Air Materiel Command, December 1947: "Flying discs still a matter of concern"

On 9 December 1947, the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson sent a memo to the Chief of Staff of the new United States Air Force. The subject line read, in typewritten capitals: FLYING DISCS.

The body was three sentences long. The first said the memo confirmed a conversation with Major General L. C. Craigie. The second asked for a reply that had not come. The third said AMC was still working on the matter.

Comments of Headquarters, Air Force on these letters have never been received by this Command. Continued and recent reports from qualified observers concerning this phenomenon still makes this matter one of concern to Headquarters, Air Materiel Command. Intelligence Department of this Command is continuing the collection and analysis of all available reports.

The attached list of enclosures is where the document does its real work. It cc's two earlier memos, one dated 23 September 1947 with the subject "AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs'" — the Twining Memo — and one dated 24 September 1947. It also attaches an "Analysis of 'Flying Disc' Reports."

Twining's actual line

The Twining Memo is the line every UAP history book quotes: "the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." That is the famous 1947 sentence. The less-quoted sentence is in the FBI file from the same year. A Portland aviation editor, Leaveritt G. Richards, told the FBI that he had phoned Major General Twining at Wright-Patterson, and from the call he got the impression that the Air Force had launched its 1947 interviews "to wash out the disc reports, since they are definitely not of AAF origin."

Two sentences. One says discs are real. The other says the Air Force is trying to close the matter. Both are 1947. Both are public record.

What the December memo tells you

By December 1947, the first line of what would become the U.S. UFO file was three months old. The Chief of Staff had not responded. AMC was writing again to flag that, and to keep the file moving.

There is no alien in this memo. There is no flying object, no photograph, no sensor data, no Estimate of the Situation. There is a bureaucracy at Wright-Patterson saying: we are still collecting, the higher office has not answered, please send a reply.

The reply eventually came. Project Sign opened in January 1948. The rest of the chain — Project Grudge, Project Blue Book, the Condon Report, AATIP, AARO, PURSUE — runs downhill from this single December afternoon when a Lieutenant Colonel at AMC asked for a piece of paper back.

Why this is news now

The December 1947 memo is in PURSUE Release 01, published on war.gov/UFO on 8 May 2026, as part of the file Flying Disc Sightings and Air Materiel Command Correspondence Volume 2. The 1970s FOIA version of the same file is on the same war.gov portal with more redactions. The public now has both, side by side, for the first time. The same founding document appears, with less ink, in the second PURSUE release and the AARO and PURSUE topic hub.

What changed is not the conclusion. The Chief of Staff did eventually answer. The phenomenon is still on the file. What changed is the read access: the institutional answer is no longer behind a stamp.

Sources

• PURSUE Release 01, 8 May 2026: Flying Disc Sightings and Air Materiel Command Correspondence Volume 2 — Air Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson, December 1947. Source for the "still a matter of concern" and "HQ has not replied" quotes.
• FBI file 65-HQ-83894, "Flying Disc Investigative Records and Public Reports 1947–1968", sections 1 and 3, also in PURSUE Release 01 — source for the "wash out the disc reports" Twining phone-call quote from Portland aviation editor Leaveritt G. Richards.
• Twining Memo, 23 September 1947, "AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs'" — public record, cc'd on the December memo as enclosure 1.
• UAP Logbook: What is in the WAR.GOV UAP file release — overview of the May 2026 release and the FBI 65-HQ-83894 file series.