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FBI-62HQ-83894/hixenbaugh-photographs-petrone-informant-1950  /  1950-07-XX  /  FBI

Two Mid-1950 Civilian-Witness Cases: Alf E. Hixenbaugh Photographs and Robert R. Petrone Informant Tip

By mid-1950 the Bureau was no longer dealing with one or two civilian-witness UAP cases per quarter.

CLASSIFICATION DECLASSIFIED  /  CONFIDENCE MEDIUM  /  1949-50, the disinformation year

The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, Washington D.C. The July 1950 Hixenbaugh photographs were submitted to the Bureau through the Petrone informant channel.
FBI Headquarters / Washington D.C. / informant channel

Summary

By mid-1950 the Bureau was no longer dealing with one or two civilian-witness UAP cases per quarter. Section 5 of 62-HQ-83894 documents Louisville and Chicago field offices each forwarding a substantive named-witness case in the same week of late July 1950, with two distinct evidentiary types, both arriving on Hoover’s desk in the same operational tempo. The Alf E. Hixenbaugh case is a 16 mm color movie-film case originated by a working newspaper staff photographer at the Louisville Times and reaching national-television and Walter Winchell distribution before the Bureau memo was even written. The Robert R. Petrone case is an informant-tip case originated by a Chicago publisher who walked into the Bureau field office carrying a letter and envelope from an anonymous correspondent describing a “new flying saucer” with crystal-glass wings and twin jet engines. Both cases were dispatched to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations under the standardized “submitted to OSI” disposition. Neither generated Bureau investigative work beyond the field-office forwarding memo.

What makes these two cases worth a single combined wiki page is what each contains inside the standardized disposition envelope. The Hixenbaugh case turns out to be substantively richer than its cover memo suggests. The Louisville Office’s three-page report (pages 187, 189, 190) does not stop at “photographer claims to have filmed a saucer.” It records a counter-allegation by Robert Steinau, a Courier-Journal staff photographer, who personally walked into the Louisville Office on July 29, 1950 to tell the Bureau that he and chief photographer William Davis “doubted the authenticity of the photographs” and that two years prior Hixenbaugh had perpetrated an earlier flying-disk hoax with a friend flipping lighted matches across the focal plane of his camera. The Bureau memo records both the original claim and the trade-internal hoax allegation in the same case file, without taking a position on either. This is the only Section 5 case mined to date in which the Bureau receives a named photographic-fraud counter-allegation from another working photographer in the same newsroom organization.

The Petrone case is thinner in evidentiary substance but operationally clean. ROBERT R. PETRONE, publisher of the Midwest Times newspaper at 3437 West Chicago Avenue, brought to the Chicago Field Office on July 28, 1950 an unsolicited letter postmarked July 25 from an “ALBERT HOLMBERG” describing a flying saucer “not yet owned by any government” with crystal-glass wings, two jet engines, and radio control. Petrone explicitly told the Bureau he did not want to publish the letter “as he felt the Army desired that the matter be kept confidential,” and committed to reporting back if HOLMBERG sent the promised “zinc cuts” or further correspondence. Chicago indices were negative on HOLMBERG. The case generated a Chicago-to-Bureau memo (page 194) and a follow-up forwarding-to-OSI memo (page 192) eight days later. No further investigative file is visible in Section 5.

The two cases together establish the mid-1950 case-volume pattern: Bureau field offices were processing UAP-related civilian-witness matter at a tempo that no longer warranted standalone investigative attention but still triggered standardized field-office reporting and OSI-forwarding correspondence. They also document the two evidentiary modalities the Bureau was case-handling in parallel: (1) photographic-evidence cases inheriting the procedural lineage of the rhodes-phoenix-photographs-1947 case, and (2) informant-tip cases inheriting the lineage of the cuneo-jones-winchell-followup-1949 case. Both lineages converge on the same disposition: forward to OSI per the 2026-05-08-fbi-62hq83894-belmont-twinkle-master-memo-osi-log-1949-1950|Cabell directive structure, no Bureau action.

