Two Civilian-Witness CIC Investigations, Summer 1947 (Switzer/Cedar Ravine Road full investigative arc; Madden/Canyon Ferry-York)

Summary

Immediately following the Muroc Army Air Field affidavit cluster (muroc-1947-cic-affidavits), Section 3 of FBI 62-HQ-83894 carries two civilian-witness 4AF CIC investigations from the same August 1947 paper trail:

Switzer family / Cedar Ravine Road / Placerville, California, 14 August 1947, ~16:00. Multi-witness sighting from a moving automobile of a 4–6 ft “highly polished chromium” rectangular metallic object that vanished into a 10-ft puff of dark gray smoke at ~800 yards distance. Investigated by 4AF CIC Special Agents Bryden E. Moon and Hubbard at the Switzer home in Sacramento on 20 August 1947. Mrs. Switzer and her mother corroborated separately.
R. J. Madden + Steve Herrmann + Karl Herrmann / Canyon Ferry-York Road, Montana, 29 July 1947, ~12:05. Three-witness sighting from a moving automobile of a “polished nickel” disc 2-3 miles distant at ~3,000 ft, fluttering up and down ~50-100 ft for ~5 sec, then “swooped to the Northeast at tremendous speed and disappeared into the clear air within a distance of 200 ft” — “melted into thin air as if because of tremendous speed.” Madden’s written account was forwarded to Military Intelligence Division, McChord Field, on 8 August 1947 and routed to FBI San Francisco via 4AF/A-2 (Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer) on 20–21 August 1947.

These two cases are filed together inside the same Section 3 enclosure run because both are 4AF CIC paper trails that came to FBI San Francisco through Lt. Col. Springer’s Hamilton Field A-2 office in late August 1947. Neither is referenced in AARO’s PURSUE Release 01 official catalog. Both are now public-domain primary source.

Case 1 — Switzer Family / Cedar Ravine Road / Placerville (Section 3 page 73)

Sighting

“On the afternoon of 14 August 1947, he was driving his automobile from Placerville, California, on the Cedar Ravine Road. Mr. Switzer’s wife was in the front seat of the automobile and Mrs. Switzer’s mother and the two Switzer children were in the back seat of the car. At about 1600 hours they were at a point approximately five miles southwest from Placerville when Switzer saw a white smoke trail out of the corner of his eye. In searching for a rocket ship (P80) he saw an object, four to six feet in length, ten to fourteen inches wide, and of a metal color, bright like highly polished chromium.”

The object was traveling “at a terrific rate of speed and seemed to be in a very shallow dive” on a path that — relative to the Switzers’ direction of travel — went from a clock position of 10:30 to 12:00. At the 12:00 position, ~800 yards distant in front of their car:

“It was engulfed in a puff of dark gray smoke about ten feet in diameter… When the puff of smoke appeared, the object disappeared completely and there were no particles seen to have fallen from the smoke.”

Shape was rectangular; for one short period the upper surface “appeared to have a top surface that was very slightly curved.” Object was at low altitude “following the contour of a canyon.” Sun was at the witnesses’ back.

Corroboration

Mrs. Switzer was interviewed separately and “concurred in the information obtained from Mr. Switzer with the following exceptions”:

Smoke trail and the puff that engulfed the object dark gray throughout (no color change).
Object size: ~5 ft long × ~1 ft wide.
Top surface “slightly curved.”
Object “appeared to be some larger in front than in the rear.”

That last detail — front-larger-than-rear, for an object that produced a smoke trail in flight — is the kind of asymmetric morphology that pushes the case closer to a “device with directionality” reading and away from a paper / debris / weather-balloon interpretation.

The Switzer children and Mrs. Switzer’s mother (in the back seat of the car) did not see the object.

CIC investigator’s notes

Special Agent Bryden E. Moon (4AF CIC) and Special Agent Hubbard interviewed Switzer at his home, 3431 David Way, Sacramento, on 20 August 1947. Moon’s agent’s-notes section commits to one credibility-positive observation:

“Mr. Switzer has been connected with the field of insurance investigation for the last eighteen years and appears to be a man not desirous of publicity.”

