DOW-UAP-D105: The Air Force Director of Intelligence "Flying Discs" File, September-December 1952 - Tremonton, Flatwoods and the DesVergers Cap

Source file: DOW-UAP-D105_US-Air-Force-Flying-Discs-File-September-December-1952.pdf Originating agency: U.S. Air Force, Headquarters USAF, Directorate of Intelligence (DCS/O): the Topical Division (AFOIN-2A) and its flying-object desk, AFOIN-2A2, under the Deputy Director for Estimates Document type: Archival office file: memoranda for record, disposition forms to the Air Technical Intelligence Center ("Material for Project Blue Book"), letters to the public, teletype messages, AF Form 112 reports, and copies of FBI, OSI, Navy and private correspondence Date: 25 August to 19 December 1952, filed in reverse chronological order; includes copies of 1950 OSI reports and incoming letters from July and August 1952 Classification: Mixed UNCLASSIFIED, RESTRICTED, CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET "Security Information" markings, most later lined through; National Archives authority NND 841508; released 2026 Page count: 253 VIRIN: 260918-D-D0360-1094 PURSUE Release: 6

Summary

This is not a report but an office file: the outgoing and incoming paper of the small Pentagon desk that handled flying-saucer business for Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, the Air Force Director of Intelligence, in the autumn of 1952. The drafting line on almost every page reads "Maj Fournet" with the office symbol AFOIN-2A2 (the file gives his full name, Maj. Dewey J. Fournet, on page 33), and the signature block is usually that of Col. William A. Adams, Chief of the Topical Division. The pages run backwards, as they were stacked in the folder: from the return of a Coast Guard photo negative on 19 December 1952 (pp. 4-5) to a memorandum of 25 August (p. 253).

The core of the file is a steady stream of disposition forms headed "Material for Project Blue Book," by which Washington passed to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson AFB whatever reached it: sighting reports from Strategic Air Command and air-defense units, letters referred by the White House, the National Security Council, the Secretaries of Defense and the Army, members of Congress and the FBI, and the desk's own inquiries. Around them sit the working papers of the season's most discussed cases: the Tremonton film, the DesVergers incident in Florida, the Flatwoods "monster" and a circle on a lawn in Arlington.

As the official description says, the file reaches no single conclusion about flying discs. What it offers instead is a close view of method: what the Air Force asked, of whom, how quickly, and how it answered the public.

Research Article

The desk and its machinery

AFOIN-2A2 was a routing point, not a laboratory. Field units reported under Air Force Letter 200-5 of 29 April 1952, the "FLYOBRPT" procedure; Strategic Air Command headquarters at Offutt AFB, for example, forwarded its Air Intelligence Information Reports in numbered batches, from IR-123-52 in September to IR-166-52 and IR-167-52 on 5 December (pp. 6-8, 16, 204-206, 236). The desk sent everything on to ATIC, usually with a note on what had and had not been answered.

The file also shows the reporting system being assembled. A memorandum for record of 26 August explains that the Army and Navy had not been told of AFL 200-5 because ATIC first wanted an "Observers Questionnaire," and warns that "Instructions on this subject within the Navy presently are conflicting and confused" (p. 242). Letters to Army G-2 and the Director of Naval Intelligence followed, superseding the September 1950 instruction "Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft" signed by Maj. Gen. Cabell (pp. 240-245). On 15 August the Chief of Naval Research, C. M. Bolster, asked for a Project Blue Book briefing for "about a dozen personnel with a definite 'need to know' and an acute scientific interest," all of whom had seen "the official reports of Project Blue Book dated through April 1952" (p. 225); Major Fournet was named to represent the Air Force on 17 September in Building T-3 of the Navy Department (pp. 224, 227).

The most consequential paper in this group is a CONFIDENTIAL memorandum of 23 September proposing revisions to JANAP 146(B), the "Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings while Airborne (CIRVIS)." It complains of "quite a bit of confusion" over who evaluated CIRVIS reports, and adds that the volume of flying-object reports during "the cyclic flurries of such sightings has given rise to some concern that CIRVIS communication channels may at some time be saturated, thereby providing an excellent opportunity for concealing an air attack which may be mounted against this country" (p. 159). The staff study itself went to ATIC, the Army, the Navy and Air Defense Command for coordination; only the covering papers survive here (pp. 158-160).