What the Section 5 Documents Document

Alf E. Hixenbaugh Photographs (Section 5 pages 187, 189, 190, 191; 188 a redacted duplicate)

Witness: ALF (AL) HIXENBAUGH, staff photographer, Louisville Times, residing at 2205 Longest, Louisville, Kentucky.

Date of sighting: June 27, 1950, 4:15 p.m., at the intersection of Longest and Everett Avenues, Louisville.

Camera and film: 16 mm magazine-loading movie camera. Hixenbaugh exposed 50 feet of film. Per the Steinau testimony on page 190, the camera ran at 64 frames per second (slow-motion setting).

Sighting account (per the June 28, 1950 Louisville Times article reproduced as page 191): Hixenbaugh was on his way to film birds when he heard a twin-motored DC-3 overhead, looked up, and saw a large disk west of the plane and lower than it, with “a slight corona around it.” The object appeared “motionless for about 10 seconds,” like a balloon, then receded westward. The disk appears on all 50 feet of film; the airplane appears on only the first 10 feet.

Distribution: The Louisville Times printed a two-column cut showing three frames. The film “was carried on a national television network and received national comment from WALTER WINCHELL.” Hixenbaugh “received telephonic and written queries concerning subject matter of the picture from various persons and organizations throughout the United States.”

First contact with Bureau: July 28, 1950. Hixenbaugh telephoned the Louisville Division to report that “a representative of one of the Army Intelligence Agencies would be in Louisville on Saturday, July 29, 1950, to view the film.” He expressed concern that the persons contacting him might be impersonators and asked if he could bring the film to the FBI Office for clearance. The Louisville Office declined to clear other-agency employees, advised him to verify directly with the agency in question, and informed him that the Impersonation Statute would apply if the visitors proved fraudulent.

Counter-allegation (the load-bearing detail of the case): On July 29, 1950, ROBERT STEINAU, 1608 South Second Street, staff photographer for the Courier-Journal, personally called at the Louisville Office. Steinau stated that he and WILLIAM DAVIS (the photographer in charge for both the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, which operate under one ownership) “doubted the authenticity of the photographs taken by HIXENBAUGH.” Steinau then told the Bureau:

“approximately two years ago HIXENBAUGH took what he claimed was a night photograph of a ‘flying disk’. The photograph was published at that time in the Louisville Times and showed a streak of light across the heavens. STEINAU said that he and DAVIS subsequently were advised by a friend of HIXENBAUGH that the picture was ‘a fraud’. The friend related that HIXENBAUGH was lying on his back on the ground with his camera pointing toward the sky when the friend flipped one or more lighted matches across the focal plane of the camera.”

Steinau’s technical critique of the June 1950 film (page 190): the trees and the DC-3 in the photograph are out of focus and “fuzzy,” but the disk itself appears in sharp detail. Steinau argued this would mean the disk was closer to the camera than either the trees or the airplane. He suggested the trick could be done “by focusing the camera at a spot on a window and then moving the camera in a straight line away from the window, thus giving the illusion that the spot was disappearing into the distance.”

Steinau’s reputational claim: “HIXENBAUGH enjoys a poor reputation among other staff photographers of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times” and “HIXENBAUGH perpetrated both the original hoax concerning the flying disk and this later ‘hoax’ concerning the flying saucer to attract attention to himself.”

Disposition: SAC Louisville’s August 2, 1950 memo (page 187, FBI serial 162-83894-240) forwards the Louisville Times article and three enclosures to the Bureau. The memo takes no position on the Steinau hoax allegation; it records the claim and counter-claim and stops there. The article reproduction is filed as the “ENCLOSURE” (page 191). The military examination chain runs through Godman Field to Wright-Patterson, not through the Bureau.

