Dickson, Tenn., October 1949October 1949

On October 26, 1949, a man living seven miles outside Dickson, Tennessee wrote to the U.S. Army Intelligence Service to report something he and four other adults had seen on his farm. They observed what he described as a flying saucer, shaped like a disk and made of aluminum. The object moved at a very high rate of speed and flew very high in the sky. The witness stated it was powered by motors, not jets, and was invisible unless sunlight struck it at just the right angle. He closed by asking that the matter receive no public attention.

The letter was forwarded from Army headquarters in Washington through official channels to the Air Force's Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, the office responsible for investigating such reports. A summary prepared by intelligence staff at Fort McPherson, Georgia included a newspaper article from the Birmingham Age-Herald published on October 25, 1949. That article described a noon-shaped, silvery object with twin tails that had been spotted over Talladega, Alabama and later reported by observers in Buffalo, New York. The article noted that scientists offered competing explanations: a meteor, a meteor shower, or possibly an aircraft. The Army summary listed the source reliability as unknown and the information itself as doubtfully true.

The file does not record an Air Force conclusion about the sighting. The full case file, comprising 7 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.