer they got, according to the researcher Kevin Randle, "must have surprised them".^[2]

The FBI and the discs

• Schulgen's request. In July 1947 Schulgen, chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division, ordered an investigation into the flying-disc craze. According to the Wikipedia account, he asked the FBI to help in "locating and questioning the individuals who first sighted the so-called flying discs". He believed that reports had been spread by communists to cause mass hysteria.^[3]
• Quiet FBI work. Randle describes the FBI's early interest as cautious and partly hidden. In one case Special Agent Reynolds "secretly" investigated a Massachusetts sighting. In another, an FBI agent accompanied an Army officer to interview the Phoenix photographer William Rhodes, who was introduced only as "a government agent". Randle suggests J. Edgar Hoover might have wanted to "empire build" but was being careful.^[2] The FBI also interviewed the prospector Fred Johnson, who claimed to have seen Kenneth Arnold's objects on 24 June 1947.^[2]
• Soviet suspicions. According to Randle, the response to a sighting with photographs investigated at Harmon, which reached Schulgen in July and to which he sent a top team from Wright Field's T-2 intelligence section, suggests that Garrett and his colleagues believed the solution lay in terrestrial technology, probably Soviet.^[2]

Garrett's "mini estimate"

Garrett compiled what Randle calls a "Mini Estimate of the Situation" from 16 cases, about 35 reports, plus two cases added later.^[2]

• The cases. They included a group of railroad workers at Manitou Springs, Colorado, a pilot's sighting at Oklahoma City, Kenneth Arnold's sighting, reports by military officers, and a sighting at Elmendorf Field, Alaska.
• The assumption. In Randle's reading, Garrett and Schulgen picked cases they thought best described the objects and their manoeuvres. They expected these would most likely lead to the conclusion that the sightings were "of a classified project then in development in total secrecy". They thought they would be told to end their investigation.
• Randle's verdict. Randle judges that the estimate contained little hard information and no real investigation, and that several of its cases are "not very good" today. One, a civilian pilot's sighting at Bakersfield, has virtually vanished from the records.
• The reply. The report was forwarded to the Air Materiel Command and to Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining. The answer "must have surprised them. It was not at all what they had expected."

The denials

Shellenberger's timeline records two entries for 19 August 1947.^[8]

• Garrett's suspicion. Garrett told the FBI's S. W. Reynolds that he suspected the Navy or Army was testing new technology, and that some of it was responsible for the flying saucers and other sightings. (See Garrett's suspicion of secret U.S. tests (1947).)
• The War Department. General Stephen Chamberlin and the War Department claimed to have no knowledge of any government or contractor program responsible.

The timeline cites a Mysterious Universe article for both entries, which could not be read here because it was behind a sign-up wall.^[7][8]

What followed

• Twining. According to the Wikipedia account of Schulgen, in September 1947 Twining issued a memorandum to Schulgen noting that UFOs seen by military personnel warranted further investigation.^[3] (See Twining memo (1947).)
• Project Sign. Twining, as head of the Air Technical Service Command, established the Air Force study first called Project Saucer and then Project Sign, which was active for most of 1948. It collected and evaluated sighting reports on the premise that they might be a national security concern. A paper released on 27 April 1949 said that while some UFOs seemed to be real aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin. Sign was followed by Project Grudge.^[4]
• Schulgen's 28 October memo. On 28 October 1947, according to the Wikipedia account, Schulgen issued a memorandum to General of the Army Henry H. Arnold. It treated the object, "for the purpose of analysis and evaluation", as "a manned craft of unknown origin". It said that "while there remains the possibility of Russian manufacture, based on perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans", some believed it "may in fact represent interplanetary craft of some kind".^[3]

The limits of a denial

A flat denial from the War Department did not rule out projects so secret that intelligence officers were not cleared to know about them. Project Mogul is the best-known example. According to the Wikipedia account, it was a top-secret Army Air Forces program, run from 1947 to early 1949 as a classified part of an unclassified New York University project. It flew microphones on high-altitude balloon trains to detect the sound of Soviet atomic tests. A Mogul balloon, NYU Flight 4, launched on 4 June 1947, crashed in the desert near Roswell, and the subsequent cover-up of its nature fed the Roswell legend. On 8 July 1947 the FBI's Dallas office teletyped Hoover that the Eighth Air Force described the recovered object as resembling a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector.^[5] (See Project Mogul.)

Assessment

The 1947 record shows Air Forces intelligence expecting a secret American answer and being told there was none.^[2][8] That helps explain why the earliest government files treat the discs as unexplained, and why Schulgen's October memo considered Soviet and even interplanetary origins.^[3] At the same time, Mogul shows that some genuinely secret projects were unknown even to officers handling the investigation.^[5] The documented War Department position in 1947 was simply that it knew of no program explaining the reports.^[8]

Notes on the earlier version

• Who gave the denial. The earlier version said Schulgen told the FBI that the objects were not the result of any Army or Navy experiment. Shellenberger's timeline attributes the denial to General Stephen Chamberlin and the War Department, while Garrett suspected an Army or Navy program.^[8] The FBI file cited for the earlier version is an image scan with no readable text, so the exact wording could not be checked.^[1]
• FBI concerns. The earlier version said the FBI worried its work might be wasted if the discs were a secret U.S. project. That is not covered in the sources read here. Randle describes an FBI that was cautious and partly hidden in its involvement.^[2]
• Twining's wording. The earlier version quoted Twining's 23 September 1947 letter as calling the phenomenon "something real and not visionary or fictitious", and said it led to Project Sign. The sources read here describe a September memorandum saying sightings warranted investigation, and Twining's establishment of Project Sign in 1948. The exact quotation and date are not covered in the sources read here.^[3][4]
• The 28 October memo. The earlier version described the memo as asking intelligence officers to collect information on how the discs might be built, on the theory that they were Soviet aircraft built with German know-how. The Wikipedia account describes a memo to General Arnold that weighed Russian manufacture, drawing on German accomplishments, against "interplanetary craft".^[3]
• Mogul and the Air Force. The earlier version said that in 1994 the Air Force said Mogul explained the Roswell material. The Wikipedia account read here describes the Mogul crash near Roswell but does not give the 1994 date.^[5]
• FBI website. The FBI's own page on UFOs refused automated access.^[6]

People and topics

• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
• George Schulgen — Air Force intelligence general who asked for the 1947 Twining memo and issued the Schulgen memo on flying discs.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
• Project Mogul — A secret Army Air Forces program using balloon trains to detect Soviet nuclear tests, blamed by the Air Force for the Roswell debris.
• Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.

On the Timeline

• Garrett's suspicion of secret U.S. tests (1947) (19 August 1947) — An Air Force officer tells the FBI he suspects secret U.S. military tests explain some flying disc reports.
• Hillenkoetter MJ-12 memo of 19 September 1947 (19 September 1947) — A disputed memo attributed to CIA Director Hillenkoetter calls for a presidential directive and scientific study of the discs.

See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

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