Garrett's suspicion of secret U.S. tests (1947)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| 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 | 10 |
In the weeks after Kenneth Arnold's sighting of June 1947 set off a national wave of "flying disc" reports, Army Air Forces intelligence asked the FBI to help investigate. An FBI memo records that the officer in charge, Lieutenant Colonel George Garrett, privately suspected some of the objects might belong to a secret U.S. project.[1][2]
Garrett's study
Garrett worked for Brigadier General George Schulgen, chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division, who in July 1947 asked the FBI to help locate and question people who had reported discs. Garrett compiled a short study of the best early cases, later nicknamed the "mini estimate of the situation", drawing on 16 cases from about 22 June to 12 July 1947. FBI Special Agent S. W. Reynolds acted as liaison and investigated at least one case himself.[2][3]
The suspicion
In a memo summarising Reynolds's talks with the Air Force, the FBI recorded that Garrett and others suspected the objects might be a secret American project, in which case the Bureau's work would be wasted. According to researcher Kevin Randle, the group expected to be told to stop investigating; instead, General Nathan Twining wrote to Schulgen on 23 September 1947 that the phenomenon was "something real and not visionary or fictitious", recommending the classified study that became Project Sign.[1][2]
The FBI pulls out
The arrangement irritated J. Edgar Hoover, and by the end of September 1947 the FBI had withdrawn from disc investigations partly because it learned that its role was mainly to screen out hoaxes. Schulgen assured the FBI that the discs were not an Army or Navy project.[1][4]
Significance
The memo, from the FBI's flying disc file now public on the FBI's Vault website, shows that even the officers running the inquiry did not know what the discs were, and that a secret U.S. weapon was one of their leading theories alongside Soviet aircraft.[1][4]
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 →
References
- FBI flying disc file, section 3 (PDF), The Black Vault · documents3.theblackvault.com · archived copy
- Kevin Randle, "The UAP report and the mini estimate of the situation", A Different Perspective (Jun 2021) · kevinrandle.blogspot.com · archived copy
- George F. Schulgen — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "UFOs and secret experiments", Mysterious Universe (Apr 2012) · mysteriousuniverse.org · archived copy
- The FBI and UFOs — FBI.gov · fbi.gov · archived copy
- Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation — Michael Swords, NICAP · nicap.org · archived copy
- FBI FOIA documents on UFOs — Project Gutenberg · gutenberg.org · archived copy
- The Schulgen memo (Oct 1947) — Sacred Texts · sacred-texts.com · archived copy
- Twining and the flying disc problem of 1947 — Skeptical Inquirer · pocketmags.com · archived copy
- FBI memo on Air Force flying disc inquiries (1947) — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
Further reading
- UFO files — FBI Vault · vault.fbi.gov · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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