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.
“The Advance”1 page
Photogramnetric -5- Serial 00 Ana.lysia ot HUtah" Film Certain soaring insects - notably "ballooning spiders" (reference (5) and (6)) produce bright moving points of' light. The author has witnessed such a phenomenon. It is produced by sun reflections ott tbe streamers of silken threads spun by many types ot spiders. Caught by the wind, these streamers serve as a means ot lecanotion floating the spider high into the air. They oocaeionally have the appearance of vast numbers of silken tlakes which till the air and 1n some recorded instances extend over many square miles and to a height of several hundred feet. The reflection, being off silk threads, is not as bright as ditruse reflection h-om a flat white board. Thus no :t'laring ot the images could be expected. The author noted that the sections at the "web" that reflected measured f'ran 1/411 to 1/211 tor the largest specimenS. Thus the images might be ttributed_to balloon iIJg spiders at distances ot 50 to 100 feet. However, these web ref'lections ordinar1]3 show up~ against a rather dark background and it is doubted U their intensity would be great enough to produce the intense UFO images against a bright sq. No quantitative densitaneter examination at image brightness could be made, as the film was available. is understood Aloriginal not It from Chop that the gOYermnent analysts did make measurements ot this kind on the original films and touud the Utah images to be very intense*• Besides the above remarks, pertinent to the actual. images, several tacts can be gleaned trcm the motion of objects. The observations are not apt to support the supposition that the objects were cOIIVentional a1rcra1"t as the maneUTers are too erratic, the relative accelerations probably rul- ing out aircraft at distances ot aver five miles. Several observers familiar with the appearance of chatt have seen the and concluded that the perfilm sistence of the nontwinkHng oonstellationa, their small quantity, and the reported absence ot aircratt overhead makes chatt unl.ikely. Furthermore, the single object passing across the tield. or view would be most d.1.tticult to explain on the basis or chatt. These same remarks would apply also to bits of paper swept up in thermal updrafts. The relative angular velocity might be canpatible with soaring bird speeds at distances at less than one mile, the angular velocity ot the single objeot coul.d be attributed to a bird within about one thousand feet. There is a tendency to pan With a movillg object - not against it - so the Telocities in the table probably represent a lower bound. The motion of the obJects is not exact~ what one would eJr:pect tran a f'latlt of soaring birds (not the slightest indieation of a decrease in brightness due to periodic turning with the Wind or f'lapping) and no cumulus clouds are present which might betray the presence of a strong thermal updratt. On the other hand the s1Dgle object might represent a single soaring bird Which broke away in search of a new thermal -- quite a ccmnon oocrurrence among gulls -- see reference (7). * In tact, "burned right down to the cellu1oid baokiDg". See also ref'erence (l). 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.