The Prisoner's Disc near Berlin

The tractor died first. In 1944, Wladyslaw Krasuski said, his prisoner work crew was on a road through a swamp north of Gut Alt Golssen when the engine stalled with no other machine in sight. A high-pitched whine filled the air, "similar to that produced by a large electric generator". An SS guard spoke to the German driver, who waited until the noise stopped and then started the engine normally.

About three hours later, cutting hay nearby, Krasuski looked where the guards did not want him to look. Behind a tarpaulin wall some 50 feet high stood a circular enclosure. A vehicle rose slowly out of it, cleared the wall and slid away behind the trees. From about 500 feet he judged it 75 to 100 yards across and 14 feet high. Its top and bottom were dark grey and still. The middle band was "a continuous blur similar to an aeroplane propeller". The tractor stalled again. Thick bare cables ran across the wet ground to a concrete column. After the war, he said, the cables were gone and the sites lay under water.

What is on the record

The account sits in FBI Detroit file 100-DE-26505, released by the Department of War on 8 May 2026. On 4 November 1957 Krasuski wrote to Robert Cutler at the White House that he "might have some information about the rocket in Texas". The Director ordered an immediate interview, and Special Agent Cassius Rathbun took his statement on 7 November. The Detroit office reported "no indication of irrational or otherwise abnormal behavior". The Bureau recorded the story and did not investigate it.

It is a memory told thirteen years on, prompted by a news report of a "mysterious vehicle in Texas causing engines to stall". The file places the estate "approximately 30 miles east of Berlin", but the only matching place name, Altgolssen, lies south of the city. The site is uncertain. Krasuski named one fellow prisoner, Franciszek Grabowski, whose own account is not in the file. No explanation is offered.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Krasuski is the only identified witness, and no independent testimony sits beside the FBI's interview in the archive. The tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What rose from the enclosure is not resolved here.