Documents / Document
This Project Blue Book case file compilation, hosted by NICAP, covers Rex Heflin's photographs of a UFO taken near Santa Ana, California, on 3 August 1965. It includes an Air Force investigation report by Captain Charles F. Reichmuth, a USMC El Toro G-2 report, an FTD photo analysis dated 14 August 1965, correspondence with Ralph Rankow and Congressman James B. Utt, and newspaper clippings. The analysis concluded the object was about one to three feet in diameter, close to the camera, and could not be the size reported.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Countian Took Pictures Of Unidentified Object BY FRANK HALL Register Staff Writer SANTA ANA-Rex Heflin doesn't believe in flying saucers. Never has. But he has photographed a saucer-shaped flying object that has still to be identified. Skeptics may say his pictures are products of trick photography, but Heflin is prepared to submit to a lie-detector test to prove their authenticity. Heflin, 37, county highway department investigator, was working on Myford Road between the Santa Ana Freeway and Valencia when a circular, silver object caught his attention. He estimated it to be 30 feet in diameter and 8 feet thick. It was visible about 15 seconds, he said. It silently moved from west to east then accelerated "about the same speed as a jet" toward Saddleback. The only sound heard was the helicopters at the Santa Ana Marine Corps Air Facility, said Heflin. A beam of white light rotated underneath the saucer, said Heflin. (Under a magnifying glass, the beam is discernable in one of the photographs.) Despite the mysterious object's proximity to the Marine base, radar operators failed to report any unidentified objects on Aug. 3, the day Heflin saw the saucer. Heflin said he tried to communicate with his supervisor via two-way radio in his vehicle when the saucer was near, but his radio was inoperative. After the saucer disappeared, the radio functioned perfectly and has since the incident, he said. The investigator said at first he didn't pay any attention to the saucer. "I thought it was another jet," he said. Heflin, who carries a camera in his vehicle for his work, said he again looked out and realized it wasn't a jet. He then grabbed his camera and took three pictures before the saucer sailed off over the horizon. Heflin said he submitted his pictures to editors of a national magazine, but they returned them saying the subject was too controversial. He photographed the saucer while reports of UFOs were flooding the nation. However, they added that his photos were the best they had seen, Heflin said. On Aug. 5, a flurry of reports of UFOs were made in California. Numerous reports of UFOs were made on Aug. 1 from residents of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas. Heflin doesn't believe the saucer is an extra-terrestrial product. He believes the United States is testing a new flying machine. He qualified his belief by saying sooner or later man-made aircraft crash near populated areas. "I have never heard of a saucer crashing, and they have been sighted for a long time."
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 40 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.