Schulgen memo
The Schulgen Intelligence Collection Memorandum is a SECRET intelligence requirements document dated October 28, 1947, issued by Brigadier General George F. Schulgen of the United States Army Air Forces Air Intelligence Requirements Division. The memo directs intelligence agents to investigate "Flying Saucer Type Aircraft" and explicitly assumes the objects are "a manned aircraft, of Russian origin, and based on the perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans." The memo was issued less than four months after the 1947 Roswell incident.
Content
The memorandum names the Horten brothers — Walter and Reimar Horten — by name and directs agents to locate them and their sister. It references intelligence indicating that the Soviet Union was building 1,800 Horten VIII flying wings. The memo specifies technical requirements for identification of the unknown aircraft, including:
- Boundary layer control methods by suction, blowing, or a combination of both
- Openings in the leading edge, top and bottom surfaces
- Unusual fabrication methods or materials
- Unusual propulsion systems, including nuclear energy
These specifications align closely with the physical characteristics of debris recovered from the Foster Ranch three months earlier, including the porous metal described by Major Jesse Marcel (see Pieces of the Roswell craft).
The forged version
A modified version of the Schulgen memorandum circulated within the UFO research community for years, containing the additional sentence: "it is the considered opinion of some elements that the object may in fact represent an interplanetary craft." This phrase does not appear in the authentic document held at the National Archives. Researcher Robert G. Todd, in The Spot Report (March 7, 1997), determined that the forged version was produced using a typewriter and rubber stamp matching equipment known to belong to William Moore — a co-author of The Roswell Incident (1980) who later confessed at the 1989 MUFON conference to having participated in disinformation operations on behalf of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
The forgery is significant because it converted a document pointing toward a German terrestrial origin for the craft into one supporting the extraterrestrial hypothesis — an alteration consistent with Farrell's argument that the ET narrative was deliberately promoted to conceal the craft's actual terrestrial provenance (see Roswell and the Reich).
Relationship to the Twining-Schulgen memorandum
The October 28 collection memorandum followed General Nathan Twining's September 23, 1947 memorandum to Schulgen — known as the Twining-Schulgen memorandum — in which according to Twining, flying objects were "real and not visionary or fictitious" and described their physical characteristics. The Twining memo notably used the word "interrogations" in describing how conclusions about the objects had been reached, which Farrell argues refers to the debriefing of Operation Paperclip German scientists about the technology.
See also
References
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