The Tremonton Film

Three answers in one file

On 11 August 1952 Delbert Newhouse wrote to the commanding officer of Hill Air Force Base and enclosed a fifty-foot roll of processed 16 mm colour film. His letter is the earliest account in the file. About seven miles north of Tremonton, on U.S. Highway 30S, at 11:10 on Wednesday 2 July, his wife saw a group of objects she could not identify. He stopped the car, took his camera out of a suitcase and exposed about thirty feet of film on ten or twelve objects “milling about in a rough formation” and moving west. There was no reference point in the sky. Toward the end one object reversed course; he held the camera still and let it cross the frame, three or four times. He used the rest of the roll that afternoon on a mountain in Idaho.

What the Air Force made of that film changed three times, and the file keeps all three.

In 1952, the ATIC worksheet for the sighting marks the final evaluation “Unknown”. The handwritten comments list the possibilities as a mirage, birds (“snow geese migrating, or seagulls”) and aircraft, “highly improbable”. Under balloons: too many objects.

In February 1953, a teleconference message from Blue Book supplying text for a press release says the balloon trace was negative, calls sea gulls soaring in thermals a “strong possibility”, and says the Air Force contemplates no further action.

In June 1956, a memorandum written for the Air Force press room concludes there is “little reasonable doubt that the UFOs in the Newhouse film were indeed seagulls.” It says the Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory at Wright-Patterson reached that conclusion shortly after the sighting, and that the conclusion was “undoubtedly supported by the presence of identifiable seagulls in some of the frames.”

The laboratory said the opposite

The laboratory analysis is in the same file. It counts ten objects, all alike. It cannot say whether they shine by reflected sunlight or by their own light, but if they reflect, they are “decidedly non-spherical”. And it states: “It is believed to be reasonably certain that the reflection brightness of these objects exceeds that of any natural diffusing type of reflecting object, such as white birds against the sky.” It rules out translucent spherical balloons, not bright aluminium-surfaced aircraft. It closes by noting that the photography would be “extremely difficult to imitate … for fraudulent purposes.”

In the released scan that analysis carries no letterhead. What ties it to the laboratory is an ATIC memorandum from early 1953, which summarises the Air Force lab’s findings in the same terms: the lab is “reasonably certain that the brightness of the images on the film exceeds that of any bird,” and the objects “are not spherical.”

So the 1956 memorandum credits the laboratory with a conclusion its own report does not contain. The Blue Book file holds no frame showing an identifiable gull, and none of the gull films the memorandum says strengthened the case.

A gull film did exist. The CIA’s folder on its scientific panel lists, among the evidence presented on 14 to 17 January 1953, a “Motion picture of seagulls in bright sunlight showing high reflectivity”, and records that the panel viewed “a short film showing high reflectivity of seagulls in bright sunlight”. That was before the February teleconference, which says gull films had shown “bright spots of light very similar to those in the movies.” What is missing is the test that would make such a film evidence: gulls filmed in bright sunlight with a 3-inch lens, knowing “how far the gulls were away each time a movie was taken”. A memorandum written after 9 February still lists that test, in Florida, as something to be done, and neither the Blue Book file nor the CIA folder records a distance or a measurement for any gull film.

This is the main finding of this release. Not that the objects were anything in particular, but that the published explanation was written over an analysis that pointed the other way.

The CIA’s panel

In January 1953 a panel of scientific consultants convened by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence studied the film, the case history and ATIC’s interpretation, and heard the Navy Photo Interpretation Laboratory present its analysis. F. C. Durant’s report of the meetings records that the panel members “could not accept the conclusions reached”. Among the reasons: “Although no data was available on the ‘albedo’ of birds or polyethylene balloons in bright sunlight, the apparent motions, sizes and brightnesses of the objects were considered strongly to suggest birds, particularly after the Panel viewed a short film showing high reflectivity of seagulls in bright sunlight.” It also noted that the Navy’s light-intensity analysis was “made from duplicate rather than original film”, and that “The original film was noted to have a much lighter background (affecting relative brightness of object) and the objects appeared much less bright.”

