★Historically significant

This 1957 FBI report, initiated by an urgent directive from the FBI Director himself and addressed to the Special Assistant to President Eisenhower (Robert Cutler), documents a detailed eyewitness account of a large circular craft with apparent electromagnetic engine-stalling effects observed at a German military installation in 1944, placing it among the earliest official US government-documented UAP-related witness interviews in the post-WWII era.

65_HS1-101634279_100-DE-26505

FBIPDFIncident ReportUNCLASSIFIEDLight redactionPURSUE Release 1

6/10

solid newsworthy item

UAP Insight significance score

Location: Germany
Incident date: 11/7/57
Duration: Approximately 2-3 hours total (initial tractor stall 5-10 minutes; main observation of rising vehicle unspecified short duration approximately 3 hours later)
Witnesses: Single witness
Released: May 8, 2026

UAP Characteristics

◉ DiscHoveringSilent flight

Evidence Types

Testimony

Official Conclusion

No conclusion stated; report filed and forwarded to FBI Director with no determination on the nature of the observed vehicle.

Official Description

An FBI report from 1957 detailing the interview with Wladyslaw Krasuski, who recounted seeing a large, circular, vertically-rising vehicle in 1944 Germany near a German military compound.

Key Findings

→Krasuski described a circular vehicle 75 to 100 yards in diameter and approximately 14 feet high, with a dark gray stationary top and bottom and a rapidly rotating middle section producing a continuous blur, observed from approximately 500 feet.
→The vehicle was observed to slowly rise vertically from a circular walled enclosure approximately 100-150 yards in diameter, clear a 50-foot tarpaulin-type wall, then move slowly horizontally before passing out of view behind trees.
→On multiple occasions, the engine of a nearby tractor stalled when a high-pitched whining noise was heard in the area, consistent with proximity to the object or enclosure.
→Uninsulated metal cables, possibly copper, 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter, were observed running between the enclosure and a small concrete column-like structure, suggesting a ground-based power or control infrastructure.
→The interviewing SA (Cassius Rathbun) noted no indication of irrational or otherwise abnormal behavior by Krasuski during the interview, lending the report a degree of credibility by FBI standards.

UAP Insight Analysis— AI generated, not official

This FBI file (Detroit Field Office, case 100-26505) documents the November 7, 1957 interview of Wladyslaw Krasuski, a Polish-born Detroit resident, who contacted the White House claiming knowledge of a phenomenon similar to a reported 'rocket in Texas.' Krasuski described observing a large, circular, disk-shaped vehicle slowly rising vertically from a walled military enclosure near Gut Alt Golssen, Germany, approximately 30 miles east of Berlin, in 1944 while a German POW. The file includes the original urgent teletype from FBI Director to SAC Detroit, interview notes with hand-drawn sketches of the object, a teletype summary to the Director, and an unrelated 1966 inquiry letter from the Oklahoma UFO Research Association.

Analyst Notes

This is a single-witness, retrospective account describing an observation made 13 years before the interview (1944 event reported 1957), with no corroborating sensor data, photographs, or additional witnesses directly interviewed. The only named corroborating witness (Franciszek Grabowski) was presumed to have returned to Poland and was not located. The FBI interviewer noted no abnormal behavior by the witness, but the account relies entirely on memory of a wartime POW observation. The object could plausibly be consistent with experimental German WWII aerospace technology (e.g., 'Fliegende Kreisel' or Schriever-type disc projects) rather than a non-human phenomenon, though no such identification is made in the document.

Extracted Entities

People

Wladyslaw Krasuski (aka Walter Krasuski)Robert Cutler (Special Assistant to President Eisenhower)President Dwight D. EisenhowerSA Cassius RathbunFranciszek Grabowski (fellow POW witness)Joann Wisniewski (Krasuski's wife)William Recknagel (Manager, Mich. Merchants Credit Association)IG Paul DesmondPaul H. Stoddard (SAC Detroit, 1966)Kerry Liesch (Director, Oklahoma UFO Research Association)Bob Stamps (Co-Director, Oklahoma UFO Research Association)Michael R. Charest (FOIPA requester)

Agencies & Organizations

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AI analysis by claude-sonnet-4-6 · May 20, 2026