From TinWiki.org
On 2 July 1952 US Navy Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse was en route from Washington D.C. to Portland, Oregon, with his wife, and his two children, aged twelve and fourteen. They were driving north on Utah State Highway 30, seven miles north of Tremonton, when Mrs. Newhouse called her husband’s attention to a group of "bright shining objects in the air off towards the eastward horizon". Newhouse filmed the objects.
The Tremonton, Utah film
On 11 August 1952, Newhouse sent the following account to Project Blue Book:
- “Driving from Washington, D.C. to Portland, Ore., on the morning of 2 July my wife noticed a group of objects in the sky that she could not identify. She asked me to stop the car and look. There was a group of about ten or twelve objects - that bore no relation to anything I had seen before - milling about in a rough formation and proceeding in a westerly direction. I opened the luggage compartment of the car and got my camera out of a suitcase. Loading it hurriedly, I exposed approximately thirty feet of film. There was no reference point in the sky and it was impossible for me to make any estimate of speed, size, altitude or distance. Toward the end one of the objects reversed course and proceeded away from the main group. I held the camera still and allowed this single one to cross the field of view, picking it up again and repeating for three or four such passes. By this time all of the objects had disappeared. I expended the balance of the film late that afternoon on a mountain somewhere in Idaho”
The films were considered by Project Blue Book and then forwarded at the request of the Navy to a group of Navy photo analysts at Anacostia, who had some ideas about how to study the films. The Navy group concluded that the UFOs were intelligently controlled vehicles and that they weren't airplanes or birds. They arrived at this conclusion by making a frame-by-frame study of the motion of the lights and the changes in their intensity.
That film has since been considered by the CIA’s Robertson’s Panel, discussed in the Condon Report and analyzed by various others.
Sample Frame from the Tremonton film
Sample Frame from the Tremonton film
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Claims to fame
The Tremonton film was one of two motion pictures of UFO sightings considered by the Robertson Panel, organized by the CIA, in January 1953.
During 2003-2007, Isaac Koi reviewed a sample of 963 UFO and SETI books and noted the frequency with which various UFO cases were discussed. The Tremonton film featured in a list of the top 10 photographic cases (in terms of frequency of discussion). This incident was the fourth most frequently discussed UFO photographic case in the study, with 64 discussions being noted.
The Skeptics
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force included these photographs in Project Blue Book as Case Number 1377. Its evaluation of them was: “Other (BIRDS)”.
The CIA’s Robertson Panel
The Robertson Panel, organized by the CIA, considered the Tremonton footage.
Edward J Ruppelt reports in his book “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” (1956) that there was some criticism of the Navy analysts' use of a densitometer, and that one of the panel members raised the possibility that while the key witness “thought he had held the camera steady...he could have 'panned with the action' unconsciously, which would throw all of the computations way off”.
The panel members' favoured explanation of what was seen was white gulls. They considered that positive identification could be made “if further data is obtained by photographing polyethylene ‘pillow’ balloons released near the site under similar weather conditions, checking bird flight and reflection characteristics with competent ornithologists and calculating apparent "G" forces acting upon objects from their apparent tracks”. However, the members of the Robertson Panel expressed doubts about whether the expenditure of the costs required to explain UFO sightings could be justified, and instead suggested that “attention should be directed to the requirement among scientists that a new phenomena, to be accepted, must be completely and convincingly documented. In other words, the burden of proof is on the sighter, not the explainer.”
Menzel and Boyd
Donald Menzel and Lyle Boyd discussed the Tremonton footage in their book “The World of Flying Saucers” (1963). They dismiss the objects as birds. They suggested that : "The pictures are of such poor quality and show so little that even the most enthusiastic home-movie fan today would hesitate to show them to his friends. Only a stimulated imagination could suggest that the moving objects are anything but very badly photographed birds."