The panel did not call the case solved. It “believed strongly that the data available on this sighting was sufficient for positive identification 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.” Birds, strongly suggested, pending tests that neither the Blue Book file nor the CIA folder shows were made.

“A calculated risk”

By late January 1953 the press knew about the film, and the Air Force had promised that no UFO information would be withheld. An ATIC memorandum for the record sets out the problem: releasing the film would bring questions about the Air Force and Navy laboratory reports, and withholding those reports would make the press think they held something “hot”.

The Navy report was the difficulty. It concluded the objects were light sources and could not be aircraft or balloons, and two astronomers who heard the Navy briefing said its method of measuring brightness was wrong. The memorandum records the decision:

“The subject of the release was discussed with Lt Col Johnston and Col McDuffy and it was decided that the movies would be released without comment as to what they were and hope that no questions were asked about the Navy report. This is a ‘calculated’ risk of another big ‘flap’.”

The alternative it lists is to get more data quickly: film gulls in bright sun, have General Mills release pillow balloons in the same pattern, fly two aircraft through the same manoeuvres, and ask the Navy to redo its study the way the astronomers prescribe. A draft statement of 26 February 1953 takes the middle road: the images came either from well-reflecting surfaces, “such as seagulls or balloons”, or from high-intensity light sources, and they are too poorly defined to say which.

965 g on three assumptions

The Navy Photographic Interpretation Center’s final report of 4 May 1953 is the source of the numbers that still follow this film: speeds from 378 to 2,457 mph, accelerations up to 965 g. They rest on three assumptions, all stated in the report: the camera was held steady, the objects moved perpendicular to the line of sight, and they were five miles away. Of the second the report says: “It is obvious that (b) is a fallacy.” Of the third: “The assumption that the objects are five miles from the camera is an arbitrary one.”

The December 1952 progress report had already given the scaling rule: at another distance x, the mean speed is x/5 times the five-mile figure. The speed is the assumed range multiplied by an angular rate. That is the same error our toolkit calculator is built to show: a camera measures angles, and a velocity only appears once somebody supplies a distance. The Minneapolis balloon panel said as much in December 1952: nobody present placed much faith in the angular-velocity computations, since all of them assumed Newhouse had held the camera still. The 1956 Douglas Aircraft analysis tabulated the same motion at a range of 100 feet up to 10 miles and let the reader choose.

The one measurement that does not need a distance is the Air Force laboratory’s: the single object crossed the frame at about 2.1 degrees per second, plus or minus 15 percent.

Where the original went

On 15 October 1952 ATIC sent the film to Air Force headquarters with the note that “the 35mm roll is the original film and no duplicate has been made”. A request for duplicates in the file describes the original as already in fairly poor condition, with seventeen loose frames whose sprocket holes had been stripped. The Navy centre’s December 1952 report found it dry, brittle and prone to break, and says it was duplicated to preserve the one originally received.

By May 1953 the same centre says its study was made on “a duplicate of a copy”, and asks whether the central portions of the objects were burnt out in duplication. That question sits under every brightness figure in the Navy analysis.

Then the original disappears. In December 1953 headquarters believes it is in ATIC’s files. In January 1954 ATIC writes to Naval Intelligence asking where it is. In March 1954 the Navy centre replies that it never had possession of the original, holds one 16 mm colour copy and 35 mm blow-ups, and knows nothing of its whereabouts. On 27 January 1954 ATIC tells Newhouse that it is not in immediate possession of the original and that it “may have deteriorated beyond the point where it could be successfully copied”, and on 23 February 1954 it posts him a copy instead. When Douglas Aircraft examined the film in 1956 it worked from a 35 mm reprint supplied by a film studio, and noted that no densitometry was possible because the original was not available.

The camera, the gauge and the length

The chain of description does not hold together, and the breaks are all inside the file.