Tremonton and Great Falls: two films go to the Navy

Pages 26-36, with pp. 18, 25, 168 and 228-229, trace the Tremonton film through Washington. Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse, USN, of the Naval Supply Center, Oakland, sent a 50-foot roll of 16mm Kodachrome to Hill AFB with a statement dated 11 August 1952. At 1110 on 2 July, "About 7 miles north of Tremonton, Utah on U.S. Highway No. 30S," his wife noticed "a group of about ten or twelve objects - that bore no relation to anything I had seen before - milling about in a rough formation" heading west (p. 28). He shot about thirty feet with a hand-held Bell & Howell Automaster and a 3-inch telephoto lens.

The film reached the Directorate on 5 September. Three days later Adams asked ATIC to have the WADC photo laboratory analyse it, with a list of questions that included "Is there any bird sufficiently actinic to cause images? Could they have been caused by aircraft or balloons?" (pp. 228-229; the list recurs at pp. 35-36). The same memorandum recommended returning the final footage of Idaho mountain scenery to Newhouse at once and asking whether "he is willing to accept a duplicate of the initial footage in lieu of the original" (p. 229). The 28th Air Division interviewed the whole family at their Berkeley home on 10 September: no sound, no trails, no "aircraft, birds, balloons, or other identifiable objects," "12 to 14 objects," all light in colour. Newhouse, with more than 1,000 hours as an aerial photographer, "could be classified as an expert photographer" (pp. 31-32). A follow-up message confirmed that the "entire roll of film was handheld" (p. 34).

On 24 October the desk sent the film to the Director of Naval Intelligence. It had "been analyzed by an Air Force photographic laboratory," but the Air Force wanted "an independent analysis by a separate laboratory" (p. 26). The Naval Observatory supplied the sun's position: 64.5 degrees elevation, 131 degrees azimuth. A handwritten notation on the memorandum reads "27 Oct 52," the date the Navy's eventual answer, DOW-UAP-D098 (Release 5), gives for the Air Force request.

The second film came from Great Falls, Montana. On 15 October the desk admitted to Nicholas Mariana that "our duplicate copy of the movies which you took of these objects has been inadvertently misplaced" and asked to borrow his original (p. 86). By 14 November four duplicates had been made, and "An attempt will be made to have it analyzed by the Navy in conjunction with their analysis of the movies taken 2 July 52 near Tremonton, Utah" (p. 43). The request of 24 November asked for the same treatment plus "a comparison with the latter film" (p. 18). Copies of the 1950 OSI reports travel with it (pp. 19-24): two bright discs at about 10,000 feet, filmed for some twenty seconds from the Great Falls ballpark, and two F-94 jets that landed at Great Falls AFB at 1130 and 1133 that morning.

Two things are absent. The file contains no result from either laboratory, and nothing about seabirds: the assessment mentioned in the official blurb is not in these pages. It also preserves small inconsistencies: seven miles north of Tremonton in the statement against "approx 10 miles" in the interview, and "ten or twelve" objects against "12 to 14" and the "10 unidentified flying objects" of a 21 November memorandum (p. 25). The companion records are DOW-UAP-D102 (the Blue Book case file), DOW-UAP-D103 (the December 1952 pillow-balloon review), DOW-UAP-D104 (Newhouse's personnel record) and the film itself, DOW-UAP-PR159.

Three late-summer investigations

DesVergers, Florida. On the night of 19 August 1952 D. S. DesVergers reported an encounter near West Palm Beach. The FBI Laboratory examined the cap he said he had been wearing; its report of 3 September, under J. Edgar Hoover's name, found no incendiary residue around the three burned holes, called the singeing "not at all uniform," and concluded that the scorched front edge of the bill "suggests that the singeing could not have taken place when Mr. D. S. Desvergers was fired upon from a position almost vertically above him" (pp. 176-177). On 5 September Col. John G. Eriksen wrote that ATIC's field investigation had produced "no conclusive results," but that there were "indications of a possible hoax"; as part of that assessment the Directorate pulled his Marine Corps service record and asked the Directorate of Special Investigations to verify a further, unconfirmed report about his background, one it attributed to "a source whose reliability cannot be judged" (p. 238). No answer to that request appears in the file. Because the cap had been cut for analysis, the desk judged it "inadvisable to return it" and proposed offering a replacement (p. 175). To a Chicago citizen the Air Force said only that "the sensational aspects of the original stories carried by the national press agencies were exaggerated" (p. 47).

