A Glowing Disk Left a Trail. The Air Force Never Investigated.

• A 1948-05-08 Hobson, Ohio sighting describes a phosphorescent round object at altitude 6-8 miles leaving a phosphorescent trail, reported by four railroad employees and relayed by FBI Cleveland — unusually specific witness profession, altitude, and trail characteristics for a single-line incident report.
• Twin Bakersfield, CA observations on 5 and 8 March 1948 of two falling objects with smoke/debris trails; extensive ground and air search by Sheriff, aircraft, and rescue units failed to locate any wreckage despite the falling-aircraft appearance.
• AMC's Col. McCoy formally proposed continuous fighter-alert interception of flying discs (with gun cameras and 'such armament as deemed advisable') in February 1948 — the proposal was rejected, but the documentary record of the proposal itself is notable.
• Hq USAF Director of Plans and Operations explicitly conceded that 'Proper interception is not possible, except by accident, without complete radar coverage. The Air Force is incapable of providing such coverage.' — a candid admission of CONUS air-defense gaps in 1948.
• AMC linked the disc problem to a Naval Intelligence attache report from Moscow (9 June 1947) claiming 1,800 Soviet aircraft based on the Horten VIII flying-wing design were jet propelled — this is the captured-foreign-technology hypothesis driving the interrogation of the Horten brothers as part of the disc inquiry.
• An indorsement notes the T-2 'German Flying Wings Designed by Horten Brothers' report was 'retained by this office' rather than passed on with the rest of the package — paperwork-level evidence of selective retention at the Directorate of Intelligence.

• 016-18_100754_general_1946-7_vol_2 (predecessor compilation in same RG 18 General series; same correspondents — Lt. Col. Garrett, AMC, AFOIR — and same disc-reporting policy thread)
• Project SIGN clippings service file (AFCAG-10, 28 Apr 1948)
• T-2 Report 'German Flying Wings Designed by Horten Brothers' (No. ?-SU-1110.Nd / ID No. 456962)
• ADC Letter 45-5, 25 March 1948 (Air Defense Command directive on flying disc reporting)
• USAF Letter, 'Reporting of Information on Flying Discs', 6 February 1948
• Hq USAF letter dated 30 December 1947 to CG, AMC establishing the AMC project
• Royal Aircraft Establishment Technical Note 1200 (UK study cited in support of Horten analysis)
• Military Air Attache, Canada report dtd 2 Feb 1948 (Johnson/Harrison incident closure)
• Tenth Air Force / Houston FBI report on 'Flying Disk' summary, 19 Dec 1947
• Tyndall AFB / 500th AU Wing report 'Flying Disc' dtd 12 April 1948

This is the foundational 1948 administrative file for what became Project SIGN: it documents the chartering of AMC/Wright-Patterson as the UFO clearinghouse (DF Comment No. 1, 27 Feb 1948), the Cabell-vs-Anderson debate over fighter-alert interception, Army-Air Force coordination via CSGID, and the explicit linkage between disc reports and Horten flying-wing analysis. Pair with slug 016 (general 1946-7 vol 2) for the predecessor period; pair forward with any SIGN/GRUDGE volumes for continuity. The document does not contain any reference to Mantell (7 Jan 1948), Chiles-Whitted (24 Jul 1948), Gorman dogfight (1 Oct 1948), or the Estimate of the Situation by name — those are absent here despite the period coverage. Document is fully RG-18 USAF/AAF intelligence correspondence; classification stamps include RESTRICTED, CONFIDENTIAL, and SECRET (now DECLASSIFIED). All quotes verbatim from OCR; minor OCR noise on names and dates was preserved/cleaned only where unambiguous from context.