Newhouse names his camera: a Bell & Howell Automaster, magazine load, three-inch telephoto lens, sixteen frames per second, hand-held. Asked specifically whether he used a tripod, he answered that the entire roll was hand-held. In March 1954 the Navy centre states it is “understood” the film was taken with a Revere 16 mm camera with an f/1.9 wide-angle telephoto lens. Newhouse’s letter encloses 16 mm film; ATIC’s covering note of October 1952 and its 1954 letter call it 35 mm.

The length varies with the copy. Newhouse exposed about thirty feet. The Air Force laboratory’s sequence table ends near frame 1,140, about 71 seconds at sixteen frames per second. The Navy centre describes the objects as visible continuously for about 90 seconds. The CIA’s scientific panel, in January 1953, writes of “Kodachrome motion picture films (about 1600 frames)” but gives no frame rate, so that figure cannot be turned into seconds. Douglas counted about 1,200 frames on its reprint. Hence the range given above rather than one figure.

The witness

Much of the file calls Newhouse a chief petty officer. He corrected that himself through the 28th Air Division: he was a Chief Photographer, a commissioned warrant officer. His personnel record, released with this file, agrees. He enlisted in 1933, held the permanent rank of Chief Photographer from October 1942, served as a temporary commissioned officer up to lieutenant during and after the war, and reverted to his permanent rank at the end of 1949. It records the Naval School of Photography at Pensacola in 1935 and years of aerial photography before the war, which matches what the Air Force interviewer was told. A CIA memorandum for the record of 18 December 1952 also calls him a non-commissioned officer, though not by name: a messenger from Britain, it records, had talked with R. V. Jones and “mentioned the film which had been taken by the Naval non-commissioned officer (Tremonton incident).”

The interview itself took place at the family’s home in Berkeley on 10 September 1952. Newhouse, his wife, their son of 14 and their daughter of 12 were all questioned. No sound, no trails, no aircraft, birds or balloons seen before, during or after. The interviewer judged Newhouse and his wife “extremely honest and reliable persons.”

The personnel record contains nothing about the film. What it does show is leave: approved leave from Naval Supply Center Oakland from 19 to 30 June and from 1 to 7 July 1952. That places him away from his station on 2 July. It does not say where he went, and it cannot confirm the drive from Washington to Portland that he describes.

A file that collected other things

Filed with the Tremonton material are a report of a fireball over Phoenix the same morning, an Air Force OSI report of a different sighting on 1 July 1952, a CIRVIS report from Los Angeles, and a poster built around a telegram from Donald Keyhoe to the Secretary of the Air Force. The file gathered what arrived around the case, not only what belonged to it, and it has to be read that way.

Why this scores where it does

Witnesses score 4: a trained aerial photographer and three family members, interviewed within ten weeks, whose qualifications his own service record now confirms. The family is one channel, not four, which is why multi-channel stays at 1.

Optics scores 3. There is colour film, analysed three times, but the images are too small to show structure and the sky holds no reference point.

Documentation scores 5. The file preserves the letter, the interview, the worksheet, both laboratories, the argument about release and the press line, including the parts that contradict each other.

Data today drops from 4 to 3. The publication of the file is already counted under documentation. This axis asks whether the case can be reconstructed now, and the core of the case is the film. Its original has not been located since 1954, and the Navy’s measurements were made on a duplicate of a copy.

What would settle it

The original film, or the earliest surviving generation of it. The 1954 correspondence traces it as far as ATIC and no further.

The gull films of 1953. The press line depends on them. The Blue Book file quotes their result and the CIA’s panel was shown one, but neither file contains a film, a distance or a measurement.

The Navy densitometry repeated on the earliest copy, by the method the astronomers asked for. The Navy centre itself recommended further tests to prove or disprove its findings.

The General Mills consignee list. The file says it was obtained, covering pillow balloons shipped between September 1951 and 2 July 1952. In the released scan those pages carry no legible text.