38_143685 Box 7 Incident Summaries 173-233

Department of War released 38_143685_box7_Incident_Summaries_173-233 on May 8, 2026 in Release 01 of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The public catalog identifies it as a Department of War PDF, not as a single-event report, and describes the file as a set of Check-List - Unidentified Flying Objects records with many accompanying witness lists, witness statements, narrative reports, or short descriptions.¹²

  Release Record

The released asset is a 144-page scanned archive packet. Its evidentiary value comes from the surviving paperwork: standardized intake forms, typed military memoranda, witness summaries, and attached investigative comments. The packet continues the same numbered case-file sequence as the related 38_143685 incident-summary PDFs, but this installment preserves later entries in the sequence, covering incident-summary material labeled 173 through 233.²

The opening pages show the kind of source material contained in the packet. A Lowry Flight Service Center memorandum dated January 9, 1950, sent from Lowry Air Force Base in Denver to Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, reports two objects seen on the night of January 6, 1950 over Kansas City and Olathe, Kansas.² The memo states that the report was submitted under Flight Service Regulation 200-4, identifies two Bendix Aviation employees as witnesses, notes clear weather with twelve-mile visibility, and says no photographs were available while sketches were being routed to Lowry.²

  Case Material

The Kansas-Olathe report illustrates why the packet is stronger than a simple catalog stub. It records reported object count, shape, color, apparent motion, altitude estimate, sound, exhaust-trail status, witness employment, and reporting path. The two objects were described as spherical, brilliant white, and giving off orange and red flashes; they were said to remain motionless for ten to fifteen minutes before moving southwest at high speed, with an estimated altitude between seven and eight thousand feet.²

Other sampled pages show the file preserving conflicting and qualified witness material rather than smoothing it into a single narrative. Incident 175 compares statements from John C. Fairchild and A. Table Angier, noting discrepancies over whether an object was stationary, how long it was seen, and whether it appeared silvery, white, oblong, or round.² Incident 176 records a report near Castro's Ranch east of San Pablo, California, where retired Army colonel Horace S. Bakins described an undulating gray object with appendages, while another witness compared it to a rectangular, crate-like form; the narrative also comments on Bakins's background and perceived reliability.²

The packet also includes reports that investigators treated skeptically or left poorly supported. A Kentwood, Louisiana entry from September 5, 1948 records an unusual sound rather than a visible object and adds that neighbors did not hear unusual noises.² Another account from Golden Gate Park says the observer felt something like an electrical arc, but the file labels the account incoherent and extremely unreliable.² Those negative or cautionary notes are part of the document's value because they show contemporaneous evidence limits inside the official record.

  Archival Significance

Several entries point to operational follow-up rather than passive collection. A January 1949 Hickam Field file includes Airways and Air Communications Service correspondence about Capt. Paul R. Stoney's reported sighting of a flat white object over Hickam, alongside a later comment that the object might have been cardboard or light metal carried aloft by local wind currents.² An October 1948 at-sea entry from the master of the S/S Gulfport records bearings and times for a bright object with a distinct center.²

This dossier should therefore be read as a primary-source archive packet for the administrative handling of early UFO reports. It does not establish extraordinary origin. It does show how the Air Force-era reporting system preserved witness names, locations, weather, object descriptions, investigator judgments, missing evidence, sketches, and internal routing. In the larger PURSUE release, the file's importance is documentary: it exposes the working paper trail behind incident summaries 173 through 233, including both unusual reports and the official caveats attached to them.¹²

  References

  References

1. war.gov ↩ ↩²

2. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²