Tuesday, December 24, 2013

The Newhouse Utah Movie - Part Two


Well, as I have said, repeatedly, nothing is simple in the world of the UFO. Skeptics have made a big deal out of a letter written by Dr. James McDonald in which he quotes from his 1970 interview with Delbert Newhouse that he, Newhouse, was “…positive they had cut the first 10 or 20 feet [of the film], which were shot when the objects were very much closer…” There was also discussion by Newhouse that he had not received the original film back and that seems to be borne out by various letters and memos contained in the Project Blue Book files.

Given a review of McDonald’s letter, it seemed that Newhouse, at best was confused and confabulating and at worse telling lies to strengthen his case. One of the major points was that the Air Force had altered his film. I wrote:

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…

So we talked about the length of the film and how it doesn’t seem that it had been altered. Everything pointed to there being some thirty feet of film of the UFOs and then additional vacation footage that was removed and returned to Newhouse. Everything in the Blue Book file seemed to line up and showed that Newhouse was mistaken.

Before we go on, I should point out that I was using a microfilm copy of the Project Blue Book files and according to the available index, the Tremonton case is on Roll 11. It is the first case there. The last case on Roll 10, according to the index was from Phoenix, Arizona.

The thing is, it seemed that some of the Blue Book file on Tremonton was missing, so I put Roll 10 in the microfilm reader, and found more documents that were part of the that case. All this would be irrelevant had it not been for an unsigned and undated document on Roll 10 that was addressed to “L/C [Lt. Col.] Adams w/orig film 10/22/52.”

This was a list of requirements for the Air Force investigation of the Tremonton Movie and point number five is the part that is relevant to us. It said, “The loose (unspliced) portion of 17 frames belongs at the end of the footage having a deep blue background and no sound track. The last frame of this loose portion is immediately adjacent to the splice with the broken frame having the sound track.”

The 17 frames comprise about one second of film and it was noted that it should go at the end of the film when the objects were farther away as opposed to the beginning when Newhouse said they were closer. We also know that the Air Force cut off the last 20 feet of film which was Newhouse vacation footage and had nothing to do with the UFO sighting.

What does this mean?

Well, if we attempt to look at it dispassionately, we see that Newhouse was correct when he said the film had been altered. True, he was saying the first 10 or 20 feet were missing but it was the last 20 that had been cut off. It had nothing to do with the UFOs, but after nearly 20 years, it seems reasonable for Newhouse to say that the film had been cut and some was missing.

That, of course, doesn’t quite match what he was claiming, and it was only the vacation footage… at least that was reasonable until we find this other memo. Now we know that some of the UFO footage was “loose” from the rest of it and we don’t know if the prints of the film that circulated afterward, especially those that leaked into the civilian world, had those frames reattached.

The thing we have to remember is that the documents now available to us were written at the time and I believe that those writing them didn’t think of the future or who might have access to them in the future. In other words, they were candid in what they said rather than trying to “talk around” a point. Had they detached a longer segment of the film from the beginning, I believe the description in the files would have related this. In this case, however, I suspect that the missing frames reveal nothing that can’t be seen on the rest of the film.

However, this does seem to strengthen, to a degree, Newhouse’s statements to McDonald some twenty (or 18) years after the fact. He said the film was altered, he said that frames were missing, and he was correct about both those things.

Is all this enough for us to now accept as real everything else he said after the fact?

Well, no. It points out that his memory was accurate to a point, but the details, the minutia of the sighting, still seems to be slightly in error. There is no evidence that any footage is missing from the beginning of the film, but there is footage missing from the film as documented in the Blue Book file... or rather that some 17 frames was detached from the original film.

What this does is add a little bit of strength to the overall case, showing that Newhouse was correct about some of what he said. It doesn’t really move the bar very far but moves it a little. For some that will be enough but for others it won’t matter at all. I just point this out for the sake of clarity in an otherwise complicated case.

Monday, December 23, 2013

UFO UpDates Fades to Black


I had noticed over the last few months that there were fewer posts to UFO UpDates than there had been in recent years. I’m not sure why there was a decline, but there is fallout from it. Errol Bruce-Knapp who ran the list for many, many years, has posted the following:

Not, perhaps, the merriest Christmas news for some subscribers and readers to/of UFO UpDates, but the time has come...

The world has moved on, apparently beyond the need of a centralised service such as this List - witness the dramatic drop in List-bound traffic of the last few years.

So, the plan is to mothball the List and for Glenn Campbell to take-back the Archive, by this coming New Year's Day, via his hosting company. Glenn wrote the script that made the Archive work and originally hosted it. The post@ufoupdateslist.com will also be retired at the end of the year.

The Archive's addresses - depending on how you access it - should not change. Nor should the search facility. "Should",because until we actually move the Archive we won't know.