The Arlington circle. On the evening of 3 September Major Fournet went in person to the home of Charles Walter Storm in Arlington, Virginia, where on 2 September Storm had found "A circle 18 feet in diameter and nearly perfectly formed" marked on his lawn "by a deposit of some unknown gray substance" (p. 231). The summary logs when the grass was cut, a dog barking "in distress" at 0400, and the deposit shifting from oily brown to slate gray and feeling "like graphite" (pp. 231-233). Nine exhibits, including three fertilizers kept nearby "because of the possibility that this incident represents a prank," went via OSI to the FBI (pp. 230, 235). On 27 October the desk forwarded to ATIC an OSI report of 6 October with the remark that "the report explains this incident completely," but the report itself, and therefore the explanation, is not in the file (p. 62).

Flatwoods. The graphite led to West Virginia, and the sequence of letters is revealing. On 23 September the desk told two Minneapolis correspondents that it discounted the "fire-breathing monster" entirely, blaming the stimulus of "the meteor sighting reports of the preceding Friday night" (p. 149); a Pennsylvania publisher was told that the many sightings of 12 September had been tentatively identified as a meteor (p. 140). Privately, the desk had noticed a press remark attributed to National Guard Capt. Dale L. Leavitt: the "skid marks" at Flat Woods, where an object allegedly landed about 1930 EST on 12 September and a "monster" was allegedly seen, were a greasy deposit "which felt like graphite." That seemed to link the case to Arlington, so Leavitt was asked for soil samples. They arrived on 29 September and "show no evidence of a graphite-like deposit" (p. 141). Even so, on 2 October the desk asked that "utmost priority" be given to the Arlington analysis because of "a deposit seeming to have the same general characteristics" reported from Flat Woods (p. 127).

Other cases on file

The file touches many more incidents, often in a line or two. A 27th Air Division statement records that on 19 August 1952, at about 2000 PDST near San Gorgonio Mountain, the leader of "Swanee Red" flight turned toward a "stranger" that "appeared to have no tail assembly and showed great acceleration in moving away from them in an easterly direction and disappearing into space"; the ground controller, call sign "Algiers," never had it on radar (p. 137). The desk rejected a WADC explanation of the Austin, Texas photographs of 8 June 1952 as sun dogs, since the images were not at 22 or 46 degrees from the sun, proposed a hot-air mirage, then doubted that too and suggested consulting "the consultant astronomer" (p. 51). Three colour transparencies taken by press photographer Wallace Litwin near the Operation Mainbrace naval formation on 20 September were enlarged "to show that the image is still round," with a cable to CINCNORTH about balloon releases from the ships (p. 96). Four frames of gun-camera film "of an unidentified flying object by the 97th FI Squadron" were printed and declassified, and two were to be given to TRUE magazine at its request (p. 162).

A Wright-Patterson sergeant, T/Sgt Emery Guzi, reported an object that fell into the sea off Okinawa in November 1950. The desk first hoped the spot was a shallow lagoon at Oku, then found it lay off the village of Ginama in at least 10 fathoms, judged recovery "impractical," and asked that the papers be kept "in the event that the future status of Project Blue Book warrants a recovery attempt" (pp. 126, 252-253). A Providence man's report of an object seen from aboard the SS Caronia on 5 October was judged "somewhat remarkable," since he had even written to the ship's captain for its position, and the reply was recommended for General Samford's signature (p. 59); a Martinique sighting arrived through the State Department (pp. 9-10). Many "saucers" were disposed of briskly: a double-exposed light fixture (p. 63), a printing flaw absent from the negative (p. 42), radar chaff "dropped by our own aircraft" (p. 98), a description matching the Chance-Vought "Flying Flapjack" (p. 139).

The public and the theorists

Most pages are letters. The form reply said the ideas submitted "are receiving our careful consideration," and a longer apology explained that the desk had "received such a large volume of correspondence from many citizens with similar patriotic motivation" that it could not answer promptly (p. 76). One correspondent wrote to President Truman that "the Air Force has a report concluding that flying saucers originate from sources outside this planet"; the reply denied any such report and added "No facts have been withheld from the public" (pp. 47-49). Others were told the Air Force gave the problem "adequate but not frantic attention," General Samford's phrase from his July press conference (pp. 100, 217).