Page 188 appears to be a heavily redacted near-duplicate of the page 187 narrative, dated 8/30/50, with most witness names blanked. It does not add new information. It may be a Bureau Internal Security Section file copy of the Louisville memo.

Robert R. Petrone, Informant (Section 5 pages 192, 194, 196)

Witness: ROBERT R. PETRONE, Publisher, Midwest Times, 3437 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, phone KEdzie 3-8400.

Date of contact: July 28, 1950. Petrone walked into the Chicago Field Office carrying an original letter and envelope, postmarked July 25, 1950 at Chicago.

Letter author: “ALBERT HOLMBERG” — name only, no return address on letter or envelope. The Chicago telephone directory listed an ALBERT HOLMBERG at 2065 North Kedzie and an ALBERT F. HOLMBERG at 11328 South Prairie Street; the Chicago indices were negative on both. Petrone confirmed no one connected with the Midwest Times knew of anyone by that name, and no one in the paper’s circulation area (15,000 copies, northwest Chicago) carried the name.

Substantive content of HOLMBERG’s letter (verbatim quote from page 194):

“Since we are on the brink of a third world conflict, the world is more air concious than ever. Aviation in some phases is yet in its pioneering days. Much talk goes on about the flying saucers or discs. The saucer we speak about, [DEFERRED RECORD] is not a military secret, and is not yet owned by any government. The flying saucer which was seen over south Chicago last April is a large fuel tank with crystal glass wings. It has two large jet engines on both sides. It is radion controled. It resembles a saucer very much when in flight. The wings cannot be seen on a clear day. This is so it is a most difficult target for anti aircraft gunners.”

The letter continues onto page 195, which is missing from the ingested archive (page 195 absent from the Section 5 OCR file run). Page 196 picks up the SAC Chicago narrative mid-stream after the quoted letter has ended, addressing HOLMBERG’s identity and Petrone’s editorial decision.

Petrone’s editorial posture (page 196):

“Mr. PETRONE stated he did not want to publish this letter as he felt the Army desired that the matter be kept confidential. He will contact this office again if he receives the ‘zinc cuts’ or has any other correspondence from HOLMBERG. He felt that HOLMBERG might send the same information to other publishers who may print the story.”

Disposition: SAC Chicago’s July 31, 1950 memo (page 194, AIR MAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY) forwards Petrone’s letter and his account to the Bureau “for such action as it deems appropriate.” Eight days later, on August 2, 1950, SAC Chicago’s follow-up memo (page 192, FBI serial 162-83894-241) closes the loop:

“The Bureau is advised that the information set forth in Chicago let dated July 18, 1950 and the information submitted to the Bureau by Chicago let dated July 31, 1950 entitled ‘ROBERT R. PETRONE, INFORMANT, FLYING DISCS’ has been submitted to OSI.”

The reference to “Chicago let dated July 18, 1950” indicates an earlier Chicago Field Office UAP communication preceding the Petrone case, not yet visible in the mined Section 5 pages. Page 197 is a blank manila file folder with serial 62-83894-242 and ends the immediate Petrone correspondence chain.

Why This Matters

  1. Mid-1950 case-volume pattern. Two named-witness UAP cases originated in two different cities (Louisville and Chicago) and two different witness types (newspaper photographer and newspaper publisher) reached Hoover’s desk within three days of each other in late July 1950, both forwarded to OSI by early August 1950. This is denser case-handling than what is visible in 1948 or early 1949 portions of the file. The Bureau was running a steady-state UAP-correspondence operation by mid-1950.

  2. Two distinct evidence types, identical disposition. Hixenbaugh produced 50 feet of 16 mm motion-picture film with national television and Walter Winchell distribution. Petrone delivered a one-page anonymous letter to a small-circulation neighborhood newspaper. The Bureau’s case-handling protocol for both was identical: field-office memo to Director, followed by OSI forwarding. The disposition envelope is type-agnostic by mid-1950, even when the evidentiary substance differs by orders of magnitude.

