I
hadn’t planned on doing this simply because it was more work at this point than
I wanted to take on, but there seems to be a real interest in the film and
there is a lot of misinformation floating around about it. These are
distortions that I believe are lodged in the belief structures of the various
commentators rather than in the facts of the case. I’m using as many of the
original sources as possible, including the reports of others who interviewed
the photographer after the event, sometimes years afterwards and will point out
that when I interviewed him, I just wanted to confirm that he had told others
what they had reported he told them.
The
film was shot by Navy warrant officer Delbert C. Newhouse north of the small
Utah town of Tremonton, Utah (though it has been spelled Trementon by many over
the years). He provided a brief statement to the Air Force about the case that
is woefully inadequate and I’m not sure why no one in the Air Force attempted
to get something a little more comprehensive from him about the shape of the objects.
According to the Project Blue Book files:
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.
When
he finished with the filming, he put the equipment away and they all got back
in the car to continue the trip. Then, apparently after arriving at his new
duty station, developed the film and sent the original off to Hill Air Force
Base in Utah which eventually sent it on to Project Blue Book in Dayton, Ohio. According
to the Condon Committee report (on page 420 of the Bantam paperback edition)
William Hartmann, the investigator wrote, “The witness’s original letter of 11 August
offers the film for whatever value it may have in connection with your
investigation of the so-called flying saucers.”
And
while all that is interesting, it turns out not to be the most important thing in
that letter. Newhouse wrote, “(1) one (1) fifty-foot roll of processed 16mm
color motion picture film.”
Ed
Ruppelt, the chief of Project Blue Book at the time wrote, “When I received the
Tremonton films I took them right over to the Wright Field photo lab, along
with the Montana Movie [a short, color film shot over Great Falls in
1950 showing two bright lights], and the photo technicians and I ran them
twenty or thirty times. The two movies were similar in that in both of them the
objects appeared to be large, circular lights – in neither one could you see
any detail. But, unlike the Montana Movie, the lights in the Tremonton Movie would
fade out, then come back in again. This fading immediately suggested airplanes
reflecting light, but the roar of a king-sized dogfight could have been heard
for miles and the Newhouse family heard no sound.”
The
inadequate statement provided in the letter with the film didn’t tell much and
according to Ruppelt, they sent a list of questions to an intelligence officer.
This interview was conducted on September 10, 1952, and included not only
Newhouse, but his wife, Norma; son, Delbert Newhouse, Jr. then aged 14 and
daughter Anne, then aged 12. This interview did nothing to clear up the
questions that we would have so many years later and, according to Ruppelt,
“The question ‘What did the UFO’s look like?’ wasn’t one of them because when
you have a picture of something you don’t normally ask what it looks like.”
The
answers to the questions were received by teletype on September 12 and do
little to resolve the questions of today. I don’t know why certain things were
not asked and why certain information is not found in the files. While Ruppelt
explained why they hadn’t asked what the objects looked like, I also noted that
there is no real description of the length of the film. Going through the
Project Blue Book files, I found a few, vague references to the film being
about thirty feet long, which, given the frames per second rate, works out to
about 75 seconds. William Hartmann, who conducted the investigation for the
Condon Committee in the late 1960s, wrote, “The film contains about 1200
frames… i.e. about 75 seconds…”
According
to the teletype, all the Newhouses were interviewed at home and the answers to
the questions were as follows:
1.
No sound heard during the observation. 2. No exhaust trails or contrails
observed. 3. No aircraft, birds, balloons, or other identifiable objects seen
in the air immediately before, during, or immediately after observation. 4.
Single object which detached itself from the group did head in direction
opposite original course and disappeared from view while still traveling in
this direction. 5. Camera pointed at estimated 70 degrees elevation and
described and [sic] arc from approx. [sic] due east to due west then from due
west to approx. 60 degrees from north in photographing detached obj [sic]
heading in direction opposite original course. 6. Sun was approx overhead of
observer. Objects were approx. 70 degrees above terrain on a course several
miles from observer. 7. Weather conditions: Bright sunlight, clear, approx. 80
degrees temperature, slight breeze from east northeast approx. 3 to 5 mph. 8.
No meteorological activity noted during that day. 9. Opinion regarding objects
following CLN [sic] A. Light from objects caused by reflection: B. Objects
appeared approx. as long as they were wide and thin, C. Appeared identical in
shape, D. 12 to 14 objects, E. All appeared light color, F. No opinion, G.