The 4AF CIC interview was not the only intake. Two days earlier — 18 August 1947, 1030 hours — Moon’s office had received an independent telephone referral from Mr. Al Rock, City Editor of the Oakland Tribune (Section 3 page 79), describing the same Switzer event but with materially different details. The Oakland Tribune route’s version:

“At 4:P.M. on August 14, while driving on Cedar Ravine Road, 4 to 5 miles southeast of Placerville, Calif, he, accompanied by his wife, observed a ‘vapor’ trail moving from north to south. Closer observation revealed a piece of ‘shiny metal’ at from 500 to 1000 feet altitude moving at a ‘high rate of speed’. The object appeared to be more ‘rocket-shaped’ than disc-shaped. It appeared to be approximately 5 feet in length and was ‘tilted in a semi-circle.’”

The Oakland Tribune route is materially more aggressive about what happened to the object:

“The object struck the ground with a ‘puff of black smoke’ about 100 feet below the top of a hill which was approximately 750 feet ahead of the automobile driven by the observer. An intervening canyon prevented investigation of the location where the object was observed to have landed.”

Two days later when Moon and Hubbard interviewed Switzer in person at his home, Switzer’s account in Moon’s memo describes the object as vanishing into a discrete cloud of smoke at ~800 yards, not striking the ground. The Oakland Tribune Al Rock characterization (object “struck the ground” / object “landed”) is more aggressive than Switzer’s own first-person CIC account two days later. Different intermediaries; different framings; same underlying observation. Both versions are inside the same enclosure run.

The Oakland Tribune referral also provides social-vouching context: “Mr. Switzer is a University of California graduate, and is personally known by members of the Oakland Tribune staff. He is a brother-in-law of Col. Gray of the Marine Hospital of Southern California.”

CIC site visit, 26 August 1947 (Section 3 pages 81–82)

Moon and S/A Hubbard met Switzer at the Raffels Hotel, Placerville, on 26 August 1947 and walked back over Cedar Ravine Road with him to reconstruct the observation point. Switzer initially named Buck’s Bar (~9 miles SE of Placerville), then revised to a closer location. After “a thorough check of the road” he settled on the ridge just north of Webber Creek where the road breaks over the summit, two miles from Raffels Hotel on Cedar Ravine Road.

Moon recorded the observation point with full precision:

“This point of observation lies 38° 42’ 45” North Latitude and 120° 47’ 15” West Longitude. The elevation at this point is 2,000 feet above sea level.”

The road’s leftward curve at the summit “would provide an observer from an automobile a sweeping view through 40° of the canyon and the horizon on the south side of Webber Creek.” Search area: “a six square mile area of wooded, mountainous terrain which is full of canyons and ravines.”

Same day (26 Aug 47) Moon checked with Ranger Dixon (State Forest Service, Camino, California) and George B. Young (Forester, Federal Forest Service, Placerville, California). Both reported: “There has been no forest fires or reported aircraft crashes in the area in question within the last month.”

Moon’s operational discipline on the Forester debrief is worth quoting:

“Forester Young will communicate with the AC of S, A-2, Headquarters Fourth Air Force, Hamilton Field, California, if any information regarding wreckage of an aircraft is located in the area in question. Young was not informed of the mission and was led to believe that the mission was an effort to locate possible aircraft wreckage in the area.”

CIC compartmentalized the inquiry: foresters were given a cover story consistent with a routine missing-aircraft search, not a flying-disc investigation.

Moon’s conclusion (Section 3 page 82)

Moon’s tentative read at the close of the investigation:

“This agent believes that Switzer could have seen an aluminum surfaced conventional type aircraft which, due to the distance at which he observed it, distinguishing features were not seen because of the bright reflection and the short period of observation.”

Followed immediately by an unusually honest caveat:

“This agent has no explanation as to the smoke trail observed by Switzer.”

Moon’s recommendation: low-level aerial reconnaissance with an L-5 between 1100–1300 hours over the six-square-mile search area, to look for any debris on the ground that the foresters’ cross-check might not have caught.

Why this case matters

A multi-witness daylight observation by an experienced civilian investigator (Switzer was an 18-year insurance adjuster, profession-trained in eyewitness assessment) of a metallic, asymmetric, smoke-trailing object that terminated in a discrete cloud at a measurable distance with no debris. The “engulfed in a puff of smoke and vanished” pattern is unusual in 1947 wave reports and matches a small subclass of cases in which witnesses describe abrupt termination rather than continuing flight out of view.

