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DOW-UAP-D102: Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film, Utah, 1952

Department of War · 2026-09-18 · 156 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Department of War release reproduces Project Blue Book records on the Tremonton, Utah film of 2 July 1952. In them, Navy Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse explains how he filmed a group of bright objects near Tremonton. ATIC memos and a December 1952 travel report record Navy and General Mills balloon specialists judging that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons. A January 1953 memorandum discusses publicly releasing the film. The file also includes unrelated sighting reports from Phoenix and Massachusetts, plus material about Donald Keyhoe.

  • p. 49 …ta appreci tion to you tor your cooper t1on throughout the entire nftlatiption of the cue…
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' - •STATEMENT BY SOURCE
Place:-
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About 7 miles north of Tremonton, Utah, on u.s. ~ghway No • .._
Time:-
11101 Wednesday, 2 July 1952.
Camera:-
B&H Automaster, magazine load, 3" telephoto lens, 16 frames per second.
Handheld.
Exposure:-
First few feet - f:S. Balance - f:16. Clear sun, cloudless sky. EKCO
Kodachrome film - Daylight. Exposure was changed with the mistaken idea of
darkening the sky to gain greater contrast. The result was merely general
underexposure.
Background:-
Driving from Washington, n.c., to Portland, Oregon, on the morning of
2 July, my wife noticed a group of objects in the sky that she could not iden
tify. She asked me to stop the car and look. There was a group of about ten
or twelve objects that bore no relation to anything I had seen before, milling
about in a rough formation and proceeding in a westerly direction. I opened
the luggage compartment of the car and got my camera out of a auitease. Load
ing it hurriedly, I exposed approximately thirty feet of fila. There was no
reference point in the sky and it was impossible for me to uake any estimate
of speed, size, altitude or distance. Toward the end one of the objects re
versed course and proceeded away from the main group. I held the camera still
and allowed this single one to cross the field of view, picking it up again
and repeating for 3 or 4 such passes. By thiE time all of the objects had
disappeared. I expended the balance of the film late that afternoon on a
mountain somewhere in Idaho.
DECLASSI FIED Authority NND 923007

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