DOW-UAP-D093, Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States, 1948
This file contains a U.S. Air Force (USAF) Air Intelligence Division study, “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States,” Study No. 203, dated 12/10/1948. The analysis includes an assessment of various reported unidentified flying object (UFO) incidents and theories to account for their nature and origin. Overall, the study assesses that “it appears that some object has been seen; however, the identification of that object cannot be readily accomplished.” The study offers that two “reasonable” origins might account for the phenomena: technologies of a domestic or foreign origin. It also suggests that, if foreign, it is prudent for the United States to assume that UFO observations are attributable to scientific, military, or intelligence activities of the Soviet Union, and, in that case, to take seriously the threat such objects may pose. The file also contains contemporary UFO reports and examples of experimental “flying wing” type aircraft planforms that might account for certain commonly reported UFO characteristics. AARO Comment: This file appears to be an earlier draft version of the file contained in DOW-UAP-D094, whose content is substantively similar.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Text of the document
Machine-extracted from the PDF war.gov published (its text layer or OCR), so expect errors, especially in names, numbers and handwriting; the PDF is the authoritative copy. Lines that did not extract as readable text are left out. Showing about 1000 words from pages 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 of 67.
PAGE 3
MEMO ROUTING SLIP NEVE., ~PROVALS, DISAPPROVALS, -CONCURRENCES, OR SIMILAR ACTIONS 1 NAME OR TITLE INITIALS CIRCULATE ORGANIZATION AND LOCATION DATE COORDINATION NOTE AND 4 SEE ME
PAGE 6
roforre;l to oo .tl.ylnJ objeota) and to devolop oonclum,ona aa to thi JX)Cllib1.llty of eximnca. lmv-s been ,:,.oportod. AnonB the obsorvarc r porting on auch incidantu t. oblervara raoortit'lJl in'.!ldents bavc, int rafted in b-
PAGE 7
objcota wen !rt v1'n thr- PAGE 8 reportod flying objecto, particularly those described ae disk~ and
Jiave been operational in recent yeara are the XF5U-l ("Flying Flapjack")
developed by Obance-Vaugb:tt, tM Northrup B-35, and the turbo-jet powered
Northrup YB-49• Tb& ~osent exiatence of any privately developed fiying
wing type aircraft baa not be.e n determined but one ouch aircraft, the
Aru.p taille$8 monoplane, was operational at south Bend, lndiana, prior
to 1935. {2) Objects are fore:i."1, snd it ao, it would aeem most logi
cal to consider that they are from a Soviet eouree. The Sovieto posoese
intormtion on a number of Oenian ni,.ng-1iringt1P9 aircraft such aa the
G>tha P60A, Junkers EF 1~ long-range, high-speed j~t bomber and the
Horten 229 twin-jet fighter, -whioh p-:irticularly reaablea ooe ot the
descr1pt1ona of unidentified flying objects (See Appendix 11011). As
early aa 1924 Tncheran01rt1k7 devoloped a "Parabola" airorart, an all
wing de&ilJl, which wno the outcoms of oonm.darabls Soviet experimentation
with gliderD or the oame general. form. SOYiet aircraft baf!led on ouch
deaigna m.1.ght bave speeds approaching trnnsonio •peeda attributsd to aome
flying object ■ or greater overall performance assuming the succ&as.ful
developxnent at eome unueual propulaion d~ce aaeh aa atomic energy
•iroraft 1• auggeated by their utilization of OuS1ther BOolc who, at
the end ot world rrar n, •• 1n charge ot the nyJ.ng-wtng progru in
Germany' (see Appendix ttA", ~•graph 3, page 4). Aobievementa aat1•
taotory to tbs u.s.s.R. are indirectly indicated by the pereooal recog
nition h• 1• report.ed to be NoetTing in the Recently it ha11
- Horten flying-Wing aircraft. Informati(m of low evaluation baa baon
XIII, 11 at Kumm:f kha, an air base two miles t1outl'Pfea\ of Iiokutak. PAGE 9 Kurm;ti kha. is identified as one of a number of airfields for the pro-
- tection ot an atomic energy plant at Irkutsk. The Horten XllI as
developed by Oermny ,ms o. glider.
10. Assu.idng that the objects might t,ventually be identifiod as
forei~ or foreign-sponsored dev-lces, the possible reason for their
appe,arance over the requires consideration. Several posoible ex
planations appsnr noteworthy,, v.i.zi
a. To ne~te confidence in the a.tom bomb as tho moot
advanced ond decisive weapon in warfare.
b. To perform photographic reconnaissance missions.
c. To test air defenoeo.
Since .Ur r.-orce is reaponsiblo for control or the air in
- the dofcnae of the u.s~, it is 1.mperativn that all other agenoies oo-
opsratc, 1n confirming or denying the poeoibility that theae obje-,ts
have a domestic or1:61n• otherwiao, if it is fir.inly indicated t.bat
m.ore activo etforta of identification and intorc~tion.
12. It mua-t be accepted tmt some type of fi1ina obj•ots ha'Ye been
obae"11d, although their identification and origin are not diaoernabl.e.