Appeared to have same type of motion except one object which reversed its
course, H. Disappeared from view by moving out of range of eyesight. 10. No
filters used. 11. One low hill 2 or 3 miles to right of US HWY 30 dash S with
observer facing north. Located approx. 10 miles north of Tremonton, Utah. 12.
Other persons sighting object [names of wife, children]. Whole Newhouse family
included in interview. 13. CPO [sic s/b CWO] Newhouse and family have never
sighted unidentified flying objects before. Newhouse stated that he never
believed he would join the ranks of those reporting such objects prior to this
observation… CPO [sic] Newhouse stated he has been in the Naval service for
over 19 years with service as a commissioned officer during WW 2…
From
this point, the Blue Book file is filled with questions about the technical
aspects of the film and the camera. On one document, in which it was revealed
that Newhouse had not used a tripod, someone underscored that and added an
exclamation point.
The
Air Force analysis, done in the months following the sighting, did not yield
any positive results. According to Ruppelt, “All they had to say was, ‘We don’t
know what they are but they aren’t aircraft or balloons, and we don’t think
they are birds.”
It
would seem that the next time that Newhouse was interviewed about the sighting
in depth was when he met with Ruppelt as they were shooting the commercial film
Unidentified Flying Objects, aka UFO. Ruppelt wrote about that meeting in
his book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Ruppelt
said:
After
I got out of the Air Force I met Newhouse and talked to him for two hours [in
1954, I believe]. I’ve talked to many people who have reported UFOs, but few
impressed me as much as Newhouse. I learned that when he and his family first
saw the UFOs they were close to the car, much closer than when he took the
movie. To use Newhouse’s own words, “If they had been the size of a B-29 they
would have been at 10,000 feet altitude.” And the Navy man and his family had
taken a good look at the objects – they looked like “two pie pans, one inverted
on the top of the other!” He didn’t just think
the UFO’s were disk-shaped; he knew
that they were; he had plainly seen them. I asked him why he hadn’t told this
to the intelligence officer who interrogated him. He said that he had. Then I
remember that I’d sent the intelligence officer a list of questions I wanted
Newhouse to answer. The question “What did the UFO’s look like?” wasn’t one of
them because when you have a picture of something you don’t normally ask what
it looks like. Why the intelligence officer didn’t pass this information along
to us I’ll never know.
The
next mention of Newhouse’s experience came in January 1953, when the Robertson
Panel, a CIA sponsored study of UFOs was made. Because there was physical evidence
available, meaning the film, it was one of those reports they wanted to review.
Luis Alvarez, one of the scientists involved, asked that the film be run
several times and then suggested that the objects looked to him like sea gulls
riding on thermals. The rest of the panel agreed with him and that was the
answer they appended to the case.
Ruppelt,
in his book wrote that they, meaning those at Blue Book and ATIC had thought of
the birds explanation months earlier. He wrote, “…several months later I as in
San Francisco… and I watched gulls soaring in a cloudless sky. They were
‘riding a thermal,’ and they were so high that you couldn’t see them until they
banked just a certain way; then they appeared to be a bright white flash, much
larger than one would expect from sea gulls. There was a strong resemblance to
the UFO’s in the Tremonton Movie. But I’m not sure this is the answer.”
Also
found in the Project Blue Book files, and dated 1955, is a report, “Analysis of
Photographic Material Photogrammetric Analysis of the ‘Utah’ Film, Tracking
UFO’s,” created for the Douglas Aircraft Company and written by Dr. R. M. L.
Baker. He provides an overview of the sighting that is consistent with the
earlier reports found in the Blue Book file, but then wrote, “He [Newhouse]
described them as ‘gun metal colored objects shaped like two saucers, one
inverted over the other.’”
Baker’s
conclusion written on May 16, 1956, or nearly four years after the sighting,
was, “The evidence remains rather contradictory and no single hypothesis of a
natural phenomenon yet suggested seems to completely account for the UFO
involved. The possibility of multiple hypotheses, i.e. that the Utah UFO’s are
the result of two simultaneous natural phenomena might possibly yield the
answer. However… no definite conclusion could be obtained.”
