Old UFO Cases

The project acquired copies of Project Blue Book and NICAP reports of UFO cases which had been discussed in popular UFO writings or which were regarded as having unusual scientific interest. Some of these reported sightings had been so extensively publicized that they have acquired the status of "Classic" cases.

In December 1966, early in the project history, we attempted to augment available information regarding one such case: the 1952 Washington, D.C., radar sightings (see Section III Chapter 5), by on-site re-investigation of the case. While this inquiry provided valuable new experience in the problems of investigating UFO phenomena, it brought little or no new information to light.

In general, testimony of witnesses recorded shortly after their experiences can be considered more reliable than their re-telling of the story two to 20 years later, both because of failures of memory and because of a tendency to crystallization of the story upon repeated retelling. For this reason, re-examination of witnesses in "classic" cases was not considered a useful way for the project to invest time. Field investigation of classic cases was therefore limited to those in which existing reports contained a serious discrepancy which might be resolved.

In one classic case, field investigation was undertaken primarily to locate that portion of a strip of 16mm. motion picture film made in 1950 which, the photographer said, showed most clearly the structure of UFOs he had photographed (Case 47). The photographer had claimed that this portion had been removed from his film when he lent it to the Air Force for study before the film was returned to him by ATIC experts.

The results of the investigation emphasized the vicissitudes of memory and the difficulties of establishing a crucial fact some 18 years after the event. Rather than reducing the uncertainty in the case, the investigation created greater uncertainty because it revealed further discrepancies in accounts of the sighting.

The case also was of special interest because earlier photographic analysis by Dr. R.M.L. Baker, then of Douglas Aircraft Corporation, indicated that the photographed objects probably were not aircraft contrary to their "identification" in Project Blue Book records. Identification as other man-made or natural objects apparently had been ruled out primarily on the basis of wind direction on the alleged date of the sighting.

Since a detailed account of this sighting is given in Chapter 3, Section IV, only that information is presented here which illustrates the difficulties arising in attempts to investigate an event which occurred years previously, even when the primary and most of the principal secondary witnesses are still available.

This writer visited the photographer seeking details that might confirm or disprove his claim that the Air Force had admitted confiscating part of the film. The photographer had asserted that he possessed a letter from the Air Force containing precisely such an admission. If the letter could be produced, it might then be possible for the project to recover the allegedly missing film for study. A first-hand account of the sighting also was desired. At Great Falls, Mont. where the film was made, residents who had seen the film before it was sent to the Air Force were interviewed, newspaper accounts were searched, and attempts were made to resolve discrepancies in these reports. The only other person who reportedly witnessed the filming was, at the time of the event, serving as secretary to the photographer. She was interviewed by telephone.

1. The photographer had an extensive accumulation of papers and news clippings relating to his UFO film, much of it referring to his participation in a commercially produced documentary on UFOs released in 1956. No Air Force (or other) letter admitting that part of the film had been removed could be found among these accumulated papers. The photographer nevertheless insisted that he had such a letter, and suggested that many such items had been misplaced when he had changed his residence.
2. He also professed to no knowledge of the Air Force's "identification" of the filmed objects as two F-94 airplanes circling to land at the Great Falls Air Base, now renamed Malmstrom AFB. He remembered no aircraft in the sky near the time of his UFO sighting, and thought the aircraft explanation absurd. Nor did he recall that he had claimed in the documentary film, and in letters which are part of the Blue Book case file, to have seen two airplanes approaching Great Falls Air Base just after he took his UFO movies.
3. Several residents of Great Falls who were said to have seen the UFO film before it was loaned to the Air Force denied having seen it at that time. Others who had seen it both before and after it was lent to the Air Force firmly believed that not all the original film was returned by the Air Force. This claim was generally accepted as true by Great Falls residents. However, no measurements of film footage had been made before and after the loan to the Air Force, so that claims of film cropping could not be verified. Blue Book files contained some evidence lending credence to this claim. The original letter of transmittal of the film from Great Falls AFB to Wright-Patterson AFB stated that approximately 15 feet. of film were being transmitted. Only some 7 feet. were analyzed by Dr. Baker in 1956.
4. The secretary was the only witness to the UFO filming. She remembered distinctly seeing a single object and rushing outside the baseball stadium with her employer to watch him film it. She was certain it could not have been an airplane, because its appearance was quite different from that of a plane. She remembers seeing only one object, while the movie unambiguously shows two, almost identical objects moving across the sky.
5. Records had shown that two F-94s did land at Great Falls Air Base at 11:30 and 11:33 a.m. on 15 August 1950, about the time the UFO film was assumed to have been made. Local newspapers for this period, however, revealed that the semi-professional baseball team that the photographer managed did not play in Great Falls on that date but, rather, played in Twin Falls, Idaho several hundred miles away. The team played no home games in Great Falls between 9 August and 18 August. According to the account of the UFO sighting, the photographer was at the base ball park to prepare for the game to be played that afternoon; if this general account of the conditions of the UFO filming is accepted, the 15 August date must be erroneous. The relevance of the landing of the particular airplanes to which official identification of the filmed objects was assigned thus became highly questionable. Weather data which indicated the objects were moving against the wind, and thus could not have been balloons, also became irrelevant.
   9 August and 18 August. According to the account of the UFO sighting, the photographer was at the base ball park to prepare for the game to be played that afternoon; if this general account of the conditions of the UFO filming is accepted, the 15 August date must be erroneous. The relevance of the landing of the particular airplanes to which official identification of the filmed objects was assigned thus became highly questionable. Weather data which indicated the objects were moving against the wind, and thus could not have been balloons, also became irrelevant.
6. 9 August and 18 August. According to the account of the UFO sighting, the photographer was at the base ball park to prepare for the game to be played that afternoon; if this general account of the conditions of the UFO filming is accepted, the 15 August date must be erroneous. The relevance of the landing of the particular airplanes to which official identification of the filmed objects was assigned thus became highly questionable. Weather data which indicated the objects were moving against the wind, and thus could not have been balloons, also became irrelevant.

This limited field investigation of a classic case revealed more discrepancies in the file record reports than it resolved. It produced no firm evidence that part of the film had been retained by the Air Force, and no leads through which such film might be located, if it had been retained.

Other field investigations of "classic" sightings involving photographs were somewhat more productive of new information. In the Ft. Belvoir photographic case for example, the doughnut-shaped structure in the photos was unequivocally identified when Dr. Hartmann showed the photographs to Army experts at Ft. Belvoir (Case 50).

During review of other classic cases it was possible, in some instances, for project investigators to develop new, pertinent information. This information generally depended upon recorded data, such as weather data, which could be acquired by telephone, mail, or library reference. Knowledge of atmospheric conditions prevailing at the time of radar UFO sightings, for example, allowed analysis of sighting reports in the light of current knowledge of radar propagation. Thus, atmospheric information was useful in evaluating classic cases such as the 1952 Washington, D.C. sightings (see Section III, Chapter 5), in which on-site interviewing had contributed no new information. Since our experience generally showed that new interviews of witnesses in classic cases did not produce dependable new information, few onsite investigations of such cases were undertaken.