Documents / Report
This confidential progress report, dated 4 May 1953 and signed by L. W. Keith, went from the Navy's Photographic Interpretation Center to the Director of Naval Intelligence. It analyzes movies of unidentified objects filmed in Utah on 2 July 1952 and in Montana in 1950, which the U.S. Air Force had asked the Navy to interpret. Using plots, density readings and velocity estimates, the analysts judged the objects to be probably light sources that were disk shaped and moved at high speeds. They concluded the objects could not be identified as natural phenomena or commonly known man-made objects.
From the source:Release of 2026-08-07 Incident: 1950, 1952, Montana, Utah. This file contains a memorandum relating to the U.S. Naval Photographic Interpretation Center’s assessment of two films allegedly depicting unidentified airborne objects, captured in Montana and Utah in 1950 and 1952, respectively. The file documents the Center’s analytic process, assumptions that constrained its confidence level, tentative conclusions, and recommendations for future research. The Center assessed, generally, that the objects depicted in the film demonstrated characteristics that were inconsistent with those of natural phenomena or commonly known aerospace technologies. The memorandum documents the Center’s recommendation for a more well-resourced investigation to corroborate its presumptive findings, citing a lack of funding and personnel. The accompanying charts compare the film’s luminosity with the apparent angular size of the phenomena, using contemporary mathematical modeling and photogrammetric analysis techniques.
“Expedition X”1 page
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0105 CONFIDENTIAL SECURITY INFORMATION Subj: Interpretation of Movies of Unidentified Objects; progress report on A preliminary detailed study of the Utah film was made and it was decided that: a. Brightly colored spots of red and green lasting only one or two frames were not to be considered. b. Water spots could be detected easily and eliminated from the study. c. The color of the objects was fairly constant as blue-white. d. Size and luminosity of an object varied through-out the film. For convenience in interpretation, the film was divided into three parts, each part being considered an entity. Part I consisted of the footage taken at f8; Part II, the footage taken at f16 with a panning motion; and Part III, the footage taken at f16 during which the camera was held steady. Three definite groups of lights were observed throughout the film and plots were recorded as follows: TABLE I PLOTS OF POSITIONS Utah Parts Control Chart I II III Holding to lower group Not enclosed I II Holding to one object and azimuth of another 2 and 3 I Arbitrary 1/2 inch correction per frame for panning 4 III Holding to frame outline 5a and 5b I One image held to base line. Every tenth frame to show changes within apparent formations 6 Montana All Terrestrial Objects 7a and 7b
Report, from the pursue collection. 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. 23 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.