But
even this isn’t without controversy. Tim Printy at his skeptics web site wrote:
In
1955, Dr. Robert Baker conducted an evaluation of the film and also interviewed
Newhouse again. Newhouse now added more information that seemed to disagree
with his earlier testimony.
When
he got out, he observed the objects (twelve to fourteen of them) to be directly
overhead and milling about. He described them as ‘gun metal colored objects
shaped like two saucers, one inverted on top of the other.’ He estimated that
they subtended ‘about the same angle as B29’s at 10,000 ft.’ (about half a
degree i.e. about the angular diameter of the moon.”
In
his earliest reports he stated that he could not estimate size or distance, now
he was able to do this as well as describe the shape. Newhouse suggests before
filming they appeared overhead and then went off in the distance when he
finally got the camera going.
A
close reading of the various sources including Ruppelt’s book and the Condon
Committee report does not support the conclusion that Newhouse was giving any
different answers. Baker’s source seemed not to be a new interview, but what
Newhouse had told Ruppelt in 1954 and that Newhouse was not saying the objects
were the size of B-29s at ten thousand feet, but looked to be the size of the
bomber if it was at that altitude. It was the same as a witness describing a
UFO as the size of a dime held at arm’s length.
At
the same time, that is 1956, the Air Force, in response to the release of UFO, put together a press package to
explain some of the cases mentioned in the film. At that point the Air Force
endorsed the “birds” explanation, and that is the way it is carried in the Blue
Book records. The documents suggest that the Air Force was more interested in
lessening the impact of the movie than they were in supplying proper solutions
to the cases. In other words, their acceptance of the birds explanation was a
public relations ploy.
The
next analysis came when the Condon Committee conducted its investigation in the
late 1960s. William Hartmann added little of importance to the case. He noted
the length of the film, which agreed with the claim that the sequence was about
30 feet long or about 75 seconds. Lance Moody had suggested that if the film
could be recovered now, the length could be measured, which would answer some
questions that have developed in the last few years. The problem is that Air
Force file makes it clear the film had been cut. On September 15, 1952, Major
Robert E. Kennedy sent Newhouse a letter saying, “The final footage of the
mountain scenery will be detached and returned to you as soon as possible.”
This point too, would become important later.
Hartmann
reviewed all the information available, including, apparently, a complete copy
of the Project Blue Book file. He provided a quick history of the
investigations and did mention that during Baker’s earlier investigation
Newhouse provided “…substantially the same account, with the additional
information: ‘When he got out [of the car], he observed the objects (twelve to
fourteen of them) to be directly overhead and milling about. He described them
as ‘gun metal colored objects, shaped like two saucers, one inverted of top of
the other.’…”
Hartmann
then made his own analysis, finally concluding, “These observations give strong
evidence that the Tremonton films do show birds… and I now regard the objects
as so identified.”
But
this comes only after Hartmann rejected the statements by Newhouse seeing the
objects at close range. Hartmann wrote, “The strongest negative argument was
stated later by the witness that the objects were seen to subtend an angle of
about 0.5 degrees and were then seen as gun metal colored and shaped like two
saucers held together rim to rim, but the photographs and circumstances
indicate that this observation could not have been meaningful.”
Baker,
in 1969 and in response to the negative findings of the Condon Committee, at a
symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
said that while Hartmann’s analysis might be appealing “[The] motion [of the
objects] is not what one would expect from a flock of soaring birds; there are
erratic brightness fluctuations, but there is no indication of periodic
decreases in brightness due to turning with the wind or flapping. No cumulus
clouds are shown on the film that might betray the presence of thermal updraft…
The motion pictures I have taken of birds at various distances have no
similarity to the Utah film.”
