Declassified FBI Bureau of Investigation files, bearing a declassification authority derived from the FBI Automatic Declassification Guide issued May 24, 2007, document two distinct unidentified flying object cases from 1960 — one involving a Michigan amateur photographer whose color slide was reviewed by Pentagon analysts, and another involving a commercial airline captain who reported three unidentified objects trailing his aircraft for nearly an hour over the eastern United States.
The Grand Blanc Photograph: Pentagon Review and a Disputed Return
According to documents filed under Detroit Division case reference 65-2477-105, Joe Perry, a 44-year-old Grand Blanc, Michigan resident described in a contemporaneous press account as a pizza entrepreneur and amateur astronomer, photographed what he believed to be a saucer-like object while using a homemade telescope camera to photograph the moon on the second night of a full moon cycle.
The color slide attracted significant attention before Perry had recovered it. Members of a self-described "Flying Objects" group sought to purchase rights to the image, a national magazine made an acquisition offer, and inquiries arrived from across the country, according to the clipping of a May 25 article by Grand Blanc staff writer Charles Manos included in the FBI file.
Perry reported difficulty retrieving the slide. He contacted the FBI and attempted to access an Air Force base, both without success. The photograph was ultimately returned only after Perry sent a letter directly to President Eisenhower. A letter accompanying the returned slide from Pentagon officials stated that the anomalous object depicted was the result of faulty photographic development and nothing more.
Perry disputed that characterization upon examining the returned slide.
"It ain't what it used to be since they got their hands on it. The flying saucer has faded — something has happened to it."
Perry told the reporter he believed the Pentagon had, in some manner, altered or degraded the image during its review period. The FBI file does not include any independent technical analysis of the slide, and the Pentagon's developmental-error explanation is presented without supporting documentation in the available records. The file was clipped and indexed by the Detroit Field Office on May 27, 1960, with a notation of "Not Recorded" dated June 8, 1960.
Commercial Pilot Reports Three Objects Trailing Aircraft Over 45 Minutes
A second document in the same FBI file contains a wire-service report, marked for the Central Research Section, describing an encounter reported by Captain Peter Killian of Syosset, New York, a commercial airline pilot with 15 years of passenger flight experience. Killian stated that he and co-pilot John Dee of Nyack, New York, observed three unidentified objects trailing their aircraft for approximately 45 minutes following departure from Newark at 7:10 p.m.
According to the clipping, attributed to the Associated Press and datelines February 25, Killian reported that the objects were lost from view in haze when the aircraft began its descent toward Detroit's Metropolitan Airport while the plane was positioned over Cleveland, Ohio. Killian indicated that crew members and all 35 passengers aboard also observed the objects.
"I have never seen anything like it before."
The file excerpt is truncated and does not include official Air Force or FAA response to Killian's report, nor does it document any investigative follow-up by the FBI beyond the clipping's inclusion in the Central Research Section holdings. The nature of the three objects was not determined in the available record.
Context and Evidentiary Limitations
Both cases were processed and indexed during a period of heightened governmental attention to UFO reports, coinciding with the Air Force's Project Blue Book program, though neither document in the available file explicitly references that program or its conclusions. The FBI's role in both cases appears to have been passive — clipping and filing press accounts rather than conducting primary investigation — consistent with the bureau's general posture on UFO reports during this era, in which investigative jurisdiction was nominally held by the Air Force.
The source material carries significant evidentiary limitations. The documents are press clippings rather than investigative reports or sworn statements, and the file is incomplete — the Killian article is cut off mid-sentence. The Perry case rests entirely on the subject's own account of image degradation, with no independent technical review reflected in the file. The Pentagon's developmental-error explanation for the Perry photograph is asserted but undocumented in the available records.
What the files do establish with confidence is that the FBI's Detroit Division tracked and indexed both cases in 1960, that a sitting commercial airline captain made an on-record report of a prolonged multi-witness aerial encounter, and that a private citizen's photographic evidence passed through Pentagon hands before being returned with an official, if unsubstantiated, explanation.