  3. Photographic-evidence comparison to Rhodes 1947. The Rhodes case (see rhodes-phoenix-photographs-1947) generated a Hoover-level teletype expressly forbidding joint Bureau-AAF investigation of civilian photographic evidence. By July 1950 the Hixenbaugh case generated no Bureau interest in the photographs at all; the AAF examination chain (Godman Field to Wright-Patterson) ran independently of the Bureau, and the Louisville Office’s role was reduced to (a) refusing to clear AAF visitors as authentic and (b) documenting an internal-newsroom hoax allegation against the photographer. The 1947 Hoover concern about Bureau exposure to civilian photographic evidence has, by 1950, been operationally resolved by handing photographic cases entirely to OSI/AAF.

  4. Informant-evidence comparison to Cuneo/Jones 1949. The 2026-05-08-fbi-62hq83894-cuneo-jones-winchell-followup-1949|Cuneo/Jones case involved a named columnist (Walter Winchell) running a UAP claim through the Bureau via a journalist conduit. The Petrone case is a smaller-scale version of the same pattern: a small-circulation newspaper publisher walking unsolicited mail into a field office. The Bureau handled both with a no-action / refer-out posture, but in 1950 the field-office memo no longer raises the question of investigative action. It assumes OSI handoff as the default.

  5. Operational disposition lineage. The Petrone follow-up memo (page 192) is a single-paragraph confirmation that the Petrone material has been “submitted to OSI.” This is the operational instantiation of the 2026-05-08-fbi-62hq83894-belmont-twinkle-master-memo-osi-log-1949-1950|Cabell directive / Belmont OSI-handoff structure that emerged during 1949. By mid-1950 the structure is so internalized that an inbound civilian UAP case generates two memos (intake and OSI-forwarding confirmation), not an investigative file.

  6. Hoax allegation as case-file substance. The Hixenbaugh case is the only Section 5 named-witness photographic case mined to date in which the Bureau receives a trade-internal fraud allegation from another working photographer in the same newsroom organization. Steinau and Davis are not anonymous tipsters; they are named, on the record, with a specific historical hoax (the matches-across-focal-plane night-disk photograph two years prior) and a specific technical critique of the current film (depth-of-focus inconsistency between the disk, trees, and airplane). The Bureau memo records all of this without endorsing it, but the case file becomes a mid-1950 example of how civilian photographic evidence generated counter-evidence from inside the same newspaper organization.

  7. Cross-archive question (open). The Hixenbaugh photographs received national television distribution and Walter Winchell coverage. They almost certainly survived in Project Sign / Project Grudge / Project Blue Book records under the June 27, 1950 Louisville sighting case number. Whether the Steinau hoax allegation was preserved in the Air Force investigative chain — or whether the Air Force evaluated only the film without ever learning what the Bureau learned from Steinau on July 29, 1950 — is a substantive open question. The OSI submission summarized in page 192 is for the Petrone case only; no equivalent OSI-submission memo for the Hixenbaugh material is visible in the mined Section 5 pages, suggesting the Steinau information may not have been transmitted forward.

Connections

Open Questions

  1. Page 195 gap. Page 195 is missing from the Section 5 OCR file run. It would contain the rest of the HOLMBERG letter (continuing past “anti aircraft gunners”) and likely the start of the Chicago SAC’s narrative about Petrone’s account before page 196’s HOLMBERG-identity section. Whether this page is missing from the original PDF release or only from the OCR conversion needs verification against war.gov’s source PDF.

  2. Were the Hixenbaugh photographs transmitted to OSI? Section 5 contains no follow-up memo confirming Hixenbaugh-case OSI submission, in contrast to the Petrone case which has a clean two-memo intake + OSI-confirm sequence. If the Hixenbaugh material went to OSI it should appear in a later memo not yet mined.

