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.
“The Advance”1 page
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## 0105 CONFIDENTIAL SECURITY INFORMATION Subj: Interpretation of Movies of Unidentified Objects; progress report on 4. All objects appear to have the same characteristics in regards to shape, color, size and relative motion. 5. The shape of the objects appears to be oblate or disk shaped, color; blue-white, and maximum and minimum size; 98 and 16 feet. The size is based on the assumption that the objects are five miles from the observer. 6. Fade in and fade out of the objects were analyzed as in 3 above. In this case the group movement was such that the distance between the objects and camera was increased so that the objects could not be recorded on the film thereby causing the apparent fade-out. Fade-in as attributed to a shortening of the distance from the fade-out area to the camera station. 7. Plots of the groups indicate that the objects move counterclock-wise relative to the axis of flight path. However, nothing has been detected which indicates motion of the individual objects about their own axis although this motion appears to be likely. 8. In determining the velocity of the objects three assumptions were made: a. The camera was held steady during Part III of the film. b. The objects were moving perpendicular to the optical axis, and c. The objects were five miles from the camera. It is obvious that (b) is a fallacy; however, this assumption will give the minimum velocity and the actual velocity is greater than computed. The assumption that the objects are five miles from the camera is an arbitrary one. However, based on the emulsion speed and focal length, an object 50 feet in diameter and five miles from the camera will be recorded on the film with sufficient resolution to identify major details of the object. It is felt that if these objects were closer than five miles at the time of recording, details would appear on the film. Velocity is computed to be 3780 mph for a shift of 1 mm per frame if the object is five miles from the observer. From 55 measurements taken from Part III of the Utah film, the maximum and minimum velocities
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.