The Rex Heflin UFO Photographs, Santa Ana 1965

The summer of 1965 brought a wave of UFO reports across the United States. Rex E. Heflin was 38, a traffic inspector with the Orange County Road Department. On Tuesday, August 3, he stopped on Myford Road near Walnut Avenue, outside Santa Ana, to photograph an overgrown railroad crossing sign. He carried a county-issued Polaroid Model 101 for the job.

It was about 12:37 p.m. Heflin tried to radio Road Maintenance headquarters. The call died. The superintendent later confirmed hearing it begin, then "a complete, sudden, sharp cutoff."

Then the object appeared. "The UFO moved from my left to in front of me and momentarily hovered there." It was a domed disc with a dull gray reflecting surface, shaped like a man's straw boater hat. He judged it about 30 feet across and 8 feet thick, some 150 feet up. A greenish-white beam of light rotated beneath it. It drifted northeast and "acted similar to a gyroscope when losing its stability." Then it "tipped its top toward me slightly" and climbed away. Heflin shot three Polaroids through the windshield and side window. The whole thing lasted about 20 seconds.

It left a mark on the sky. A blue-black, doughnut-shaped ring of vapor lingered for more than thirty seconds. Heflin drove about a mile and photographed that too. Reporting it worried him. "I knew I'd be branded some sort of nut," he said.

Marine Corps intelligence at El Toro copied the prints. On September 20, 1965, the Santa Ana Register published the photos, and wire services spread them. That day a caller claiming to be a NORAD colonel phoned Heflin. On September 22, one or two men carrying ID cards without photos took the first three originals. They never brought them back. The Air Force said no NORAD representative had contacted him.

In 1993, a woman phoned Heflin twice, asking whether he had checked his mailbox. Inside was a plain 9 by 12 manila envelope with no postage. It held the three original Polaroids, marked "ORIGINAL" in grease pencil and "13" in black pencil. Heflin said he had made neither mark.

For the Air Force, Capt. Charles F. Reichmuth questioned Heflin for more than three hours and found no evidence he was hoaxing. The photo analysts saw it differently. They put the object at 1 to 3 feet across, and a 9-inch vaporizing tray tossed into the air looked strikingly similar. Project Blue Book classified the case as a photographic hoax.

The Condon Committee took it up as Case 52. William K. Hartmann showed that a model hung by a thread from a rod on a truck roof could reproduce the first three frames. He flagged weather inconsistencies in the ring photo. His verdict stayed measured: "The case must remain inconclusive."

NICAP's Los Angeles subcommittee, led by Idabel Epperson, judged the photos authentic. Robert Nathan of JPL enhanced the prints and said they confirmed the underside beam. Physicist James E. McDonald reinvestigated the radio cutoff and the weather. In 2000, Ann Druffel, Wood and Kelson reanalyzed the returned originals and reported no sign of manipulation. Sceptics pointed to a string line in enhanced copies, a stereo analysis placing a tiny object just beyond the truck's mirror, and a claim of a toy train wheel on fishing line.

When the weather record was challenged, Heflin had an answer: "The meteorologists are going to have to find some clouds to go in these photos!" Hartmann saw a wider value in the case. It "supplies good documentation of the dealings between our society and a man who claims to have seen one."