Declassified War Department Document Releases 72 UFO Incident Summaries
The Department of War made document 38_143685_box_Incident_Summaries_101-172 available to the public on May 8, 2026 through the PURSUE archive. The release is not a single narrative; it is a collection of seventy‑two incident summaries, each equipped with its own checklist, witness list, and narrative report.
The metadata for every entry lists the date and location as “N/A.” This blank field is itself a statement: the agency is not specifying when or where the events occurred, only acknowledging that the record exists. The opening pages of the file contain fragmented text. Among the fragments are the references to “Discs” and a “Bluish‑white” construction, a note of “disappearance,” and the phrases “Subject: / l yi riG Discs,” “construction,” “Weather conditions,” “photographs,” “explosion,” and “disappearance.” Another fragment reads “a possibility, however is either inhabited or,” after which the sentence breaks off.
The document bears the signature of NORMAN GARRETT LARKHAM. Below the signature the authority line shows the code NND 917033 and the serial number 00196?57.
These markings are processing indicators, not explanatory content. The official summary accompanying the release describes the format as a “Check‑List – Unidentified Flying Objects” and notes that many of the summaries contain witness statements. It offers no assessment of the witnesses’ credibility, does not state whether the objects were later identified as aircraft, balloons, or weather phenomena, and simply confirms that the file exists and contains the listed elements.
By releasing the raw record without annotation, confirmation, or denial, the PURSUE archive follows its established pattern: it provides the material and places the burden of analysis on the reader. The checklist layout suggests a standardized reporting procedure.
Based on the document’s style and the name NORMAN GARRETT LARKHAM, the effort appears to have been undertaken by someone in the Department of War during the mid‑twentieth century, tasked with gathering and summarizing UFO incidents. The file is the product of that bureaucratic process, not a personal diary or confession, but rather a filing‑cabinet drawer that has now been opened. The existence of a uniform checklist implies an institutional framework: someone designed the form, someone distributed it, someone collected the responses, and someone filed them.
That entity was the Department of War. The document’s presence on the official war.gov domain, hosted by the agency itself, signals that the government regards the record as authentic and worthy of preservation.
It has not been redacted, it has not been classified, and it has been released in full.
