Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

Fig. 3b. Separation distance of of UFO system as function of time.
distance can be made on the basis of the angular data presented by the film.) Figure 4 also shows where Mariana and his
secretary first viewed the "hovering and rotating" UFO's near an Anaconda smoke stack.
After over a decade of speculation and hypothesis checks, all natural phenomena (e.g., birds, balloons, insects, meteors,
mirages, etc.) have been ruled out, except airplane reflections, on the basis of winds (which the weather bureau reported as
blowing in the opposite direction); the lack of an observable trail (which would have betrayed a bifurcated meteor); and
brightness, angular speed, and steady motion, which could not be reconciled with the supposition that they were birds or
insects. These same facts, together with the weather bureau report [1] and the Sun angle, also seemed to rule out various
forms of optical lens flare, atmospheric mirages, or cloud reflections. From analyses of speed and geometry, which
included a knowledge of the Sun's azimuth at the time of the photography (as confirmed by the shadows on the film) the
images could have been (although not without some stretch of the imagination) specular Sun reflection from airplane
fuselages. This explanation seemed attractive since it was rumored (although not verified [2]) that two jet airplanes (F-94's)
were landing at Malmstrom Air Force Base at the approximate time of the sighting. This rumor was reinforced by a
presentation by E. J. Ruppelt to a panel of experts in January, 1953 (the panel's membership was not revealed) but may
have been called the "Robertson panel" [4]). Ruppelt [5] indicates "the intelligence officer at Great Falls had dug through
huge stacks of files and found that only two airplanes, two F-94's, were near the city (Great Falls) during the sighting and
that they had landed about two minutes afterwards. ... First we studied the flight paths of the two F-94's. We knew the
landing pattern that was being used on the day of the sighting and we knew when the two F-94's landed. The two jets just
weren't anywhere close to where the two UFO's had been." Figure 4 bears this conclusion out since the objects were in the
opposite direction from Malmstrom Air Force Base and headed away from the air field. The panel, however, did not
consider this as positive proof for eliminating the jet-plane hypothesis.
Experiment
Using a camera similar to Mariana's (Revere turret type with a 3" focal length telephoto lens), a series of photographic
experiments were carried out by the author on an array of objects (see Figure 6-22 on page 321 of reference [3]) at various
distances and Sun angles and on jet plane reflections. The results of these experiments, however, made the hypotheses of
airplane reflections quite strained.