PURSUE Record — FBI 62-HQ-83894 — Phoenix-Blythe radar intercept, 509th Bomb Group (June 1950): Federal Bureau of Investigation · Phoenix, Arizona / Blythe, Cal

FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 is a declassified PDF document released on May 8, 2026, as part of PURSUE Release 01 — the U.S. Department of War's inaugural coordinated declassification of UAP-related government records. The document originates from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and concerns a radar intercept event recorded in June 1950 along the Phoenix, Arizona to Blythe, California corridor, in proximity to operations of the 509th Bomb Group. It is one of 120 PDFs included in the 162-document release.

What this record contains

The record is a single-part FBI file catalogued under case number 62-HQ-83894. Its releasing agency is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and its incident date is June 1950 — placing it in the early Cold War period, five years after the end of World War II and one year before formal U.S. Air Force UAP investigation programs had fully consolidated. The geographic footprint spans the Phoenix–Blythe corridor in the American Southwest, a corridor that in 1950 sat within the operational range of the 509th Bomb Group. According to the official release description, the document covers "a June 1950 radar intercept involving the 509th Bomb Group between Phoenix and Blythe," and the release notes explicitly that the 509th was the strategic bomber group responsible for delivering the atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and remained a primary nuclear-strike unit in 1950.

Beyond those documented details, the public release does not include granular metadata — no named witnesses, no described object characteristics, and no resolution status is attached to this specific file in the release index. What the record offers is a radar-confirmed track in proximity to one of the most consequential military units then active.

Historical & documentary context

The FBI's involvement in early UAP investigation is well-documented in the historical record. Beginning in 1947, following the Kenneth Arnold sighting and the Roswell incident, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover authorized a limited cooperative arrangement with the Army Air Forces to receive and evaluate UAP reports. That relationship was sometimes contentious — Hoover famously pushed back when the military restricted Bureau access to recovered materials — but it produced a body of field reports and investigative files spanning the late 1940s through the early 1950s. Case file 62-HQ-83894 falls squarely in that window. A radar intercept in June 1950 would have been treated seriously by investigators of the period: 1950 was the year the Korean War began, Soviet nuclear capability had just been confirmed, and the airspace over nuclear-capable bomber units carried obvious strategic sensitivity.

The 509th Bomb Group context amplifies that sensitivity. Stationed at Roswell Army Air Field in 1947, and later operating out of Walker Air Force Base in New Mexico, the 509th was at that time the only unit in the U.S. military with experience delivering nuclear ordnance. Any unidentified radar contact near its aircraft or operational corridor would have warranted an elevated response from both military and law-enforcement channels — which may explain the FBI's documentary involvement in what might otherwise have been a purely Air Force matter.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts are limited but specific: an FBI file exists, it is indexed to a radar intercept event in June 1950, and it involves the operational area of the 509th Bomb Group. That is what the released metadata confirms. The record does not establish what was intercepted on radar, how the track was ultimately characterized, or whether any explanation was reached at the time. "Radar-confirmed track" means a return was recorded — it does not mean the return was anomalous, unexplained, or attributable to anything beyond conventional aircraft or atmospheric phenomena. The official release description calls it "significant" given the unit involved, but significance of context is not the same as evidence of extraordinary origin. Any interpretation beyond the documented radar event and unit proximity is speculative on the current public record.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI 62-HQ-83894 is part of the historic FBI archive series within PURSUE Release 01 — a thread of documents that runs from 1947 through the early Cold War era and represents the Bureau's previously restricted participation in early UAP collection. The release's inclusion of these older files alongside contemporary Department of War sensor records and NASA archive imagery reflects a stated intent to surface the full institutional breadth of UAP documentation, not just recent events. Cases like this one — older, PDF-format, agency-originated — provide the longitudinal baseline against which newer sensor data can be evaluated. For readers tracking the full scope of the release, other PURSUE coverage on this site addresses the contemporary military and NASA materials in parallel.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.