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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.
“The Advance”1 page
Photogramnetric -5- Serial 00 Ana.lysia ot HUtah" Film Certain soaring insects - notably "ballooning spiders" (reference (5) and (6)) produce bright moving points of' light. The author has witnessed such a phenomenon. It is produced by sun reflections ott tbe streamers of silken threads spun by many types ot spiders. Caught by the wind, these streamers serve as a means ot lecanotion floating the spider high into the air. They oocaeionally have the appearance of vast numbers of silken tlakes which till the air and 1n some recorded instances extend over many square miles and to a height of several hundred feet. The reflection, being off silk threads, is not as bright as ditruse reflection h-om a flat white board. Thus no :t'laring ot the images could be expected. The author noted that the sections at the "web" that reflected measured f'ran 1/411 to 1/211 tor the largest specimenS. Thus the images might be ttributed_to balloon iIJg spiders at distances ot 50 to 100 feet. However, these web ref'lections ordinar1]3 show up~ against a rather dark background and it is doubted U their intensity would be great enough to produce the intense UFO images against a bright sq. No quantitative densitaneter examination at image brightness could be made, as the film was available. is understood Aloriginal not It from Chop that the gOYermnent analysts did make measurements ot this kind on the original films and touud the Utah images to be very intense*• Besides the above remarks, pertinent to the actual. images, several tacts can be gleaned trcm the motion of objects. The observations are not apt to support the supposition that the objects were cOIIVentional a1rcra1"t as the maneUTers are too erratic, the relative accelerations probably rul- ing out aircraft at distances ot aver five miles. Several observers familiar with the appearance of chatt have seen the and concluded that the perfilm sistence of the nontwinkHng oonstellationa, their small quantity, and the reported absence ot aircratt overhead makes chatt unl.ikely. Furthermore, the single object passing across the tield. or view would be most d.1.tticult to explain on the basis or chatt. These same remarks would apply also to bits of paper swept up in thermal updrafts. The relative angular velocity might be canpatible with soaring bird speeds at distances at less than one mile, the angular velocity ot the single objeot coul.d be attributed to a bird within about one thousand feet. There is a tendency to pan With a movillg object - not against it - so the Telocities in the table probably represent a lower bound. The motion of the obJects is not exact~ what one would eJr:pect tran a f'latlt of soaring birds (not the slightest indieation of a decrease in brightness due to periodic turning with the Wind or f'lapping) and no cumulus clouds are present which might betray the presence of a strong thermal updratt. On the other hand the s1Dgle object might represent a single soaring bird Which broke away in search of a new thermal -- quite a ccmnon oocrurrence among gulls -- see reference (7). * In tact, "burned right down to the cellu1oid baokiDg". See also ref'erence (l). DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 923007
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