Documents / Case file
This U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book file compiles 1952 and 1953 messages, memos and reports on the movie film Navy Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse shot on 2 July 1952 near Tremonton, Utah. It records interviews with Newhouse's family, requests about the film, and Navy and General Mills balloon experts judging that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons. It also covers internal debate about releasing the film to the press. Unrelated reports from Phoenix, Lexington and Highland Park sightings are included too.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 7/2/52, Tremonton, Utah. This document records the Project Blue Book investigation and subsequent assessments of an incident near Tremonton, Utah, on July 2, 1952. Project Blue Book was a 1952-1969 U.S. Air Force program to investigate the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The file describes the Air Force’s assessment of the principal witness, Delbert C. Newhouse, a U.S. Navy Warrant Officer specializing in photography, as honest and reliable, and as an expert with more than 1,000 hours of aerial-photography experience. Newhouse reported observing 12 to 14 reflective objects and recorded the event on color motion-picture film using a handheld Bell & Howell Auto Master camera. The file reflects an evolving Air Force assessment of the imagery over several years. Early documentation considered several possible explanations, including sunlight reflecting from birds or balloons, and a mirage effect, and did not identify the objects conclusively. Later assessments became more confident that the objects were seabirds reflecting sunlight, citing identifiable seabirds and similar films showing seabirds as bright points of light under comparable conditions. However, the film’s limited detail and lack of fixed reference points prevented reliable determination of the objects’ distance, size, altitude, or linear speed from the film alone. AARO Comment: The file contains conflicting references to the film format. Several documents describe a 35mm film, while contemporaneous submission documentation identifies the original as a 50-foot roll of processed 16mm Kodachrome color motion-picture film recorded with a handheld Bell & Howell Auto Master camera. Newhouse reported exposing approximately 30 feet of the roll during the incident and using the remaining film later that day to record unrelated mountain scenery in Idaho. Other records show that 35mm positive and negative duplicate blowups were produced from the original 16mm material. The file also indicates that the original film was duplicated for preservation, citing its deteriorating condition. The footage retained by the National Archives and Records Administration and presented in this collection as DOW-UAP-PR159 is a digitization of a 16mm print.
“Hill”5 pages
white; no strong colors are notea. As to similar motion, a definite grouping of objects is noticeable. The first two sequences, taken with the slcy as a light blue , show what probably are two groups of three objects each, and two groups of two each. The final sequence, against the dark blue slcy, shows four pairs of objects, with the fifth pair having drifted upwards , out of the camera' s field of view. 6. If the objects are reflecting, the 11fade-in11 and fad.e-out 11 are caused by changes in attitude of decidedly non-spherical objects, as in .Answer 1 above. On the other hand, if they are light sources, the variation could be associated with their maneuvering activity. 7. and 8 . As explained in the o'Oening paragraph, the objects are only small bright s-oots on the film. When they dim sufficiently, they become invis ible ; no dark spots can be identified with these objects. The only visible motion in any single frame is with respect to the camera's field of view. Slow motion examination of successive frames suggests a general flight pattern of sweeping skew curves in space. This concept of object motions -produces no sharp breaks in their apparent flight paths , and also makes it practically impossible to detect rapid accelerations or decelerations along these patns. 9. In the seouences during which the camera \\'as held motionless , to record the angular velocity of a single object, it is possible to measure this velocity. Three such passes can be seen. Tae first was incomplete, picking up the object near the center of the frame . The second and. third passes were complete, from one ec..ge of the field of view to the other. J?i;..";tll'e I shov,s the actual tracings of the object from frame to frame for both Passes No. 2 and No. 3. The distance from lens to screen ~,as 100 inches. The focal length of the projection lens \.,as 2 inches. The enlargement of Figure I over the actual negative size is therefore 50 times. Camera and pro jector errors, plus small band- held camera motions , probably account for the deviations from a straignt line path. The average calculated angular velocity for both paths is about 2.1 degrees per second. Detailed computations are given in Append.ix I. 10a. A slow motion viewing, plus single frame position plots, suggest that the objects are maneuvering in definite formations. However, successive identical positions are not indicated when position plots from any t~o frames in a sequence are superimposed. For instance, the first sequence of movement lasts 160 frames or 10 seconds. During the first seven seconds, clear plots for all 10 objects can be made. These plots were made at half second intervals or 8 frames apart. 10b. Figure II represents a possible set of flight paths for this interval, derived as explained in Appendix II. It should be remembered that Figure II very likely contains some indeterminate and non-constant camera motion, botn horizontal and vertical, caused by tracking the formations . This means th?.t the directions and curvatures as sho1:-m may be a9oreciably different from ,,·bat a --stationary camera would have recorded. However , Figure II does help visualize 2 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 923007
Case file, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 156 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.