The investigative arc is one of the cleanest in the entire 62-HQ-83894 paper trail. CIC executed: (1) home interview with primary witness, (2) on-site reconstruction at the witness’s identified observation point, (3) precise coordinate location (38°42’45”N, 120°47’15”W, 2000 ft elevation), (4) cross-check with two independent forester offices, (5) tentative deflationary conclusion that explicitly lists the unexplained anomaly (smoke trail) it cannot account for, (6) operational recommendation for follow-on aerial recon. Moon does not assert “case closed.” He commits to an aircraft hypothesis, marks the gap, and leaves the door open.

Two further data points worth flagging:

The Oakland Tribune route described a crash. The CIC route described a vanishment. Same underlying witness, same date, two different intermediaries telling different stories two days apart. Useful reminder that even single-source cases acquire shape from the channel that processes them.
The smoke trail was never explained. Moon explicitly disclaims explaining it. The Switzer case sits in a small but real subclass of 1947 wave reports where the “vapor trail / smoke trail” component does not fit any common-cause hypothesis (not a conventional aircraft contrail behavior at the reported altitude band, not pyrotechnic in any way the foresters could account for, not a forest fire).

Case 2 — Madden / Canyon Ferry-York / Montana (Section 3 pages 75–76)

Sighting

R. J. (Bob) Madden, Division Plant Engineer for The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, on summer travel in Montana. On 29 July 1947 at approximately 12:05 PM, three men in a sedan driven by Steve Herrmann (with Madden in the front passenger seat and Karl Herrmann in the rear) were proceeding northwesterly along the Canyon Ferry-to-York road, ~25 miles NE of Helena, Montana.

Karl Herrmann spotted it first: “See it! See it! There’s a flying saucer!”

By the time the sedan stopped, ~10 seconds had elapsed. Karl had initially mistaken it for a meteor. The object had come over the southwest horizon traveling NE at high speed.

When the car came to rest, all three men simultaneously observed:

“Directly ahead, (N.W) 2 to 3 miles distant and approximately 3000 ft. above the ground, a bright disc hovering and fluttering in the air. Descending and rising through a vertical distance of fifty or a hundred feet for a period of about five seconds then, while at the top of an ascent, the ‘disc’ suddenly swooped to the Northeast at tremendous speed and disappeared into the clear air within a distance of 200 ft. That is to say it did not pass beyond an obstruction to further visibility but ‘melted into thin air’ as if because of tremendous speed.”

Apparent dimensions from 2-3 miles: ~3 ft diameter, ~3-4 inches thick. Madden notes carefully: “It is to be remembered that the dimensions as stated above were as they appeared to the observers some 2 or 3 miles from the ‘disc’ and the true dimensions must be considerably greater.”

Surface: “the disc gleamed and shimmered in the bright sunlight as if covered with highly polished nickel.”

Reporting chain

Madden wrote the observation up himself in narrative form, on letterhead, and on 8 August 1947 mailed it from his home address (427 W. 3d Avenue, Spokane, Washington) to Military Intelligence Division, U.S. Army, McChord Field, Washington. His cover letter cites his motivation:

“Following the reading of an account of the visit of Mr. Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, as published in the Spokesman Review under date of August 7, 1947, the undersigned considered the enclosed account of an observation of a ‘flying saucer’ would be of interest to you. This account has not been given to any newspaper or other publication as yet.”

McChord forwarded the letter to 4AF/A-2 at Hamilton Field. Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer transmitted it to FBI San Francisco on 20 August 1947 with the brief cover note: “No further investigation will be made of this reported incident by this headquarters.”

Distribution per Springer’s transmittal: AAF (2 copies), Air Defense Command (1), 6th Army (1), FBI (1).

Why this case matters

Three-witness, broad-daylight, documented disc sighting with all three observers committing to the same fundamental observation (hovering / fluttering vertical motion for ~5 seconds, then high-speed lateral departure that “melted into thin air”).
The “melted into thin air” termination is unusual. Madden distinguishes this carefully from “passed beyond an obstruction.” He is asserting the object terminated at apparent visibility while still in clear sky. That is a discrete observation independent of the object’s physical reality, and is one of the better-documented 1947 instances of the “abrupt vanish” pattern.
Arnold-spillover effect. Madden’s cover letter explicitly cites the August 7 1947 Spokesman Review account of Kenneth Arnold’s Tacoma visit (during the Maury Island episode — see maury-island-1947) as his motivation to come forward with a sighting from 10 days earlier. That confirms the broader 1947 reporting pattern: civilians witnessed events, said nothing, then came forward only after Arnold’s wave became national news.
AAF chose not to investigate. Springer’s cover note — “No further investigation will be made of this reported incident by this headquarters” — is a deliberate non-action commitment, distributed to AAF, ADC, 6th Army, and FBI simultaneously. Compare to the Switzer case which got CIC ground investigation, and to the Muroc cluster which got nine sworn affidavits. The differential is informative: 4AF/A-2 invested in cases with military-witness components and declined civilian-only cases lacking corroborating physical evidence.

