This is the write-up in the Condon report about this incident:

At 11:25 a.m. (5 August or 15 August) Witness I, general manager of the Great Falls Electrics, a baseball team, was making an inspection of the baseball stadium (1,3) with his secretary, Witness II. In virtually all early publications (e.g., 3,5) the date for this is consistently given as 15 August 1950. However, Dr. Roy Craig of the Colorado project notes early correspondence between Witness I and Project Blue Book that raises an uncertainty about the date. A letter dated 9 January 1953, from Great Falls AFB (renamed Malstrom AFB later) to Project Blue Book, conveying results of a re-interrogation which had been requested by Blue Book, states:

“(Witness I’s) version of the incident is as follows: ‘On about the 5th or 15th of August, 1950, I, as manager of the Electrics, a local baseball team, walked to the grandstand of the local stadium here in Great Falls, Montana. It was approximately 11:30 a.m. and my purpose was to check the direction of the wind in preparation for the afternoon’s game.'”

A subsequent undated Blue Book review of the case, dated late 1956, carries the case dated “5 or 15 August, 1950”. Dr. Craig determined by checking Great Falls newspaper records that no home game was scheduled for 15 August, and, in fact, the witness’ team played that evening in Twin Falls, Idaho. Mrs. LaVern Kohl, Reference Librarian, Great Falls Public Library, determined, at Dr. Craig’s request, that the baseball team played no home games in Great Falls between 9 and 18 August, 1950. The 15 August sighting date is therefore certainly open to question.

Accounts of the incident give essentially the following information:

As was his habit, Witness I looked NNW to the smokestack of the Anaconda Copper Company in order to ascertain the wind direction. Directly in line with the stack, he saw two bright lights stationary in the sky(l) . After a few seconds, he decided they could not be airplanes, directed his secretary’s attention to the objects, and ran to his car which was 50-60 ft. away (1,2,3). Her observations were reported in Blue Book files to be identical to Witness I’s. At his car he took five to eight seconds to load his motion picture camera with Eastman Kodachrome, daylight-type (1). The camera was a Revere turret-type, 16mm. magazine loader, with a F.1.9 telephoto lens with a 3 in. focal length. He set the diaphragm at F.22 and the focus at infinity. Film speed was 16 frames per second (2). From the time of sighting until he began filming, approximately 30 seconds elapsed. At a point near his car, he began “panning” his camera slowly from right to left (2). During this time the lights had moved from a stationary position toward the SW and they continued to the SW until they faded away. The first frames were not made until the object was already in the SW.

According to the initial Air Force report of 6 October 1950, Witness I described two disk-shaped lights having a bright, clean, “aluminum quality”. He thought that the objects were about 50 ft. in diameter, 3 ft. in depth and about 50 yds. apart. In a subsequent written statement quoted in the Blue Book report of 9 January 1953, he described them as being “like two new dimes in the sky” and said they may have made whistling or whooshing noise .

According to the initial report of 6 October 1950, Witness I described a definite spinning motion (2). While in a stationary position “an occasional vibration seemed to momentarily tilt them, after which they would instantly correct their level plane to its seemingly balanced position. The two objects made an abrupt flight in an arc motion at very high speeds”. In late 1952 he estimated the speed as being over 400 mph. The Air Force report of 1950 quotes his first estimate of the speed as about 200 mph.

WItness I thought they were between 5,000 and 10,000 ft. in altitude and at an elevation angle of 30°-35° above the horizon and within 0.75 mi. or 2-2.5 mi. from him. Measurements of the motion picture film (3) indicate that in the first available frames, the lights were at an elevation of about 15° and slowly descending.

These are the official documents about it from the Project Blue Book files. It’s officially considered an unknown. The below file was obtained from the National Archives & Records Administration.

Document Archive

Project Blue Book: Mariana UFO incident, August 15, 1950 [114 Pages, 15MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [14.79 MB]

Video Archive

The post Project Blue Book: Mariana UFO incident, August 15, 1950 first appeared on The Black Vault Case Files.

The post Project Blue Book: Mariana UFO incident, August 15, 1950 appeared first on The Black Vault Case Files.

The following was submitted to The Black Vault. It is used here, with permission.

I’ve attached a photo of a UFO I photographed in Hot Springs, MT in November of 2014. 

I was taking a picture of a rainbow during a light rainstorm but didn’t notice the object in the photo until later.

It is located in the lower left of the photo. The object can be magnified, which I did through Google+, and I was surprised to see the UFO.

It is very curious.

There’s a strange blue glow under it and the air around it seems odd. It looks like a craft of some sort.

Please take the time to magnify and study the object.

It is quite strange.

The photo was taken with a 20 megapixel camera. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Kind regards,
Norman Tveit

Photo Gallery

The post UFO Photographed in Hot Springs, MT first appeared on The Black Vault Case Files.

The post UFO Photographed in Hot Springs, MT appeared first on The Black Vault Case Files.

A classic UFO film was taken on August 15, 1950, by Nicolas Mariana, general manager of the Great Falls “Selectrics” baseball team. This film was listed as Top Secret and, although now declassified, is still considered an “unknown.”

Note that in government “releases” (National Archives, etc.), the distant objects in the frames almost don’t show up.

However, even the TNT versions (as you will see later) show that the objects were clearly visible and oval-shaped, especially in the early footage.

And the evidence strongly suggests that what Mariana has told us for a long time is true, much of the early footage was apparently removed by the Air Force.

NICAP Synopsis:

Nick Mariana, Great Falls, Montana, obtained 16 mm color movies of two UFOs which appear as bright circular points of light. Footage of UFOs at closer range, confirming visual observation of discs with rotating rims, was reported missing from film when returned by Air Force.

Remaining footage was contained in United Artists documentary movie “UFO” and compared to July 2, 1952, Trementon, Utah film showing similar images.

Mr. Mariana used Daylight Kodachrome film in a Revere turret type camera and obtained 315 frames showing the UFOs.

The film was examined by the Air Force and Navy, but no formal reports released. Report on Photogrammetric analysis by Dr. Robert M.L. Baker, Jr., Douglas Aircraft Corporation, on file at NICAP.

Air Force explanation that UFOs were reflections off jet aircraft said to be “quite strained,” and the analyst states no definite conclusion. However, UFOs could not be explained as any conventional objects.

(UFO Casebook Editor’s Note: The video you see below is a comparison of what the general public had access to and what was kept under wraps for quite some time. Sometimes, only those who pay for first generation access get to see what was originally caught on video, as opposed to second and third generation “copies.”)

The post The Great Falls, Montana UFO Film first appeared on The Black Vault Case Files.

The post The Great Falls, Montana UFO Film appeared first on The Black Vault Case Files.