The Guy Hottel memo (1950)
🏛️ Federal Bureau of Investigation
A one-page memo to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, head of the Washington field office, repeating a story he had heard about three “flying saucers” said to have been recovered in New Mexico.
Key points
- The story was third-hand: Hottel was relaying what an informant said an Air Force investigator had said.
- It describes small bodies in metallic cloth and blames radar for bringing the craft down.
- The FBI has said it never followed up on the claim, and that the memo proves nothing on its own.
- It is regularly listed as the most-viewed file in the FBI Vault.
Why it matters
It is often shared as “proof” of a crash retrieval. Reading it in full shows how thin the chain of sources is.
Read it yourself
The summary above is ours, written in plain English. Always check the original: the official files on this page go straight to the source, and each one has a backup copy saved by the Internet Archive in case the government page moves.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1950). The Guy Hottel memo (1950). https://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guyRelated records
FBI teletype on the Roswell “disc” (1947)
Federal Bureau of Investigation
A short teletype from the FBI’s Dallas office, sent the day the Roswell story broke. It passes on what Army Air Forces officers told the Bureau about the object recovered near Roswell, New Mexico.
65 HS1-101634279 100-DE-18221 Serial 844
FBI
An FBI memo from 1958 reporting a UFO sighting by a Detroit man who described a "circular object with a crystal-type dome," and recommending that the information be forwarded to "proper air force authorities."
65 HS1-101634279 100-DE-26505
FBI
An FBI report from 1957 detailing the interview with Wladyslaw Krasuski, who recounted seeing a large, circular, vertically-rising vehicle in 1944 Germany near a German military compound.
Washington State ‘UFO’ Investigation, 1952-1960
FBI
This file details an investigation of various sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in Washington state between July 1952 and August 1960. This file includes memoranda and correspondence between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Air Force regarding UFO sightings.