Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

APPENDIX 3
Reprints of
"OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE OF ANOMALISTIC PHENOMENA"
and
"FUTURE EXPERIMENTS ON ANOMALISTIC OBSERVATIONAL PHENOMENA"
by
Robert M. L. Baker, Jr.
and
ESTABLISHING OBSERVER CREDITABILITY: A PROPOSED METHOD"
by
Sydney Walker, III, M.D.
[[176]]
The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences Vol. XV, No. 1, pp. 31-36 Jan.-Feb., 1968
Observational Evidence of
Anomalistic Phenomena 1
Robert M. L. Baker, Jr.2
Abstract
A summary of the data obtained from a series of analyses and experiments, which were initially carried out by the author
under the auspices of Douglas Aircraft Company and based upon movie film containing anomalistic data, originally
provided by the United States Air Force, is presented. It is concluded that, on the basis of the photographic evidence, the
images cannot be explained by any presently known natural phenomena. On the other hand, the quality of the images is
insufficient to determine the nature of the anomalistic phenomena recorded on the movie film.
Introduction
Two anomalistic unidentified flying objects (UFO's) were sighted and later photographed at about 11:30 a.m. Mountain
Standard Time on August 15, 1950, by Nicholas Mariana at Great Falls, Montana. Mr. Mariana owned and operated a radio
station in Missoula, Montana, and was the owner of the Great Falls baseball team.
All of the soft-data (eye witness reports of Mr. Mariana and his secretary) indicated that the objects were silvery in
appearance with a notch or band at one point on their periphery and could be seen to rotate in unison, hover, and then "...
with a swishing sound, floated away to the left (SW) ..." The hard data from the film showed inarticulate bright white dots.
Figure 1 shows the manner in which the diameter of the bright dots decreased with time. The objects passed behind a water
tower and are exhibited in Fig. 2, along with the associated frame number (the frames below 65 exhibited no foreground).
According to Mariana, 35 of the earlier frames, allegedly lost by the Air Force, showed a larger image, complete with a
"rotating notch." Figure 2 was constructed from iconolog measurements (a film viewer with movable cross hairs and a
digitalized coordinate output) using the foreground reference points marked (3), (5), and (6). This figure is drawn like a
panorama on the assumption that the photographer kept his stance without moving appreciably (which was reported by him