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Project Blue Book Mariana UFO Incident PDF

NARA via The Black Vault · 114 pages · text by GLM-OCR

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.

  • p. 37 …and is manufactured by Genisco Inc., Los Angeles 64, California. Also a reprinted 35mm film was…
  • p. 86 …foot) in a landing pattern over the Los Angeles International Airport. Its estimated distance was 12…

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

Because of the above described effects, the proportions of bright objects seen from a distance may also be distorted (cf. figure 9(a) where a cylinder of length to width ratio of 1:3 appears almost like a circular dot). In spite of this, fuselage reflections from planes appear to be slightly elongated, cf. figure 9(c). Of course, the amount of elongation depends upon the perspective of the observer and the distance of the object. In the case of the Montana films (the object's line of motion making an angle of $ 55^{\circ} $ with the line of sight) the fact that the images appear as uniform white dots cannot serve as a valid deterrent to an airplane reflection hypothesis. $ \star $ However, this rather large angle does mean that the image would be smaller and the hypothetical planes would have to be even closer than three miles. In figure 9(c) the jet plane motion made an angle of only about $ 30^{\circ} $ to $ 40^{\circ} $ with the observer's line of sight and the image definitely appears oval.

Cases discussed

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