Now
the case becomes more complicated. In 1970, Dr. James E. McDonald interviewed
Newhouse over the telephone, with his wife on the extension. In a letter to
Arthur C. Lundahl and found on the NICAP web site, McDonald wrote:
It
was particularly good to have Mrs. Newhouse on the phone, since she was the one
who first spotted the objects and watched them for an estimated minute or so
while she was trying to persuade Newhouse to stop the car for a better look…
Both
of them emphasized that it must have taken two or three minutes for Newhouse to
hunt through their luggage and locate the camera and film, which were in
separate suitcases. In the initial period, the objects were considerably closer
to them than at the time he finally began shooting, Newhouse stressed. It was
his estimate that the objects lay only about 10 degrees east of their zenith
when they first got out of the car. He reported his angular-size estimate that
has been noted elsewhere, namely about the comparative size of a B-17 at 10,000ft…
…
[O]ne of the key points that I wanted to check with Newhouse concerned the
description given by Ruppelt… namely, that they appeared to be silvery-gray,
“gunmetal”, and like two pie pans face-to-face. Both Newhouse and his wife
fully confirmed that, Newhouse comparing the shape to a discus…
I
asked Newhouse if it was correct that he had given that description to Ruppelt
after the latter had left the Air Force. He confirmed that, saying that the
only time he personally talked to Ruppelt was at a filming session for that
movie entitles “UFO” produced in 1954 or 1955. He guessed that meeting must
have been in 1954, and Al Chop was also present at that discussion. He brought
out the important point that he had also stressed the visually observed shape
in those early portions of the sighting, when he was interviewed at his duty
station in Oakland by an Air Force officer. He further remarked that he saw a
copy of the officer’s transcript of the interview, and that point appeared in
the transcript…
…A
rather interesting point, which I have never seen brought out before, was
mentioned, almost by happenstance. It turned out that the footage which
Newhouse submitted to the Air Force was spliced from about 20 feet that he shot
at the end of one 50-foot magazine, plus about 40 feet that he shot on the
first part of the next magazine. In other words, he had to change magazine in
the middle of that shooting…
Newhouse
said that the Air Force didn’t send the originals back to him at any time. He
wrote ATIC when a long time had elapsed, and what they did finally send back to
him was a color print which he stressed was distinctly inferior to the
original. Not only that, but he was positive that they had cut out the first 10
or 20 feet, which were shot when the objects were very much closer and appeared
much sharper on the film… The missing footage, which he seemed positive was
from the earliest and best parts of his original…
I
found it interesting to learn that no contacts of any sort have been made with
Newhouse since that movie was made. This evidently included Baker, as well as
Hartmann and the Condon Project team. I was particularly surprised that Bob
Baker had not contacted him…
There
are some things that we can deduce from all this. First, strangely, in the
original interviews, there is no indication that anyone asked Newhouse or his
family what the objects looked like. The statement he supplied as he submitted
the film is devoid of any important information other than time and location.
He does not describe the objects in any way other than to say, “…that bore no
relation to anything I had seen before…”
The
point to be made here is that Newhouse had more than 19 years of service in the
Navy and it is reasonable to assume that he had seen sea gulls soaring in the
past. It would seem that if five minutes or so passed during the sighting,
which includes 75 seconds of the filming, sea gulls would have revealed
themselves as such at some point. If he saw them at close range, as he claims,
then the sea gull explanation fails.
Newhouse
told McDonald that he had told the intelligence officer about the shape and
that the description had been included in the transcript of the interview.
There is nothing like that in the Project Blue Book file, which means one of
two things: Either Newhouse is mistaken or the transcript was removed from the
files.
Although
some believe that Newhouse didn’t mention the shape until more than twenty
years later when I interviewed him, it is clear that Newhouse was talking about
the shape within two years. He told Ruppelt that he had told that to the
intelligence officer, but there is nothing to back up the claim. The best we
can say was that he mentioned it in 1954 and was consistent in those statements
from that point. His original statement does not preclude the observation, only
that it can’t be documented in the Project Blue Book file.
The
criticism that Newhouse was unable to give size, distance and shape estimates
at first but later came up with them is invalid. It is quite clear he was
merely saying that the objects appeared to be the size of a bomber at 10,000
feet. The description he offered the September interview suggests a circular
object (or one that is square or diamond shaped and very thin) isn’t very
helpful. In fact, given that vague information, it would seem that someone,
Newhouse, his wife or children, would have said something more definitive.
The
real point where this falls apart, at least for me, is when Newhouse began
talking to McDonald about his film. Here is the one thing that is well
documented in the Project Blue Book files and for the believers we have the
statements made by Newhouse himself about the film when he submitted it to the
Air Force.
First,
when he submitted the film, he made it clear there was a single enclosure and
that was a fifty foot roll of film. The document was created by Newhouse so
there is no reason to dispute it. It says nothing about there being more than
fifty feet of film or that it was a spliced film. Just the whole roll that
included some of his vacation pictures and that it had been processed.
