The Department of War's PURSUE Release 01 indexes this PDF as row 18, release date May 8, 2026, incident date June 15, 1948, and describes it as memorandums, correspondence, and forms on reporting information about flying discs and investigating sightings.1 The 28-page file is less a single case report than a working packet from early 1948, when Air Force offices were still turning civilian and military sighting reports into a repeatable intelligence workflow.2
Why this file matters
The clearest policy statement appears in a February 27, 1948 disposition form from Air Intelligence Requirements. It says Air Force policy was not to ignore reports of sightings and atmospheric phenomena, but to collect, collate, evaluate, and act on information of that nature.2 The same form identifies Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as the collecting and evaluating agency for information that could concern national security, and it asks that Department of the Army installations also route such reports directly to Air Materiel Command.2
The required report fields are unusually concrete: location and time, weather, witness names, occupations and addresses, photographs if available, object number, shape, size, color, speed, heading, maneuverability, altitude, sound, exhaust trail, and general remarks.2 That checklist is the file's main historical value. It shows the Air Force trying to standardize evidence intake before the later Project Blue Book era, and before public summaries had compressed these early records into folklore.
Hobson and other sighting traffic
The opening case packet concerns a reported sighting at Hobson, Ohio, on the night of May 8, 1948. A Harrisburg headquarters letter says the report came from FBI Special Agent D. K. Brown in Cleveland and was forwarded because the headquarters had no further information and was not initiating its own investigation.2 The recorded witnesses include New York Central System personnel: Ben Guse, Carl Roush, Bob White, and C. R. White.2
The summary records the object description as round, apparently about nine inches in diameter from ground level, phosphorescent in color, moving at a great speed on a 90-degree heading, at an estimated altitude of six to eight miles, and leaving a phosphorescent trail in the sky.2 The packet also notes unknowns: weather, photographs, sketches, sound, number of objects, and maneuverability were not established by that headquarters.2
Other pages show how broadly the same file gathered flying-disc traffic. A March 1948 Fourth Air Force message describes two separate Bakersfield-area reports of objects apparently falling to earth, one on March 5 between 1610 and 1655 hours and another on March 8 north of Bakersfield, with searches by parties, aircraft, and rescue units unable to locate the reported objects.2 A January 7, 1948 Tenth Air Force letter from Brooks Field forwards a Houston FBI office report on "Flying Disks" to the Chief of Staff, Air Defense Command, and Fourth Army channels.2
Project SIGN routing
The file also preserves institutional routing around Project SIGN. One correspondence reference form identifies a "Clippings Service for Project SIGN" dated April 28, 1948, filed under a 380 Project heading.2 Later forms send flying-disc material to Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson and refer to collection memoranda being forwarded to field collection agencies.2
The most revealing operational debate concerns whether fighter or night-interceptor aircraft should be kept on continuous alert inside the Zone of Interior to gather flying-disc information. Air Materiel Command wanted aircraft with gun cameras and suitable armament available so installations could investigate unusual flying objects reported from any source.2 A March 9, 1948 response rejected the proposal as untenable, citing the amount of aircraft and personnel required, incomplete radar coverage, and the difficulty of fighter aircraft following up reports that mostly originated with civilian sources.2
Read narrowly, this volume does not identify the objects. It documents the administrative machinery: who received reports, which offices forwarded them, what facts investigators were told to collect, and where the Air Force drew practical limits around pursuit and interception. That makes it a strong baseline record for early U.S. military handling of flying-disc reports, not a finished evidentiary conclusion.