The Rhodes Photographs

A storm had passed over Phoenix on the afternoon of 7 July 1947. William Albert Rhodes told the FBI that at about 5 p.m. he heard a noise like a P-80 jet and saw "an odd shaped ship" to the north-east. He put it at 20 to 30 feet across, moving at about 100 miles per hour in a tight spiral. He fetched a Brownie box camera from his workshop and took two photographs before it banked right into the clouds. By then the sound had stopped, and he saw no propeller.

What is on the record

The fullest account is his interview in the FBI's "Flying Discs" file (62-HQ-83894, Section 2), requested by the Fourth Air Force in August 1947. George Fugate Jr. of Fourth Air Force intelligence sat in, introduced to Rhodes only as a government representative. He asked for the negatives and afterwards told the FBI agent he doubted they would ever be returned. FBI memos of June 1949 record that Rhodes had asked the Air Force to give his photographs back.

Project SIGN's summary sheet for Incident 40 tells it bigger: a grey elliptical object at about 5,000 feet doing 400 to 600 miles per hour, two circles a quarter to half a mile across, a spiral down to 2,000 feet and a climb away at 45 degrees. It notes two points at the tail, what looked like a flush cockpit canopy, and no landing gear or propellers, which is why Rhodes dropped his first idea that it was the Navy's new "Flapjack". To the FBI he said the newspaper story had been "blown up".

At first the Air Force took the pictures seriously. A secret Directorate of Intelligence study enclosed with a memo of 18 December 1947 (DOW-UAP-D100) spells him "Rhoads" and says the picture "showed a round front and square tail in plan form". Arnold's sketch, it adds, "corresponds closely" to it. An Air Intelligence report of December 1948 (DOW-UAP-D094) says experts found them true photographic images with no emulsion or lens fault, which rules out film defects but not a thrown or hanging object.

The doubts sit in the same files. Blue Book's Incident 40 file records Dr Irving Langmuir's view that the object was paper swept up by winds after the thunderstorm, which ATIC in 1952 called "entirely probable" given its view of the witness's character. J. Allen Hynek found no astronomical explanation in 1949 but noted "the strong possibility that the entire incident is spurious". Captain Edward Ruppelt told a 1952 audience (DOW-UAP-D154) there was doubt whether it had been "purposely faked" but that it was never proved. Even the hour varies: about 5 p.m. to the FBI, sunset in the Air Force papers.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Rhodes is the only witness, and no independent testimony sits beside these files in the archive. The tier measures sourcing, not truth. What Rhodes photographed is not resolved here.