Letters from an electrical engineering professor at Wisconsin and an engineer at CBS Laboratories, proposing that radar beams could ionize patches of air, were signed by Samford personally "because of the professional status" of the writers, and noted as coinciding with the experiments of "Mr. Scott of the Engineer Research and Development Lab at Fort Belvoir as well as with the ideas of Dr. Possony" (p. 156). Less learned proposals got shorter shrift: a theory forwarded by Senator Mike Monroney was "typical of the many completely amateurish proposals received on the subject" (p. 165). The desk's humour surfaces in its memorandum on a Salt Lake City engineer whose scriptural calculations pointed to 4 October: the analyst pleaded "innocent to any accusation that he is a theologian" and marked the date as "a red letter day" (pp. 201-202).

The range is wide. A handwritten letter from Provo, Utah, "Saucers from Where?", asks whether the visitors might be the lost tribes of Israel (pp. 112-113). OSI was asked to trace a Detroit man who claimed to know the inventor of the saucers, because "If Mr. Springer's claims in his last paragraph have any foundation whatsoever, it could have an important bearing on the project" (pp. 247-250). Colonel Adams offered to meet Leon Davidson of Arlington "in complete confidence," citing "the security clearance that has been granted you" (p. 65). OSI reported that Maj. Gen. V. E. Bertrandias had seen a model "flying saucer" at the Townsend Brown Foundation (p. 85). An August letter is listed from "Gore Vidal, Barrytown, N.Y.," its contents not reproduced (p. 183).

What the file does not say

The file holds no ATIC evaluations, no laboratory results for either film, no OSI explanation of the Arlington circle and no account of the Navy briefing. Most enclosures are marked "w/orig only": they are listed but absent. The SECRET file returned to Capt. E. J. Ruppelt on 14 October, which included two December 1948 OSI reports and a folder labelled "Mscl. Fireball," survives only as its cover letter (p. 87). A 2 September note records that "General Samford does not concur" with a recommendation that is not itself included (p. 239). Nor does the file say anything about what the objects were; its only conclusions concern individual photographs and hoaxes. Physically, pages 2, 7, 17, 94, 205, 207, 211, 226 and 237 are blank or carry only receipt stamps and show-through, and several faint carbons (for example pp. 40, 52, 93, 106, 110 and 115) cannot be read in full. The CIRVIS memorandum (pp. 159-160) and the handwritten Provo letter (pp. 112-113) have no usable text layer and were read from the page images.

Significance

The file is the Washington half of Project Blue Book in its busiest year. It shows the Directorate of Intelligence treating the Tremonton film as its strongest evidence and seeking an independent Navy analysis; engaging the FBI Laboratory, OSI and the Marine Corps records system on a single Florida case; and sending a major out to inspect a lawn. It records, as early as September 1952, the worry that floods of reports could saturate military warning channels and mask a real attack. It also shows how much of the work was public relations: form letters, reassurance, and a firm line that no conclusions existed. Read alongside DOW-UAP-D098, D102 and D103, it supplies the requests, doubts and dead ends that the finished analyses leave out.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"The attached movies (see Incl. 1) are possibly the best documentary evidence yet obtained on unidentified flying objects." -- page 26

"There was no reference point in the sky and it was impossible for me to make any estimate of speed, size, altitude or distance." -- page 28

"Is there any bird sufficiently actinic to cause images? Could they have been caused by aircraft or balloons?" -- page 35

"When the cap is observed from the front and left edge of the insigne and the fold in the blue cloth in the surrounding areas are examined, the absence of singeing under the fold suggests the possibility that the cap was not being worn on the head when the singeing took place." -- pages 176-177

"It is suggested that all documents pertaining to this case be filed in the event that the future status of Project Blue Book warrants a recovery attempt." -- page 126

"Because this observation was made at night and under conditions of excitement and, furthermore, since the story has died a natural death without further mention in the press, we discount it entirely." -- page 149

"At levels lower than this headquarters echelons of the Air Force have mis-stated our desires to echelons of the Navy. Instructions on this subject within the Navy presently are conflicting and confused." -- page 242

"Additionally, this analyst has marked 4 Oct down as a red letter day and is eagerly awaiting its arrival since it apparently means that the mystery of the 'flying saucers' will finally be solved and his toil towards that end will no longer be necessary." -- page 202