Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film, Utah, 1952

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.

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' - •STATEMENT BY SOURCE
Place:-
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About 7 miles north of Tremonton, Utah, on u.s. ~ghway No • .._
Time:-
11101 Wednesday, 2 July 1952.
Camera:-
B&H Automaster, magazine load, 3" telephoto lens, 16 frames per second.
Handheld.
Exposure:-
First few feet - f:S. Balance - f:16. Clear sun, cloudless sky. EKCO
Kodachrome film - Daylight. Exposure was changed with the mistaken idea of
darkening the sky to gain greater contrast. The result was merely general
underexposure.
Background:-
Driving from Washington, n.c., to Portland, Oregon, on the morning of
2 July, my wife noticed a group of objects in the sky that she could not iden
tify. She asked me to stop the car and look. There was a group of about ten
or twelve objects that bore no relation to anything I had seen before, milling
about in a rough formation and proceeding in a westerly direction. I opened
the luggage compartment of the car and got my camera out of a auitease. Load
ing it hurriedly, I exposed approximately thirty feet of fila. There was no
reference point in the sky and it was impossible for me to uake any estimate
of speed, size, altitude or distance. Toward the end one of the objects re
versed course and proceeded away from the main group. I held the camera still
and allowed this single one to cross the field of view, picking it up again
and repeating for 3 or 4 such passes. By thiE time all of the objects had
disappeared. I expended the balance of the film late that afternoon on a
mountain somewhere in Idaho.
DECLASSI FIED Authority NND 923007