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This Project Blue Book file, released through The Black Vault, collects US Air Force records from 1950 to 1959 on the movie film Nicholas Mariana shot at Great Falls, Montana on 15 August 1950. It includes the OSI interview report, letters about borrowing and copying the film, and a 1956 Douglas Aircraft analysis. Blue Book's own findings were not consistent: one letter lists the cause as unknown, while later memos conclude the objects were probably two F-94 jets.
# MEMORANDUM FOR DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE Attn: Lt Colonel T. R. Johnson, AFOIN-X SUBJECT: (Uncld) UFO Movie 1. The following statements concerning two of the UFO sightings described in the recently released movie, are submitted in response to Mr. Monts' request of 29 May 1956. a. The Case-Montana-1950. The original Air Force conclusion, based on the interrogation of witnesses and the evaluation of the data, was that the UFOs were, in all probability, two Air Force F-94 fighter aircraft known to be in the vicinity at the time. Simulated photographs of aircraft at various distances, made by an aircraft manufacturing firm in a recent independent and unsolicited analysis of the film, show striking similarity to the two white blops in this film. Based on the degree of credibility accorded this early ATIC evaluation and the strong corroborative evidence supplied by the recent independent analysis, the Air Force has no compelling reason to alter its original conclusion. b. The 1 Utah-1952. The original film was analyzed by an Air Force Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory shortly after the sighting. The conclusion reached was that a strong possibility existed that the bright spots of light appearing on the film were caused by seagulls soaring in thermal air currents. The credibility of the conclusion was undoubtedly supported by the presence of identifiable seagulls in some of the frames. This conclusion was further strengthened by movies of seagulls, taken at various distances, which showed them as bright spots of light similar to those in the film.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 114 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.