By 
August 8th, 2026
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Here’s a wait-a-minute question: What’s the frequency, Kenneth Arnold?
Admittedly, I borrowed and bent that R.E.M. song line. But it came to me in reading the latest outpouring of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) documents, videos and illustrations by the Department of War on August 7.
Those files are part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
It’ll take a while before Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) and UAP specialists deep dive through all the newly released data.
But one thing caught my wandering and wondering eye.
Project Sign
I sifted through 245 pages of the report DOW-UAP-D100, Air Materiel Command Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947-1948.
This file is a collection of U.S. Government memoranda and correspondence relating to “Project Sign,” a 1948 U.S. Air Force program to investigate reports of high-performance airborne objects.
The Air Materiel Command’s (AMC) investigation found that observers were “generally not mistaken when reporting that they had seen an airborne object, but that their characterizations of those objects as unusual was likely a reflection of the ‘limits of their personal experience.’”
Flying saucer
I thought 1947. Wasn’t that the year Kenneth Arnold caught glimpse of nine unidentified flying objects near Mount Rainier, moving at incredible speeds. What’s more is that Arnold’s report locked into place, due to a reporter’s catchy expression, the term “flying saucer.”
Indeed, on June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier, Washington. He estimated the objects were flying at speeds of at least 1,200 miles per hour. His sighting is often cited as kick-starting the modern UFO phenomenon. That was over 79 years ago.
What I didn’t realize was that Arnold was not alone in sighting strange things in the air in 1947.
Image credit: Kenneth Arnold’s report drawing from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)
Typical reports
“The following are typical reports of observations of discs,” explains the AMC report, indicating the types of objects gleaned from a variety of sources.
On July 7, 1947, five Portland, Oregon police officers saw varying numbers of discs flying over different parts of Portland.
On July 7, 1947, a Phoenix, Arizona resident saw a disc in the glow of sunset and took two photographs. “The resultant picture showed a round front and square tail in plan form,” the AMC document adds.
On July 10, 1947, a mechanic near Harmon Field, Newfoundland, observed a circular object flying at high velocity and leaving a trail. Two other persons also saw the trail.
On July 11, 1947, three people at Codroy, Newfoundland saw a disc flying at high velocity and leaving a smoke trail.
Also pointed out in the AMC report, Kenneth Arnold’s sketch of one of the flying objects he spotted “corresponds closely to that shown in the photographs made by the individual in Phoenix, Arizona.
Furthermore, the AMC report states that on the same day as Arnold’s sighting, two U.S. Air Force pilots at Hamilton Field, California saw two flying discs trailing a P-80 aircraft, following it toward Oakland, California. The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was an early jet fighter.
Image credit: Air Materiel Command
Flying wing – German style?
This AMC report is chock full of other 1947 accounts of objects, from military personnel, including radar technicians in Japan.
In the “investigations made” part of the document, one item is looking into the possible existence of foreign aircraft projects which might be related to these observations. “Of interest in this regard are two German designs that could be under current exploitation by the U.S.S.R” – now the Soviet Union.
The Horten Brothers are identified as looking into a flying wing, crescent shaped in design.
Cannot be dismissed
In the AMC “conclusions” section, they state that “while a portion of the observations may be the results of natural phenomena, such as meteors, or may have other conventional explanation, the likelihood that some observers actually saw disc-shaped objects sufficiently large to be compared in size with known aircraft cannot be dismissed.”
“Considering the described conduct of these disc-like objects when sighted, it must be considered a possibility that they may have been humanly controlled, either manually or remotely, or by pre-set automatic controls,” the AMC report states.
Puzzling problem
Lastly, the AMC document explains that “if these discs actually exist they are foreign in origin, so investigation of the possible country of development and the place of origin should continue.”
All in all, the Directorate of Intelligence, U.S. Air Force, “will continue to collect and analyze all reports of sightings of flying objects, lights, trails, etc., in an effort to develop an answer to the puzzling problem which they present.”
For your waaay back reading, go to:
The entire UAP documents just released are available at:
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
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