In the Condon Report, Hartmann suggests (at page 647) that this conclusion was “phrased in a way inconsistent with the facts”. Hartmann commented that Menzel and Boyd’s conclusion “gives the totally wrong impression that the objects are difficult to identify merely because of poor photography. The objects may be birds though unresolved because of distances, but the images are small and relatively sharp, and lack of a clear identification cannot be ascribed to poor photography.”
Condon Report
There are 14 pages of discussion of these photographs in the Condon Report (“Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects”, Edward U Condon (Director) and Daniel S Gillmor (Editor) (1969)).
It is designated as Condon Case Number 49. The main discussion was written by William K Hartmann.
At pages 651-652 of the Condon Report, Hartmann summarises the arguments in favour of the hypothesis that the Tremonton objects were birds, probably gulls, as follows:
- (1) White gulls are known to be present in the area.
- (2) Bird-sized objects at a distance of 2,000 ft. would be on the limits of visual resolution, moving at about 45 to 55 mph east to west, with relative motions up to 9 mph;
- (3) Such motions are independently supported by the testimony that the objects overtook and were first sighted from a moving car travelling toward the north-west. The objects were kept in sight until the car was stopped, and nearly a minute and a half of film exposed.
- (4) R.M.L. Baker, Jr. points out that the departure of a single object from the group is typical of a bird seeking a new thermal updraft.
- (5) Variations in motion and brightness suggest wheeling birds.
- (6) The bulk of informed opinion among those who studied the film, both in and out of the Air Force, is that birds were the most probable explanation.
At page 652 of the Condon Report, Hartmann went on to summarise the arguments against gulls as including the following:
- (1) The distances and velocities cited are on the margin of acceptability. If the gulls were slightly closer, they should have been clearly identified since their angular size would exceed 3 min. of arc; if they were slightly further away, their velocity would become unacceptably high. This argument is considerably weakened by noting that somewhat smaller birds could be unresolvable but slow.
- (2) Arguments have been raised that the weather conditions would not be conducive to thermal updrafts that would allow long, soaring flights of birds. This is not a strong argument, however, since there is insufficient data concerning weather conditions.
- (3) No clear, periodic flapping is observed on the film. This is not critical, since there are erratic brightness fluctuations, and since the objects were evidently below the limits of resolution.
- (4) The strongest negative argument was stated later by the witness that the objects were seen to subtend an angle of about 0.5° and were then seen as gun-metal coloured and shaped like two saucers held together rim to rim, but the photographs and circumstances indicate that this observation could not have been meaningful.
At pages 641 and 652-653, Hartmann expressed his conclusion : “Observations of birds near Tremonton indicate that the objects are birds, and the case cannot be said to establish the existence of extraordinary aircraft”.
References to discussions in books
- Donald Menzel and Lyle Boyd in their “The World of Flying Saucers” (1963) at pages 130-132 (in Chapter VI) of the Doubleday hardback edition. [3 page discussion]
- Donald E Keyhoe, in his “Flying Saucers from Outer Space” (1953) at pages 151-154, 167 (in Chapter 9), 218, 219-221 (in Chapter 12), 243-246 (in Chapter 14)of the Henry Holt hardback edition, pages 152-156, 168 and 216, 218-220 and 239-243 of the Tandem paperback edition. [13 page discussion]
- Kevin D Randle in his “Scientific Ufology” (1999) at pages 91-98, 125-126 (in Chapter 4), 211-212, 216 (in Chapter 8) of the Avon softcover edition. [11 page discussion]
- Edward J Ruppelt, in his “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” (1956) at pages 219, 220-224 (in Chapter 16), 228 (in Chapter 17) of the original 17 chapter Doubleday hardback edition, at pages 286, 288-292, 297 of the Gollancz hardback edition, at pages 287, 289-293, 299 of the Ace paperback edition, at pages 219, 220-224, 228 of the 1959 revised Doubleday 20 chapter hardback edition, at pages 157, 158-160, 164 of the reprinted Source Books softcover edition.
For further references, see the entry dated 1952.0702 in Isaac Koi’s Core Chronology (“KCC”).
External links
Relevant Discussion Threads on ATS