Second,
there is Major Kennedy’s letter of September 15, in which he mentioned the
final footage of the mountain scenery would be “detached” and returned. In that
same letter, Kennedy wrote, “If it is agreeable to you, a duplicate of the
aerial phenomena will be made and forwarded to you in lieu of the original. It
is desired to retain the original for analysis.”
Third,
on February 17, 1953, Major Robert C. Brown wrote, “A copy of the original
movie film taken by you near Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952 is being
returned.”
On
November 17, 1953, Newhouse wrote to the Air Force, “About a year ago I mailed
for evaluation a 16mm Kodachrome original film to the Commanding Officer, Hill
Air Force Base in Utah. The film was of unidentified flying objects sighted by
my wife, my children and myself… I gave the Air Force permission to retain the
original for use in the investigation… My copy of the film has been damaged… If
the Air Force has completed its evaluation and has no further use for it, I
would appreciate the return of the original…”
On
January 27, 1954, Lieutenant Barbara Conners wrote, “The Air Technical
Intelligence Center is attempting to locate the original of a 35 mm [sic] film
of unidentified flying objects taken by a Mr. D. C. Newhouse near Tremonton,
Utah…” and then on February 23, 1954, CWO R. C. Schum wrote, “We are forwarding
as Inclosure [sic] 1 one copy of you Tremonton, Utah film...”
This
means the Air Force attempted to cooperate with Newhouse and that Newhouse had
given them permission to keep the original. They supplied a copy which Newhouse
ruined. He asked for the original, and the Air Force attempted to comply. We now
know that Newhouse’s discussion of all this with McDonald is in error.
But
more important than this trivia about originals and copies is the claim that
Newhouse shot footage on two separate rolls and that there was more than sixty
feet of film. The documentation, including that written by Newhouse himself does
not bear this out. The best estimate is that there was thirty feet of film.
There is a suggestion that the film lasted about 75 seconds, and with a 16 frame
per second use that works out to about thirty feet of film.
In
the end, there is no good evidence that Newhouse altered his story because the
original investigation lacked competence. There are hints in the September 1952
interview but it is not very clear. It can be argued that the description is of
the saucers but it could also be argued that the description is too vague to be
of any real value to determine what he meant. It could be argued that his
description was vague because he didn’t get a good, close up look at the
objects.
It
is clear that by 1954 Newhouse was providing a description that if accurate,
eliminates the sea gulls as an explanation. It also seems that others such as
Baker and Hartmann took the description from Ruppelt’s book but didn’t attempt
to verify the accuracy of the information by contacting Newhouse. In 1976, when
I talked to Newhouse, he verified that he had said that, which, of course,
doesn’t mean that the description was accurate, only that he said it to Ruppelt.
The
one point that seems to stand out here is that Newhouse made the comment in
1954 before the Air Force began pushing the sea gull explanation, but after the
Robertson Panel had determined, to their satisfaction, that birds was the
answer.
Here,
I suppose, it boils down to the nonsense about the length of the film and if
Newhouse switched magazines during the filming. Given the documentation
available, it seems that these new details do not reflect the reality of the
situation. Newhouse himself made it clear there was but a single roll of film,
that it was only fifty feet long, and we know that part of it was detached and
returned to him. If we wish to reject the case, this seems to be a good reason
to do so. It suggests that his memory of the event has been clouded by outside
influences.
I
will note here that I have not engaged in a discussion of what the film showed
or the various analyses of it. All of the investigators seem to find the
conclusions that fit their own biases. The Air Force originally said it wasn’t
balloons, airplanes and probably not birds. Robertson said it was birds and
dismissed it. The Navy said they couldn’t identify them. The Air Force then
said it was birds. Baker said he couldn’t identify the objects and Hartmann
said he could
So,
you look at the evidence, all the evidence, what the witnesses said and did and
what the film shows and decide for yourself what to believe. I said in the
beginning that this (the last post) was a case that provided some physical evidence.
That evidence could lead to proof of something unusual in the air and that
terrestrial explanations didn’t cover all the facts, if Newhouse saw the
objects close by and that they were saucer shaped. If he didn’t, then the evidence
is not as strong as it could be.
To
my mind, the case is not resolved simply because there is not a consensus for
the solution… but on the other hand, the evidence is not all that strong
either, which, unfortunately seems to be the situation in a large number of UFO
sightings.