I'm grateful to all those who contributed 90,00+ posts to UFO UpDates over these many years, increasing the awareness and knowledge of the phenomena and my 'ufological' education.

My thanks to Glenn Campbell for his advice and support over the years and for taking over the Archive for the benefit of succeeding generations of the 'seriously interested'.

I've been retired for the past six years tho' there are still things on my bucket list to be completed, such as the digitising and uploading of several hundred hours of my Strange Days... Indeed radio program to virtuallystrange.net ...


Trusting that all will be revealed, eventually,

Errol Bruce-Knapp
Late-Moderator of UFO UpDates - Toronto

Facebook & Twitter
errolbk_at_virtuallystrange.net

Over the years the discussions have sometimes been acrimonious, sometimes heated but always interesting. It was a way to communicate with fellow travelers, a way to see rich and divergent points of view, and to learn a little about some of the more obscure cases. Errol, as moderator often directed the conversation and eliminated some of the more heated comments, keeping the list on a fairly even keel. It was a fun way to start a day, seeing what others had to say about the world of UFOs.

For Errol, this was truly a labor of love because I can think of no other reason someone would devote so much time to the list. He kept it going, gently reminding the subscribers of the rules and generating controversy. I know that I used the list to learn more about specific cases, engaged in dialogue with a wide range of researchers around the world, and to expand my horizons.

UFO UpDates was a fine source of information and controversy and I have missed it in the last year. In fact, just the other day I noticed that it had been a long time since I had seen anything from it. I’m sad to see it go, but I wish Errol the best and thank him for providing the resource and keeping it going for so long.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

The Project Mogul Double Standard


Here’s an interesting question that is generated by the recent discussions of Delbert Newhouse and his UFO footage. There are those on the skeptical side of the fence who reject his close up description of objects that were gunmetal-colored disks because that description doesn’t appear in the written record until nearly two years after the fact. One debunker seemed to be outraged that I had mentioned that this was what Newhouse told me because I didn’t talk to him until 1976. Of course, I was merely pointing out that I had talked to him and that this description of the UFOs had come from him rather than a survey of the literature, which, of course, makes that first-hand testimony regardless of when gathered.

The theory among the debunkers is that Newhouse embellished his sighing to make it more interesting for some obscure personal reasons. Maybe he didn’t want to be identified as a Navy officer who couldn’t identify sea gulls when he saw them. Maybe he was embarrassed by the identification made by those who apparently never bothered to interview him and only believed what they read in the Project Blue Book files. Maybe Newhouse wanted to increase the importance of his sighting.

Yes, we all understand that memories are often flawed and that they can be unconsciously embellished over time in a process that is known as confabulation. That means simply that the mind has filled in details that might not have been observed. The witness is not lying in the classical sense, is not aware that he or she is not relating reality, and truly believes what he or she says about the situation.

So, what does this have to do with Project Mogul and double standards?

Well, there are those on the skeptical side of the fence who believe that a Project Mogul array fell near Roswell, was partially recovered by Mack Brazel, and that is what caused all the fuss about a crashed alien spacecraft. Ironically, and ignored by those same skeptics is the theory that is refuted by the written records made at the time. Never mind that because Charles Moore, one of the engineers who worked on Project Mogul told us all that he remembered that flight, that it was the first successful balloon flight in New Mexico, and the reason for the delay in identifying it was because Project Mogul was so highly classified that he hadn’t heard the name until Robert Todd told him in 1992 (we, of course, know that the name appeared in the records made at the time in 1946 and 1947 which is one of the first indications that Moore might not be relating reality to us).

To flog this dead horse, I will repeat what we all know. According to the written record Mogul Flight No. 4 was cancelled. There is no equivocation about it. The flight was cancelled, which should be the end of the story… but no, Albert Crary’s diary, the written record and part of the source material, mentions that a cluster of balloons was flown on the date in question. This is Flight No. 4. We know this because Moore told us so fifty years after the fact and his memory, which is in conflict with the written record, is acceptable, while Newhouse’s memory is not.

Charles Moore, who knew exactly what that cluster of balloons was, told everyone that this was actually Flight No. 4. And although the Mogul flights were not scheduled before dawn in June 1947, Flight No. 4 was launched, not at dawn, but around 3:00 in the morning, according to Moore. Why? Because a weather front went through Alamogordo about dawn and the weather data from it suggest that the balloon trajectory would have not been toward the Brazel ranch. However, if it was launched about 3:00, then the winds aloft data can be used to predict a path toward Corona, New Mexico and the Brazel ranch.

The documentation from the New York University balloon project shows that the first successful flight in New Mexico was Flight No. 5. But Moore claimed that Flight No. 4 was just as successful; they just didn’t record it. If it was as successful, then why not record it and tout it as the first successful flight in New Mexico? Why not report the data collected rather than leave it out of the record altogether. Why would Crary say the flight had been cancelled if it had actually flown and was successful?

