This posting is my attempt to type out page of this document from the FBI’s vault. It is worth noting that from the search I have done this is not a research document written by the FBI but a letter that was sent into them. Still it bothered me to no end that this document was practically unreadable (see above link for example) so I thought I would attempt type out at lest page one (maybe more pages to come) so people can read it and search for it using Google.

(Images with text under them added to make this a more enjoyable reading experience.)

——————–Page 01——————–

FROM “The OREGONIAN” Thursday, July 3, 1967

PILOT RECALLS SEEING DISCS

Dick Rankin Tells of Odd Aircraft:

More report of “flying flapjacks” turned up Wednesday, one from no loss that Dick Rankin, brother of the late Tex Rankin, and himself an experienced pilot of more than 7000 hours flying time.





(Image of Tex Rankin , Dick Rankin’s Brother.)

Rankin, who is recovering from an old back injury received in an automobile accident, came to Portland over the weekend to spend the summer. He saw the ‘Silver Saucers’ over Bakersfield, Cal., June 23, while lying on the lawn sun bathing, he told The Oregonian.

(Image of the Navy’s XF5U-1

“I hesitated to say much about them,” Rankin said, “until I noticed all the hullabaloo in the papers. I puzzled over their strange shape for a while and finally concluded that they were the Navy’s new XF5U-1 flying flapjacks, which are thin and round, with twin propellers and stubby tail.

ONLY ONE XF5U-1 BUILT.

The navy and the manufacturer have accounted officially that only one such machine was built and that it never left Connecticut.

These planes were flying high, maybe 9000 feet and fairly fast, about 300 or 400 miles an hour. I first counted ten of them in formation, going north. About 2:15 PM they returned on the reverse course, headed south, but there were only seven in the formation. I couldn’t make out wings or tail. They appeared almost round. They looked like pictures of the navy’s flying flapjack,” Rankin said.

Rankin, who plans to spend the summer here at *34 N.E. Simpson St. is now able to resume a little flying for fun but not commercially, he said. He now operates a string of auto courts, spending his winters at Palm Springs.

TWO DESCRIPTIONS CHECK.

Rankin’s description of the mysterious aerial objects agrees with that of Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, business man, who first reported them over the State of Washington except that Arnold clocked them at the estimated 1200 miles an hour.

Other reports same Wednesday from Astoria.Jack Hayes, patient in St. Mary’s hospital there, said he saw two of the discs Monday flying south west at a rapid speed and that they vanished behind the hills.

(Photo of Fort Stevens taken in 2003)

Mrs. Earl Reade, Fort Stevens, said she saw a disc traveling north over Fort Stevens Tuesday noon and that other observers saw the same object.

The Army at Fort Stevens and the Coast Guard at nearby Point Adams did not see discs.

The report of a Centralia, Wash. man Wednesday coincided in material times with the original report made by Arnold. Sidney B Gallagher of Centralia said he saw nine aluminum-hued objects flying north at 3 P,M. June 24. He was working 11 miles southwest of Mineral Wash., at the time.



———-End Of Page———-