The Warren Smith Photographs: Highwood Ranger Station, Alberta, 1967

1967 was a busy year for strange skies over Canada. Military files would later count about 40 UFO reports in 1966 and 167 in 1967. On 3 July, Warren Smith, a 27-year-old salesman, was returning from a weekend prospecting trip with two companions. One was a student of around 16. They were in rugged bush country near Highwood Ranger Station, Alberta, about 50 miles southwest of Calgary, at roughly 5,000 feet. Scattered cumulus drifted overhead.

It was early evening. Something appeared in the east, about 2 miles out and below 2,000 feet. It was coming down. At first they took it for an airplane. Then they saw it had no wings. In Smith's sworn words it was "losing altitude fast, as if headed for a crash." It passed behind some trees. Then it reappeared and hovered in the open sky.

One companion described that moment. "It travelled towards us gradually losing altitude, and at a distance of not more than ½ mile it hovered for a moment, at which time some object fell from the craft." The same witness added: "No sound accompanied the sighting and no exhaust or colors of any kind were seen." It was a silvery disc, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, four times wider than it was deep.

Smith remembered the loaded camera in his pack. He took two pictures, a few seconds apart. Then the disc left at high speed toward the south. The whole encounter lasted about 25 seconds.

All three witnesses signed statutory declarations that the photographs were genuine. A false one could have been prosecuted under the Canada Evidence Act. Canadian military photo interpreters ran four tests. The clouds matched in both frames. The blur fit camera movement. The weather fit the reported visibility. The remote location explained why no one else came forward. Their conclusion was an oblate ellipsoid or torus, 40 to 50 feet across and 11.5 to 14 feet thick.

J. Allen Hynek, then scientific consultant to Project Blue Book, ran lab tests on the original negatives and flew over the site with Smith. He found no sign of a hoax. A companion had brought back a specimen described as the fallen object. Hynek had it analysed. It proved to be solder with aluminium-magnesium alloy particles. Mike Adamson of Calgary radio station CKXL arranged polygraph tests, and the witnesses were said to be anxious to take them. But Hynek left Calgary first, and the station cancelled.

The Condon Committee filed it as Case 57, "Ranger Station Photograph." Of 35 current cases, only two were first priority. This was one. Investigator William K. Hartmann measured the plates. The object fell from about 1,400 feet in the first frame to about 240 feet in the second, "consistent with testimony." He derived a size of 35 ± 14 feet across and 8 ± 3 feet thick, and found no evidence for the torus shape.

Every testable detail matched. Still, Hartmann wrote that "the photographs are also consistent with a hand-thrown model and that there is insufficient information content to rule out this hypothesis." He never claimed to have shown a hoax. No confession or model has ever surfaced.

In November 1967, Wing Commander D.F. Robertson wrote a 27-page briefing for the incoming Defence Minister. The Smith photos were Case #2. Its conclusion: "assuming the photograph to be genuine, the UFO fitted the description of the object reported by Mr. Smith." Chris Rutkowski found it at Library and Archives Canada, and it drew fresh press in 2018. Jacques Vallée placed the case in his "Metal-Ejecting UFOs" chapter of Confrontations. And Hynek's words endured. The best daylight disc photograph he had personally investigated.