Because a cluster of balloons was just that… a cluster of balloons. We know from later entries what that means. When flights were cancelled, they sometimes conducted experiments using some of the balloons and equipment. So, Flight No. 4 was not launched in the dark, which would have violated the CAA regulations under which they operated, and was cancelled because of clouds at dawn, which was demanded by the CAA. If it was cancelled at dawn, then how could it be launched some three hours earlier at 3:00?

Let’s also remember that Moore had originally calculated the launch time as about 5:00 a.m. because that was dawn in New Mexico in July 1947, and Flight No. 5 was launched just after 5:00 the next day. That was, of course, before the winds aloft data ruled out the dawn launch. And, explain how it would make sense to say that the flight was cancelled but it was launched before the clouds became an issue… well, obviously this is true because that is what Charles Moore remembered fifty years after the fact and his memories of those long ago events are not flawed.

Oh, so we don’t get lost in arguments over source material, in his 1995 paper, Moore calculated the launch time as about 5:00 but in the Benson, Saler, Zieler, and Moore book, ironically called UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth, on page 102, he changes the time. What we have here is clear evidence of Moore changing the times, not based on newer and better evidence, but on his memory to prove his own theory... or maybe I should say his alleged memory because there is no documentation to support the earlier launch.

The documentation available from that time also tells us that the CAA governed the launch of these Mogul balloon trains because they were some 600 or so feet long and would be a threat to aerial navigation. They couldn’t be launched when there were clouds to hide them and they couldn’t be launched at night because pilots wouldn’t be able to see them. The rules and regulations in place in 1947 are clear and the documentation is clear on those points.

True, in July, as they worked the project and the length of the arrays was reduced considerably, these factors were altered, but in June, they were in place. They couldn’t launch at night and they couldn’t launch because of clouds, so Flight No. 4 was cancelled. Until Moore said otherwise and we can believe him because it is true that he would never embellish his self-proclaimed place in history as the man who launched the Roswell wreck.

Here’s another interesting side note. There was a discussion about NOTAMs, which are Notices to Airmen about information that would be important for aviation safety. The launches of these arrays required a NOTAM to be filed, but Moore said that no NOTAM had been filed for Flight No. 4 because they expected it to remain over restricted airspace on the Alamogordo (White Sands Proving Ground) ranges until it was above normal aviation operating altitudes or something around 30,000 feet. The questions are: why would he remember that, and why should we believe him?

I could go on, but is there a point? We know, based on the records that Flight No. 4 was cancelled and that the cluster of balloons does not a Mogul array make. We know that the flight did not fly at 3:00 in the morning, but had it been launched then, it would have been noted as being launched then and there wouldn’t be the note that it had been cancelled. We know what the cluster was, based on other entries, and Moore had to know that as well but just made contradictory statements about it anyway. (In 1995, Moore acknowledged that a valid interpretation of Crary’s diary was that Flight No. 4 was cancelled.)

I say that if you reject Newhouse because his later statements about the length of his movie disagree with the documentation made within weeks of his shooting it, then Moore’s statements about Mogul Flight No. 4 can be rejected because they are in conflict with the written record. I really don’t see any difference here. In both cases we have statements made after the fact, years after the fact, which are contradicted by information gathered at the time.


I just want to see the same standards applied to both sides of the coin. But I will say this in defense of Newhouse. I don’t believe (please note the qualification here) Newhouse was consciously changing his story and there is some evidence to back that up. For example, only about 40 seconds of his movie was released, meaning that some 35 seconds are not readily available. I think he believed he was telling the truth… Moore knew what he was doing and deliberately misled us all in his attempt to be the man who launched the Roswell case. What I don’t understand is how anyone looking at the facts can believe that Moore and Mogul had anything to do with Roswell. Remember, that doesn’t prove it was alien, only that this particular explanation has failed… based on the documentation and not on the fifty year old memories of one man

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Newhouse's Tremonton, Utah Movie Revisited


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.


Saturday, December 07, 2013

Delbert Newhouse and the Utah Movie


There are two things that have happened recently that impact this blog. First is a statement, again, by someone who should actually know better, that there is no evidence that UFOs are alien craft. He asks, demands really, just one example of a solid case for the UFO. Ignoring the fact that the debunkers have worked wonders in marginalizing UFO reports by throwing all sorts of ridiculous explanations for the sightings out there, some of which are contradictory, there are some very good cases that have multiple chains of evidence and some very good research attached to them. Any explanation, even if it doesn’t fit the facts will do, just so long as they can claim the sighting is explained in the mundane.

