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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.
“Los Angeles Times”2 pages
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In order to compare the UFO frames with a typical fifty foot airplane, silhouettes are included in figure 10(b). Figure 10(c) shows the UFO's just before they fade from view.
The experimental results appear to indicate that if the first few frames of the UFO film show sun reflections from airplanes which are optimally oriented with respect to the sun then the planes would have been on the order of one to three miles distant from the observer. If, however, these first few frames represent images of the reflection from airplanes not quite optimally oriented then the planes could have been at closer distance. Even in the light of the many sources of image distortion the experimental shots indicate that the image size of the UFO's could not be reconciled with airplane fuselage reflections at even four miles.
Airplane reflections have been observed both photographically and visually to persist (total angular distance from fade-in to fade-out) over angular travel ranges less than $ 2 0^{\circ} $ (40 moon diameters). This conclusion was borne out by manipulation of model airplanes (DC-6 and F-94) in strong sunlight.
The effects which accounted for the distortion in image size may be listed as follows: scattering in the atmosphere (between the light source and the camera) *, optical aberrations (coma, astigmatism, distortion), flaring at the lens surfaces, diffraction, turbidity in the film (sometimes called "photographic craspedomorphology"), reflections off the film backing (halation) and finally adjacency effects (chemical reactions between over-exposed and under-exposed areas usually produce firings called Makie line or Eberhard effect). There are also distortions produced during development and reprinting. An excellent description and analysis of all of the above effects is presented in reference (11).
All of these effects will cause, to a greater or lesser degree, the image on the film to appear larger than the source. $ \cdot $ The stronger the light source, the more prominent these effects become. Curved reflecting surfaces become a much less intense source (cf. figures 9(a) and 9(c) and also have the property of not needing to be precisely oriented with respect to the sun in order to yield a bright image. Thus fuselage skin reflections aren't as bright as direct specular reflections but last over a greater angle. There is also quite a difference between specular sun reflections from fins, wings, planar windows etc. and those from the fuselage. Fins, wings and windows have more nearly planar surfaces and therefore produce more intense reflections, however, a very slight change in orientation with respect to the sun $ (1^{\circ} $ to $ 5^{\circ} $ ) will completely destroy the reflections. Fuselage surfaces have greater curvature and thus produce less intense reflections but the angle of orientation is not quite as critical - e.g., $ 5^{\circ} $ to $ 10^{\circ} $ in the horizontal plane and sometimes up to $ 45^{\circ} $ in the vertical plane. 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.