Official · Document · FBI
A Salesman Says He Met Six People Aboard a Transparent Craft
Two approached him, and he climbed inside. After it left, his car started again.
Released to the public May 8, 20262 min read
In brief
Schmidt said he encountered six people aboard a transparent craft in a field and climbed inside. The craft vanished, and only then could he start his car. Investigators questioned his story after finding oil that resembled commercial motor oil.
Summary
FBI 'Sub A' supplement to main case file 62-HQ-83894 (Flying Discs / Unidentified Flying Objects). The 124-page document is almost entirely newspaper, news-service and magazine clippings dated June 1947 through approximately June 1960, routed through standard FBI Bureau-distribution slips (Form 0-19 / 0-20 / 4-26) listing initials of Bureau executives (Tolson, Ladd, Nichols, Belmont, Mohr, Parsons, Rosen, Tamm, Sullivan, Trotter, Holloman, Gandy, etc.). The clippings — drawn from the Washington Times-Herald, Washington Post, Washington News, Washington Star, Washington City News Service, New York Herald Tribune, Daily Mail (London), Sunday Dispatch (London), Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Graphic, Reynolds News, Daily Graphic, La Prensa (Madrid), Omaha World-Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Detroit News and others — were forwarded to FBI HQ from the FBI Office of the Legal Attaché, American Embassy, London for foreign press, and were filed in the 62-HQ-83894 case folder. Topics include the Kenneth Arnold sighting (June 24, 1947), the Mantell crash, the 1952 Washington National Airport radar sightings, the Coast Guard cutter Sebago Gulf of Mexico tracking, the November 1957 Levelland Texas car-engine-stall wave, the Reinhold O. Schmidt 'Kearney spaceship' contactee story, Pan-American pilot W.B. Nash / Fortenberry sighting, Donald Keyhoe and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), Air Force Project Saucer / Project Blue Book denials, Carl Jung's UFO statement, Wilbert B. Smith's Canadian Project Magnet, the Marines' Quantico 'red lights' incident (Dec. 1953-Jan. 1954), Skyhook 'Moby Dick' research balloons explanation, and the Caldwell 'Gray Goose'/'Roto-Plane' inventions found in a Maryland barn in 1949. There is essentially no original FBI investigative content; the file is a Bureau press-clipping morgue on UFOs from 1947 through 1960.