Di the intereot ot' national defense it would bj un'rfiN to overlook the
Hypoth9t1oal Taotios Employed
Appendix II C1' .. Selected Reports of Plying ObJeot Incident• PAGE 10 ANALYSIS OF FLYilTG OBJECT IUCIDENTS Ilf Tlm U.S.
AND HTPOTHETIOAL TAOTICS l'?iPLOXED
l. Introduction. To formulate tho possible tactic• of
jects reported ovor the U.S. assumes from the outGet that firm conclu
sions have beon reached on both the exiotonce pnd origin of the r oported
flying objects. The current status of information on such incidents
and overall analys1o doec not cllow subotentiation for auoh concluaione.
However. the lack of such firm concluaions points to the necessity for
an immodiato and sound statisticnl annl7oiA of every nepect of the aituo.
tion and doeo not proclude a concurrent examination of the reported in
cidents to develop explanatione of their possible tactioe. The latter
will be useful at oome future date ohould tho exictencea.ndoririn of the
flying objocts be definitely e•tabliahed. Theroforc, tho followint;
anolyais of availablo information ii advanced in order to praeent evi
dence on the actunl exhtenoa of somo tn,e fl7ill(; object and to relate
samo to tactical purposen for which the objects are pose1bly deeiEned.
pend1n6 a further dotailod analyaio of all aspects of the problem.
cxaM1nat1on of evidence on reported incident ■ haa been mnde o.nd it 1•
po111ble to cite certain genorAlltiee which it npp~nre MQ.1 be borne out
when detailed a.nal71os ha~• been completed.
Amo~ the 1noidentB reported there are m&IJ.1' otatemonta by
reliable and experienced pereone which t~nd to confirll that fl7lng ob
j~ote havo been aeon. The detcription of ouch objeot~ 1nem• to fall
\o V-2 type rockets in horliontal flight. ihe numbere of configurations PAGE 11 might be further roduced wi the follow~ conoideratione i n mind:
Silver disks or balls have, or the greater part, been observed in
daylight nnd a number under lear weather conditions with visibility
unlit1i~edt In aost instanc a. balla of fire have been oboerved at
night. Oie;ar. or pencil-sh od objects have been aig~tod in fe\fer
nwnbers but ~,ith about equa distribution in daylight and at nieht.
A few accounts toll of ·eks havil'.l,f; u rough eigar-ahapo whon
viewed vh1lo maneuvering. me of the dioka are described no having
lw:ninoa1t7 in daylight. hereforo is poseible that e sin&lo type
of object J11a1 be involved i cightinga. and diffo~onceo in dee
cription n1A7 reault from vi ng tho objects at variouo ~lee and
under diftoring conditiona vieib1lit1.
Tho n.boTo indicate that some type object h:l.e been oeen
and tho poseibil ity t tho object or obJecta aeen aro conven-
tional domestic deviceG, ru e.a we&thor balloons, test rockets, or Jet
The nos1ibility e ate that the reportiJ:I& of f~ill8 objects
may have rliar reports on similar inoidente in
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of DoD's 282 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the DoD agency block it ranks #150 of 282 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 478-file archive it ranks #274 of 478.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (274 of 478 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 56/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
No sensor, camera, or instrument backs this observation - it is testimony, relayed through the Department of War, and scored on the rubric's lowest sensor-quality tier for that reason. That doesn't bear on the witness's credibility (a separate axis); it reflects only that nothing beyond human perception recorded the event.
Reported by trained U.S. military personnel during an operational mission (12/10/1948) - a high witness-credibility tier, ranked in the rubric below astronaut, trained-aviator, and federal-agent testimony. This profile is shared across the AARO-submitted infrared-capture cluster that anchors the archive's densest scoring band, at 66.
On corroboration, this file from the Department of War - like every single-tier file in the PURSUE archive - is a single-witness or single-instrument capture per the released metadata. The rubric doesn't infer multi-witness confirmation the summaries don't actually establish; this score reflects the honest limit of what was released, not a judgment about the underlying event.
The released file contains no speed, acceleration, or vector data precise enough to score on the kinematic axis - and that's true archive-wide, not specific to this file. The rubric declines to infer kinematic anomaly from a witness's narrative estimate of how fast something moved; that itself says something about what PURSUE actually released: descriptive accounts, not flight-path telemetry.
Every file in the archive, including this one, scores this tier: a conventional explanation was considered in the released record but isn't treated as dispositive. That's a pattern in how war.gov's own summaries are written - they consistently hedge against strong conclusions either way - and the rubric takes that hedging at face value rather than resolving it for them.
This file was released as open by the Department of War after a formal review process concluded - not simply logged and left pending. That's a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved, no review': a review actually happened, and remaining open is the Department of War's own published conclusion from it, not an absence of one.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 56/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
Related files in DoD
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
DOW-UAP-PR024, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023
DOW-UAP-PR072, "ADMINISTRATIVE REVISION: IIR 1777 J0032 22 Kazakhstan - UAP in the vicinit…
DOW-UAP-PR106, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR109, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2015
DOW-UAP-PR110, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
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