  3. Did the Air Force investigative chain ever see the Steinau hoax allegation? The Bureau memo records both the photographs and the counter-allegation in one file. If only the photographs traveled to OSI/AAF, the Air Force may have evaluated the film without the trade-internal context that the Bureau possessed.

  4. Was Hixenbaugh’s earlier matches-across-focal-plane “flying disk” photograph (~1948) preserved anywhere? Steinau described it as published in the Louisville Times “approximately two years ago” — circa mid-1948. A separate Bureau-file or Project Sign / Project Grudge record of that earlier image, if it exists, would establish the photographer as a serial UAP-image producer.

  5. Did “ALBERT HOLMBERG” ever follow through with the promised “zinc cuts”? Petrone committed to reporting back to the Chicago Field Office. No follow-up Petrone memo is visible in the immediately adjacent pages. Either HOLMBERG never sent further material, Petrone declined to forward what arrived, or a follow-up memo exists later in 62-HQ-83894 not yet mined.

  6. What is the “Chicago let dated July 18, 1950” referenced in the August 2, 1950 follow-up memo (page 192)? It is forwarded to OSI alongside the Petrone material. It indicates an earlier Chicago UAP communication of unknown content that was case-handled together with the Petrone tip. Worth grepping the rest of Section 5 and Section 6.

  7. Why did Petrone believe “the Army desired that the matter be kept confidential”? This editorial restraint by a small-circulation publisher suggests prior Army outreach to the Chicago newspaper community on UAP matters that is not directly documented in the mined pages. It echoes a pattern of newspaper-side voluntary suppression that would warrant separate cross-archive investigation.

Quotes Worth Keeping

“On June 28, 1950, the Louisville Times, a newspaper of general circulation published at Louisville, Kentucky, carried a two column cut showing three frames of a movie camera film of what purported to be a moving picture of a flying saucer. The photographs, taken by ALF (AL) HIXENBAUGH, Times staff photographer, were taken, HIXENBAUGH said, on a 16 mm magazine-loading movie camera.” — SAC Louisville to Director, August 2, 1950 (Section 5 page 187, FBI serial 162-83894-240)

“STEINAU said that he and DAVIS subsequently were advised by a friend of HIXENBAUGH that the picture was ‘a fraud’. The friend related that HIXENBAUGH was lying on his back on the ground with his camera pointing toward the sky when the friend flipped one or more lighted matches across the focal plane of the camera.” — SAC Louisville to Director, August 2, 1950 (Section 5 page 189)

“STEINAU said that HIXENBAUGH enjoys a poor reputation among other staff photographers of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times and he believes HIXENBAUGH perpetrated both the original hoax concerning the flying disk and this later ‘hoax’ concerning the flying saucer to attract attention to himself.” — SAC Louisville to Director, August 2, 1950 (Section 5 page 189)

“The flying saucer which was seen over south Chicago last April is a large fuel tank with crystal glass wings. It has two large jet engines on both sides. It is radion controled. It resembles a saucer very much when in flight. The wings cannot be seen on a clear day. This is so it is a most difficult target for anti aircraft gunners.” — Anonymous letter signed “ALBERT HOLMBERG”, postmarked July 25, 1950 Chicago, quoted in SAC Chicago to Director memo July 31, 1950 (Section 5 page 194)

“Mr. PETRONE stated he did not want to publish this letter as he felt the Army desired that the matter be kept confidential. He will contact this office again if he receives the ‘zinc cuts’ or has any other correspondence from HOLMBERG. He felt that HOLMBERG might send the same information to other publishers who may print the story.” — SAC Chicago to Director, July 31, 1950 (Section 5 page 196)

“The Bureau is advised that the information set forth in Chicago let dated July 18, 1950 and the information submitted to the Bureau by Chicago let dated July 31, 1950 entitled ‘ROBERT R. PETRONE, INFORMANT, FLYING DISCS’ has been submitted to OSI.” — SAC Chicago follow-up memo to Director, August 2, 1950 (Section 5 page 192, FBI serial 162-83894-241)

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