‘Flying saucers over air base for 30 mins’: FBI UFO files reveal chilling 1948 ‘non-human craft’ encounters near military sites

The Pentagon on Friday released a substantial archive of previously classified and decades-old files relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), more commonly known as UFOs, offering a detailed look at sightings reported by military personnel, intelligence officials, astronauts and civilians over several decades. The release follows a directive issued by US President Donald Trump and includes more than 160 documents comprising FBI memoranda, Air Force intelligence reports, military footage, infrared imagery and NASA transcripts. Among the most discussed files is a November 1948 Air Force intelligence report examining recurring accounts of so-called “flying saucers” observed near sensitive military locations in Europe.

One of the central incidents described in the FBI newly released files concerns Neubiberg Air Base in Germany. According to the report, an unidentified object was “observed hovering over Neubiberg Air Base for about thirty minutes”. Officials noted that such reports had become too widespread to dismiss. The document states: “They have been reported by so many sources and from such a variety of places that we are convinced that they cannot be disregarded.”

The report also revealed that American officers consulted Sweden’s Air Intelligence Service on the phenomenon. Swedish officials reportedly concluded that “these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth”. While the report stopped short of endorsing extraterrestrial explanations, it added that investigators were “inclined not to discredit entirely this somewhat spectacular theory”.

The files also reference a separate Swedish case involving an unidentified object reportedly crashing into a lake. A Swedish technical expert carefully recorded the object’s trajectory before intelligence authorities dispatched a naval salvage operation to the site. According to the memo, divers later discovered “a previously uncharted crater on the floor of the lake”. Investigators believed the depression “was in fact caused by a flying saucer”, though no physical object was recovered.

Another report detailed an encounter involving the US Air Force’s 307th Bomb Group during Operation Daggar in September 1948. Three bomber crews flying near the west coast of Holland observed what they described as a fast-moving aircraft at 30,000 feet. The object reportedly accelerated suddenly while producing smoke and condensation trails. Witnesses concluded it possessed “tremendous reserve power, more than normal cruising speed for jets of the 1947 variety”.

The archive also revisits one of the earliest recorded military sightings from July 8, 1947 at Muroc Army Air Field in California. Sergeant Ruvol reported seeing “two flying discs or saucer-shaped silver-coloured objects” travelling at an estimated 350 to 400 miles per hour. “I am of good health and sound mind and this was no hallucination,” the witness stated in the report, which was later marked as “confirmed by other sources”.