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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.
“Cooper”6 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
No details can be recognized on the images of the objects, i.e. no structure of any kind, no color fringes, no shape, even under a high power microscope. The images are uniformly round white dots, except a few which are oblong (frames 15, 17, 19 or 56, etc.), both objects parallel, probably as a result of camera motion blur. The sun is known to have been to the left of the photographer, at an elevation of about $ 5 5^{\circ} $ and on an azimuth of $ 1 5 4^{\circ} $ (confirmed by shadows on the film) *. There is no conclusive evidence that they were self-luminous sources because at no time were they seen against the prevailing sunlight.
Several additional pertinent pieces of information were learned from Mr. in telephone conversations on March 17 and March 28, 1955, to wit: The Revere turret type camera was equipped with a telephoto lens of 3" focal length and operated at 16 frames/second. He noticed no surface wind to speak of at the time, possibly due to shielding by the bleachers, just a gentle breeze. He recalled that a wind sprang up later in the afternoon. An aerial photograph of the ball park showing the grain elevators and water tower in part was obtained (figure 2).
With the knowledge of the focal length and frame speed, the transverse component of the velocity of the objects can be correlated to their altitude and distance from the observer (for the objects at the start of filming). Assuming the azimuth heading to be $ 1 7 1^{0} $ the total velocity can be similarly correlated. Since only angular distances from one station are available for measurement, the actual range at any one time cannot be determined.
If the objects' initial distance was (miles) Their altitude was (ft. above observer) Their transverse velocity was (mph) Their total velocity was (assuming 171° heading)
1/4 320 18 19
1/2 640 35 36
1 1,280 69 74
2 2,160 138 150
3 3,800 200 220
4 5,100 280 300
5 6,400 345 370
10 12,800 690 740
Incidental information presently available comprises the following: Great Falls, Montana is situated on the upper Missouri River, just East of the Rocky Mountains at latitude $ 4 7^{\circ} $ 30' and longitude $ 1 1 1^{\circ} $ 18'. Altitude is 3312 feet. 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. 114 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.