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.
Key points
- The military told the FBI the object looked like a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector.
- It says the material was being flown to Wright Field in Ohio for a closer look.
- It is one of the earliest government documents about the Roswell incident, and is posted in the FBI Vault.
- In the 1990s the Air Force published two reports tying the debris to Project Mogul, a classified balloon program for detecting Soviet nuclear tests.
Why it matters
Roswell is the most famous UFO story in the world. This page shows what the government was saying internally on day one.
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. (1947). FBI teletype on the Roswell “disc” (1947). https://vault.fbi.gov/Roswell%20UFORelated records
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.
Los Alamos Conference on Aerial Phenomena, 1949
Department of Energy
This document is a transcript of a 1949 conference held at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (now Los Alamos National Laboratory), Los Alamos, New Mexico. Attendees included several eminent scientists and physicists, many of whom had contributed to the development of the first nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project. The purpose of the conference was to discuss and gather hypotheses to account for the nature and origin of a phenomenon involving “green fireballs” that had been reported over a period of several months in the vicinity of the laboratory. The group did not come to a consensus on a likely attribution for the phenomenon, though a leading hypothesis was that the observations may have been related to meteors entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle and high altitude. Dr. Edward Teller suggested that if not a “material body,” an “electron phenomenon” might be the cause, while Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, an expert specializing in meteorics, expressed that “nothing like this, to [his] knowledge, has ever been observed in the case of meteorite drops.”
D/FBI Correspondence Referral, 1949
FBI
This collection of documents contains correspondence between the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, and Rev. Charles Barnes concerning Barnes’ account of an incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). Rev. Barnes described observing four beams of light “converging in the Cascade Mountains,” at an altitude of approximately 10,000 feet, with a “great explosion” visible at the convergence point of those beams for at least ten minutes. Director Hoover replied to Rev. Barnes thanking him for his letter and informing him that he had forwarded it to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Director Hoover conveyed to the AEC that Rev. Barnes believed that the event may relate to a military or scientific experiment within the commission’s purview.
UAP Reported at Sandia Base, 1948-1950
Department of War
This file contains 116 pages of documentation from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP) – the direct, post-World War II successor to the Manhattan Project – and from the U.S. Air Force – relating to a series of sightings and investigations in Sandia, New Mexico, from 1948-1950. This file contains 209 sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” reported near the military base. Witnesses reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) maneuvering, flying out of sight, disappearing, or exploding. The documents also include the results of contemporary investigations into residual copper powder found in some areas where sightings were reported. A few of these investigations became the basis for Project Grudge, which collected reports of unidentified flying objects from various other military installations – also included in this collection.