PURSUE Record — FBI 62-HQ-83894 — Rhodes Phoenix photographs (July 7, 1947): Federal Bureau of Investigation · Phoenix, Arizona · July 7, 1947

FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 is a declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation record released as part of PURSUE Release 01 on May 8, 2026. It concerns two photographs taken by William Rhodes on July 7, 1947, over his Phoenix, Arizona neighborhood — photographs that Rhodes claimed depicted a disc-shaped object in flight. The file represents one of the Bureau's early engagements with aerial anomaly reports at a moment when no formal investigative framework yet existed for such cases. It is a PDF document, single-part, now part of the public record.

What this record contains

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the releasing agency for this file, catalogued under case number 62-HQ-83894. The incident date is July 7, 1947 — less than two weeks after the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24 that had already ignited national press coverage of "flying discs." The location is Phoenix, Arizona. The record is a single-part PDF, consistent with the document-archive materials in the PURSUE Release 01 set.

According to the official description, the file contains "FBI 62-HQ-83894 material concerning the William Rhodes photographs of July 7, 1947 — two photographs of an apparently disc-shaped object Rhodes said he photographed over his Phoenix neighborhood." Critically, the description notes that "the negatives were retrieved by Air Force investigators (and reportedly not returned)." The official blurb further states that the Rhodes case "is one of the earliest U.S. UFO photograph cases and was extensively scrutinized by Project Sign / Project Grudge analysts." The public release does not include additional technical metadata about the photographs themselves beyond what is described in the blurb.

Historical & documentary context

July 1947 was a period of acute institutional uncertainty about aerial phenomena. The Air Force's formal investigative apparatus — Project Sign, later Project Grudge — did not exist yet in structured form; Sign was not officially established until January 1948. The FBI's involvement in the summer of 1947 reflected Director J. Edgar Hoover's own insistence on Bureau access to physical evidence, including hardware and photographs. In the weeks following the Arnold sighting, Hoover had written directly to Army Air Forces leadership requesting cooperation. The Rhodes photographs, taken roughly a week after Arnold's report, arrived at precisely the moment when inter-agency protocols were still being negotiated and contested.

The fact that Air Force investigators took physical custody of the Rhodes negatives — and, per the official description, reportedly never returned them — is itself a documented feature of how anomaly evidence was handled in this era. FBI case files from this period typically contain correspondence between Bureau field offices and military liaison officers, analyst assessments, and chain-of-custody notes, rather than photographic reproductions. Readers should expect the released PDF to be bureaucratic record-keeping rather than imagery. The scrutiny applied by Project Sign and Project Grudge, referenced in the official description, reflects the period when analysts were actively trying to determine whether a Soviet aerospace explanation was plausible — a context that shaped how every case was evaluated.

What this does and does not prove

What the record documents is that the FBI opened a case file on this incident, that photographs were taken and subsequently transferred to military custody, and that the case received analytical attention from early Air Force UAP programs. What it does not establish is the nature of whatever Rhodes photographed. The official description uses the phrase "apparently disc-shaped object" — language drawn from witness characterization, not from a concluded investigation. The absence of the original negatives, noted in the description itself, is a meaningful evidentiary gap. PURSUE Release 01 is investigative material, not a verdict: cases marked unresolved mean the case has not been satisfactorily explained, not that anything anomalous is proven. This file is best understood as a primary-source document illuminating how the American investigative state responded to an unusual report in 1947 — not as confirmation of any specific claim about what was seen.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI 62-HQ-83894 sits within the historic FBI archive series of PURSUE Release 01 — a strand of the release that traces the Bureau's documented engagement with aerial anomaly reports from the late 1940s onward. The May 8, 2026 release combined AARO-coordinated military sensor records, NASA archive materials, and exactly these kinds of historic FBI files going back to 1947. The Rhodes file is among the earliest-dated documents in the entire 162-record release. Paired with other cases from the SkyLens UAP files page, it provides longitudinal context: a through-line from summer 1947 correspondence to contemporary sensor video. Coverage of the broader FBI archive strand and the full PURSUE Release 01 set is collected across the SkyLens PURSUE blog coverage.

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.