The second point is that, for some reason, there has been an on-going dialogue into the July 1952 UFO sighing near Tremonton, Utah. This is the tale of a Navy warrant officer who filmed a formation of bright objects over the tiny Utah town. The film was studied for months by a number of different organizations but in January 1953, the objects were identified as birds by the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel. (For a lengthy analysis of the motivations of the Robertson Panel see Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-Ups, 155 - 174)

Here’s the thing about this movie. Almost everyone talks about what is shown on the film but few mention what the witnesses observed. In 1976, when I interviewed Delbert Newhouse, the Navy photographer, he told me that he and his wife, Norma, saw the objects at close range. He said they were large, disc-shaped things that were brightly lighted. By the time he got the car stopped, dug his camera out of the trunk and put film into it, the objects had moved off so that they looked like bright blobs of white on a bright blue background. It was then that he began filming the formation or cluster or mass, which was now much farther away.

Sure, you could say that in 1976 he had heard more than twenty years of comments about the film, had been interviewed repeatedly and his story certainly could have changed. Ed Ruppelt, the chief of Project Blue Book when the film was shot in his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects wrote:

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.

So, it’s clear from the beginning that Newhouse was telling those interested that he had seen the objects up close. He said, from the beginning, that the objects were disc shaped. I don’t think anyone, in those early days, thought to get statements from the wife and the kids. They had the “important” information from a naval officer and were satisfied with that. And even with that, the Air Force didn’t bother to complete the investigation, failing to ask basic questions or seemingly failed to ask them, and according to Ruppelt, didn’t bother to pass along some of the answers.

In the months that followed, the Air Force analyzed the film and when they finished, they had no solution. Ruppelt wrote about that, saying, “All they had to say was ‘We don’t know what they are but they aren’t airplanes or balloons, and we don’t think they are birds.’”

When the Air Force finished, the Navy took over, and they weren’t as restricted in their praise as the Air Force. The Navy experts made a frame by frame examination that took over a thousand man hours. The Navy concluded that the objects were internally lights spheres that were not reflecting sunlight. They also estimated the speed of the objects at 3,780 miles an hour which ruled out aircraft of the time and birds of any time. They had no explanation for what was seen on the film.

But, as I say, never let an independent analysis stand when you can throw cold water on it. Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer who never met a UFO sighting he liked and who wasn’t above providing explanations as quickly as he could regardless of the facts, claimed that it had been proven the film showed birds. Such was not the case, except to those with closed minds but Menzel made the claim anyway.

Dr. R. M. L. Baker made an independent study of the film in 1955. He agreed with the Air Force that the film didn’t show aircraft or balloons, and he didn’t think it was some sort of airborne debris or radar chaff either. In disagreement with Menzel, he found the bird explanation “unsatisfactory.”

Given what we know about the University of Colorado UFO study led by Edward U. Condon we could guess what they would conclude about this film. I won’t mention what we now know about the reasons for the study or the directions Condon and his team had been given by the Air Force (see the Hippler Letter March 21, 2007; June 5, 2013) but that certainly influenced their conclusions.

William Hartmann conducted the analysis for the Condon committee. He provided a quick history of the investigations and did mention that during Baker’s 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.’…” (Which sort of reinforces the idea that Newhouse had not radically altered his tale over time.)

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. He 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.”

Or, in other words, the statements of Newhouse were unimportant and I suspect the reason being that if they were accepted, then the bird explanation was eliminated. Birds are not shaped like two saucers held together rim to rim.

To add to all this, Baker, in 1969, 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.”

Here’s where we are. This is a case of multiple chains of evidence. First is the eyewitness testimony that has been virtually ignored. It is clear from what Ruppelt and others say that some parts of the Project Blue Book file on the case have disappeared. But that doesn’t change the fact that Newhouse and his wife saw the UFOs and what they had to say about it is an important part of the report. Hartmann rejected it almost out of hand.

The second chain of evidence, which is independent of the first, is the film. It provides something that can be taken into the lab and analyzed in various ways. It seems to me that those without a bias (or in the case of the Air Force who leaned toward finding any explanation which now suggests they were arguing against their own interest) couldn’t positively identify the objects. Those who know that there is no alien visitation however, found what they believed to be the solution. The film showed birds.

Here’s the point, finally. Those who know that there is no alien visitation claim that there is no evidence to the contrary. I say the Tremonton, Utah film is evidence of something unusual flying through the atmosphere and if evaluated from a neutral position is not explained by birds. I will freely concede that eliminating the accepted explanation does not lead directly to the extraterrestrial; I will also note that we do have some evidence of an unusual event. I will further note that if Newhouse’s description is accurate then there is no terrestrial explanation for the sighting. Give it an unbiased reading, look at everything through a neutral prism, and you have something that suggests there could be alien visitation. It is, therefore, some of the evidence that many claim does not exist