Connections

Open Questions

~~Did Bryden E. Moon’s 26 August 1947 site visit with Switzer to Cedar Ravine Road produce a follow-up report?~~ Resolved on pass 6. Moon’s full follow-up is on Section 3 pages 81–82 (and the Oakland Tribune intermediary route on page 79). Coordinates 38°42’45”N, 120°47’15”W, elevation 2000 ft. Moon’s tentative conclusion: probably aluminum-surfaced conventional aircraft, but “This agent has no explanation as to the smoke trail observed by Switzer.” L-5 aerial reconnaissance recommended.
Did the L-5 aerial reconnaissance Moon recommended ever happen? No record in the OCR’d portion read so far. If it did, results would be in Section 3 pages 83+ or in Section 4 (post-September 1947).
What did Air Defense Command do with Springer’s distribution copy of the Madden letter? ADC was on the distribution. ADC’s contemporaneous assessment of a 29 July 1947 northern-tier sighting (Helena MT, on a roughly NE bearing into the Dakotas/Canada) is operationally interesting — outside this archive but cross-referenceable through Project Sign / Project Grudge later case files.
Did Switzer’s wife or mother-in-law file any of their own statements? Only Mr. Switzer is described as having signed a formal statement. Mrs. Switzer’s account is recorded as Moon’s separately-elicited interview but no signed page survives in the OCR.
Were the Herrmann brothers (Steve and Karl, in Madden’s car) ever separately interviewed? Madden’s letter is the only surviving narrative of the Montana sighting. CIC took no follow-up because Springer declined further investigation. The brothers’ independent accounts, if they ever existed, are unrecorded in this file.
Wright Field civilian Mr. Lenz appears in the Stapp affidavit (Muroc cluster). 4AF CIC Special Agent Bryden E. Moon appears here. Special Agent Hubbard assists Moon. Captain Harry D. Black takes Gilkey’s oral statement. Thomas A. McMillan is the CIC Agent for the Muroc cluster. The 4AF intelligence personnel network for August 1947 UAP investigations is now substantially identified across these primary-source pages — worth flagging for cross-reference if any of these names recur in later case files.

Quotes Worth Keeping

“It was engulfed in a puff of dark gray smoke about ten feet in diameter… When the puff of smoke appeared, the object disappeared completely and there were no particles seen to have fallen from the smoke.” — Switzer to SA Bryden E. Moon, 4AF CIC, 20 August 1947, Section 3 page 73. The discrete-termination signature.

“Mr. Switzer turned to tell his wife about the object and found her with her mouth open in an effort to say something and with her hand in a pointing gesture toward where the object had disappeared.” — Moon’s investigator notes, same memorandum. The independent simultaneous-recognition detail that would matter to any modern UAP investigator.

“Mr. Switzer has been connected with the field of insurance investigation for the last eighteen years and appears to be a man not desirous of publicity.” — Special Agent Bryden E. Moon’s credibility commitment. The kind of agent’s note that doesn’t survive into AARO’s modern catalog format.

“It did not pass beyond an obstruction to further visibility but ‘melted into thin air’ as if because of tremendous speed.” — R. J. Madden, written narrative on Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. authority, 8 August 1947, Section 3 page 76. The “melted into thin air” signature, with explicit ruling out of obstruction-occlusion.

“Following the reading of an account of the visit of Mr. Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, as published in the Spokesman Review under date of August 7, 1947, the undersigned considered the enclosed account of an observation of a ‘flying saucer’ would be of interest to you. This account has not been given to any newspaper or other publication as yet.” — Madden cover letter to MID/McChord Field, 8 August 1947. The Arnold-wave reporting-trigger pattern in primary-source form.

“No further investigation will be made of this reported incident by this headquarters.” — Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer, AC of S A-2, 4AF Hamilton Field, transmittal to FBI San Francisco, 20 August 1947, Section 3 page 74. The 4AF investigative non-commitment for civilian-only sightings without physical corroboration.