Part 31 (2/2)

Both Dewey and I had been someorried about how the panel would react to a study with such definite conclusions But when he finished his presentation, it was obvious fro the conclusions serious thought Fournet's excellent reputation ell known

On Fridaywe presented the feature attractions of the session, the Tremonton Movie and the Montana Movie These two bits of evidence represented the best photos of UFO's that Project Blue Book had to offer The scientists knew about them, especially the Tremonton Movie, because since late July they had been the subject of many closed-door conferences Generals, admirals, and GS-16's had seen them at ”command performances,” and they had been flown to Kelly AFB in Texas to be shown to a conference of intelligence officers from all over the world Two of the country's best ht Field and the Navy's lab at Anacostia, Maryland, had spentto prove that the UFO's were balloons, airplanes, or stray light reflections, but they failed--the UFO's were true unknowns The possibility that the movie had been faked was considered but quickly rejected because only a Hollywood studio with elaborate equipment could do such a job and the people who filmed the movies didn't have this kind of equipust 15, 1950, by Nick Mariana, the e bright lights flying across the blue sky in an echelon forive an indication of the UFO's speed, but at one tihts didn't show any detail; they appeared to be large circular objects

Mariana had sent his movies to the Air Force back in 1950, but in 1950 there was no interest in the UFO so, after a quick viewing, Project Grudge had written thehters that were in the area”

In 1952, at the request of the Pentagon, I reopened the investigation of the Montana Movie Working through an intelligence officer at the Great Falls AFB, I had Mariana reinterrogated and obtained a copy of his movie, which I sent to the photo lab

When the photo lab got theto ith because the two UFO's had passed behind a reference point, the water tower Their calculations quickly confirmed that the objects were not birds, balloons, or meteors Balloons drift with the wind and the as not blowing in the direction that the two UFO's were traveling No exact speeds could be hts were traveling too fast to be birds and too slow to be meteors

This left airplanes as the only answer The intelligence officer at Great Falls had dug through huge stacks of files and found that only two airplanes, two F-94's, were near the city during the sighting and that they had landed about two minutes afterwards Both Mariana and his secretary, who had also seen the UFO's, had said that the two jets had appeared in another part of the sky only a minute or two after the two UFO's had disappeared in the southeast This in itself would eliminate the jets as candidates for the UFO's, but anted to double-check The two circular lights didn't look like F-94's, but anyone who has done any flying can tell you that an airplane so far away that it can't be seen can suddenly catch the sun's rays and ht paths of the two F-94's We knew the landing pattern that was being used on the day of the sighting, and we knehen the two F-94's landed The two jets just weren't anywhere close to where the two UFO's had been Next we studied each individual light and both appeared to be too steady to be reflections

We drew a blank on the Montana Movie--it was an unknown

We also drew a blank on the Tremonton Movie, a rapher, Warrant Officer Delbert C

Newhouse, on July 2, 1952

Our report on the incident showed that Newhouse, his wife, and their two children were driving to Oakland, California, from the east coast on this eventful day They had just passed through Tremonton, Utah, a town north of Salt Lake City, and had traveled about 7 roup of objects in the sky

She pointed them out to her husband; he looked, pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, and juet a better look He didn't have to look very long to realize that so place because in his twenty-one years in the Navy and 2,000 hours' flying ti like this About a dozen shi+ny disklike objects were ”h formation”

Newhouse had his movie camera so he turned the turret around to a 3- inch telephoto lens and started to photograph the UFO's He held the ca all of the bright objects in one photo All of the UFO's had stayed in a coroup from the time the Newhouse family had first seen them, but just before they disappeared over the western horizon one of the his ca his cah the field of view before it disappeared in the east

When I received the Treht Field photo lab, along with the Montana Movie, and the photo technicians and I ran them twenty or thirty times The two movies were sie circular lights--in neither one could you see any detail But, unlike the Montana Movie, the lights in the Treain This fading iht, but the roar of a king-sized dogfight could have been heard for miles and the Newhouse fahter pilots and they watched the UFO's circling and darting in and out in the cloudless blue sky Their unqualified co

Balloons came under suspicion, but the lab eli the kind of a reflection given off by a balloon-- it is a steady reflection since a balloon is spherical Then, to further scuttle the balloon theory, clusters of balloons are tied together and don't mill around Of course, the lone UFO that took off to the east by itself was the biggest arguence officer from the Western Air Defense Forces that he had held his cah the field of view, so the people in the lab ular velocity Unfortunately there were no clouds in the sky, nor was he able to include any of the ground in the pictures, so our esti that the photographer held his camera still Had the lone UFO been 10several thousandthe ht Field gave up All they had to say was, ”We don't knohat they are but they aren't airplanes or balloons, and we don't think they are birds”

While the lab had been working on theto the Navy photo people at Anacostia; they thought they had soood ideas on how to analyze the h with them I sent them to Major Fournet and he took them over to the Navy lab

The Navy lab spent about twothe films and had just completed their analysis The men who had done the ere on hand to brief the panel of scientists on their analysis after the panel had seen the ine that we ran each film ten times before every panel member was satisfied that he had seen and could reether so that the men could compare them

The Navy analysts didn't use the words ”interplanetary spacecraft”

when they told of their conclusions, but they did say that the UFO's were intelligently controlled vehicles and that they weren't airplanes or birds They had arrived at this conclusion by hts and the changes in the lights' intensity

When the Navy people had finished with their presentation, the scientists had questions None of the panelto find fault with the work the Navy people had done, but they weren't going to accept the study until they had meticulously searched for every loophole Then they found one

In hts, the photo analysts had used an instrument called a densito the density of an extree with a densitometer because he did it all the time in his studies of the stars And the astronomer didn't think that the Navy analysts had used the correct technique intheir measurements This didn't necessarily , but it did mean that they should recheck their work

When the discussion of the Navy's report ended, one of the scientists asked to see the Treain; so I had the projectionists run it several ht the UFO's could be sea gulls soaring on a therulls high in the air over San Francisoby We had thought of this possibility several months before because the area around the Great Salt Lake is inhabited by large white gulls But the speed of the lone UFO as it left the ulls I pointed this out to the physicist

His ansas that the Navy warrant officer ht he had held the camera steady, but he could have ”panned with the action” unconsciously This would throw all of our coree that they were sea gulls