DOW-UAP-D103, Project Blue Book Photo File Relating to Tremonton Film, Utah, 1952
WAR.gov / Department of War PURSUE Release 06
During its investigation of a July 1952 film of an incident reported near Tremonton, Utah, Project Blue Book examined whether the objects recorded on film might have been “pillow balloons.” Project Blue Book was a U.S. Air Force program active from 1952 to 1969 that investigated the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Document Highlights
Note: Highlights are derived from OCR-recognized document passages and file metadata. Please verify important claims against the original scan.
Short overview
A five-page photo file from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book on the film shot near Tremonton, Utah, in July 1952: a cover sheet, a typed case card, and photographs, one of them on a mount from General Mills Research Laboratories in Minneapolis.
Why this is interesting
The file is almost entirely images; the only running text is the case card, which condenses the incident to a few lines. It names CPO Delbert C. Newhouse as the witness, seven miles north of Tremonton at 1110 MST on July 2, 1952, driving on the highway when his wife noticed the objects, described as a group milling about in rough formation. The card is frank about the limits of the evidence: there were no reference points for estimating speed, distance or size, and the objects are too small on the photo to show detail. Its last line gives the possible explanation as pillow balloons or birds. According to the official description, the General Mills imagery shows examples of pillow balloons, which the company supplied when Blue Book tested that explanation. The analysis itself is in the paired records DOW-UAP-D098, DOW-UAP-D102 and DOW-UAP-D105; Newhouse’s personnel file is DOW-UAP-D104 and the footage DOW-UAP-PR159.
Selected passages
- “Group of objects milling about in rough formation”
- “No reference points by which to estimate speed, distance or size”
Background
During its investigation of a July 1952 film of an incident reported near Tremonton, Utah, Project Blue Book examined whether the objects recorded on film might have been “pillow balloons.” Project Blue Book was a U.S. Air Force program active from 1952 to 1969 that investigated the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). In December 1952, investigators contacted General Mills, Inc., the only known manufacturer of pillow balloons at the time, to determine whether a balloon release could account for the incident. The file includes example imagery of pillow balloons supplied by General Mills Research Laboratories. In late December 1952, Project Blue Book personnel, balloon specialists, and representatives from General Mills reviewed the Tremonton footage. The group’s consensus was that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons in flight and behaved consistently with that explanation. One General Mills representative was less convinced, noting that the objects appeared somewhat too bright and seemed to maneuver too rapidly. The reviewers also questioned previous angular-velocity calculations suggesting that the objects moved at a high rate of speed because those calculations depended on the unverified assumption that the camera operator had held the camera still during filming. Subsequent efforts to identify a pillow-balloon release in the Tremonton area were unsuccessful. The file also considered seabirds as a possible explanation, citing similar films showing seabirds as bright points of light under comparable conditions. Later Air Force assessments favored the seabird attribution.