FBI 62-HQ-83894: the master 'flying disc' file, 1947–1968

FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 is the Bureau's master investigative file on 'flying discs.' It opens in mid-1947 — in the weeks following the Kenneth Arnold sighting and the Roswell Army Air Field press release — and runs through the late 1960s. PURSUE Release 01 makes eighteen sections and serials of this case file available in full, totaling well over a thousand pages.

The file documents three notable categories of activity: investigative records of individual flying-disc reports across the continental U.S.; eyewitness statements and photographic evidence including coverage of overflights of Atomic Energy Commission facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and a body of correspondence with private researchers, propulsion-system theorists, and convention organizers reflecting the Bureau's effort to keep abreast of public interest in the phenomenon.

Section 10 alone is 101 megabytes, the single largest file in PURSUE Release 01. The Oak Ridge nuclear-facility content represents perhaps the most-cited material in the case file.