Documents / Case file
This Project Blue Book photo file, covering Files 1377 and 1415 and dated July 7, 1952, deals with two photos taken by CPO Delbert C. Newhouse. He took them at 1110 MST on 2 July 1952, about 7 miles north of Tremonton, Utah, after his wife noticed a group of objects milling about in rough formation. The file notes there were no reference points for speed, distance or size. It gives the explanation as pillow balloons or birds and includes a General Mills Research Laboratories photo of 2 by 2 foot pillow balloons.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 7/2/52, Tremonton, Utah. During its investigation of a July 1952 film of an incident reported near Tremonton, Utah, Project Blue Book examined whether the objects recorded on film might have been “pillow balloons.” Project Blue Book was a U.S. Air Force program active from 1952 to 1969 that investigated the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). In December 1952, investigators contacted General Mills, Inc., the only known manufacturer of pillow balloons at the time, to determine whether a balloon release could account for the incident. The file includes example imagery of pillow balloons supplied by General Mills Research Laboratories. In late December 1952, Project Blue Book personnel, balloon specialists, and representatives from General Mills reviewed the Tremonton footage. The group’s consensus was that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons in flight and behaved consistently with that explanation. One General Mills representative was less convinced, noting that the objects appeared somewhat too bright and seemed to maneuver too rapidly. The reviewers also questioned previous angular-velocity calculations suggesting that the objects moved at a high rate of speed because those calculations depended on the unverified assumption that the camera operator had held the camera still during filming. Subsequent efforts to identify a pillow-balloon release in the Tremonton area were unsuccessful. The file also considered seabirds as a possible explanation, citing similar films showing seabirds as bright points of light under comparable conditions. Later Air Force assessments favored the seabird attribution.
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General Mills Research Laboratories 2010 E. HENNEPIN AVE. MINNEAPOLIS 13, MINN. Photo Laboratory No.___759 Date___ These are " pillow balloons " 2' x 2' . at altitudes and with a cloud or adverse background — there could give a " saxon " appearance when long on a flat, humigible pontoon
Case file, 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. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.