The Twining memo
On 23 September 1947 General Nathan Twining of Air Materiel Command wrote that the reported saucers were 'something real and not visionary or fictitious'.
1947 CE · 39.78, -84.10 · status: official
The account
Answering a request for an assessment, Twining described discs of metallic appearance with extreme climb rates and manoeuvrability, and recommended a formal study. The memo led directly to Project Sign. It's often quoted as the military's first admission that UFOs were real.
The sceptical view
Twining also allowed that some reports might be natural phenomena or secret domestic projects. The memo says the reports were real, not that the craft were extraterrestrial. It doesn't mention any recovered hardware, which some readers argue counts against a Roswell recovery two months earlier.
Connections in the atlas
- The Twining memo
- Project Sign
- ▶ The government UFO files
- Kenneth Arnold sighting
- Roswell incident