FBIUnknown

William Rhodes disc photographs — Phoenix, Arizona, July 1947

~Jul 1947Phoenix, Arizona

⟳ Deeper read pending. This record is from the FBI 62-HQ-83894 flying-disc file, whose cursive, clippings and faint scans are under-read by automated OCR. It is flagged for a vision-transcription pass and likely undercounts what the source contains — see the documents collection note.

Analysis — our summary

In 1947 William Rhodes of Phoenix, Arizona, reported photographing a flat gray object spiraling up and down in the sky at an estimated 400-500 mph. He delivered negatives to the FBI Phoenix office in August 1947, which were accepted for transfer to Air Force intelligence. Rhodes contacted the FBI in April 1950 requesting return of the negatives; the FBI confirmed they had been turned over to Air Force intelligence and were unlikely to be returned. In 1958, the Arizona Republic raised the matter publicly and the FBI confirmed the chain of custody.

As reported — verbatim from the document

“"a flat gray object spiralling up and down in the sky at a speed that he estimated at between four and five hundred miles an hour. He snapped two pictures of it with his Brownie."”

Analyst notes — caveats & confidence

Physical photographic evidence (negatives) existed and was transferred to Air Force intelligence. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Irving Langmuir was reportedly consulted by Project Saucer on these photographs (referenced in the New Yorker article in the file). No analysis results appear in this FBI section. Account sourced from both direct FBI records and the New Yorker article. OCR quality is good.

Provenance

Source document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_7.pdf

Document typecorrespondence collection

Reporting agencyFBI

Source pages205

Redaction markers in doc3

DeclassifiedFirst public at this release (2026)

Held classified~79 years (≥, to this release)

Extraction confidence ModerateHow cleanly this record could be parsed from the source — driven by legibility & redaction. It is not a measure of how credible or anomalous the sighting is.