THE DOCUMENT
DOW-UAP-D098, “Film Analysis of Unidentified Objects, 1953”, a Department of War record from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 05, published at war.gov/ufo, cleared 7 August 2026. The release title is not the document’s own. The file carries no title as such; its subject line does the work, and reads “Interpretation of Movies of Unidentified Objects; progress report on”. It runs to 23 pages: a two-page Bureau of Aeronautics route sheet, a seven-page letter report dated 4 May 1953, and fourteen hand-drawn chart enclosures, the sheets numbered 2, 3, 4, 5A, 5B, 6, 7, 8A, 8B, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. The letterhead is the U. S. Naval Photographic Interpretation Center, U. S. Naval Receiving Station, Washington 25, D. C., abbreviated PIC in its own text; it is a Center, not a laboratory. From the Officer in Charge, to the Director of Naval Intelligence (OP-322H4D), copies to CNO (OP553) and the Bureau of Aeronautics (PH), signed L. W. Keith, file references Code 01/HWW/lbh, J12, Serial 0105. Marked CONFIDENTIAL, SECURITY INFORMATION on every page and struck through by hand. Declassified by NARA under authority NND 67905 on 25 June 2026, alongside a red declassification-project stamp reading DECLASS IN FULL, PER EO 12958, OTHER EQUITIES: YES. No redactions anywhere in the file.
Why this one is worth your time
Nearly all of the early paper PURSUE has released is Air Force paper: Study 203 in Release 04 Briefing 1, the Project Sign progress report in Release 04 Briefing 2, a Headquarters USAF working file of 1947 to 1948 in Release 05 Briefing 5. This one is the Navy’s, and it is not a sighting report. Nobody in it saw anything. Two reels of film arrive from the Air Force, a photogrammetry section projects them frame by frame onto a ground glass screen, reads densities off them with a laboratory densitometer, and hands back velocities, accelerations expressed in g, a shape and a size in feet.
It is also a document that keeps interrupting itself. The subject line calls it a progress report; section 3 says the answers supersede the earlier report and present the final analysis. The images are light sources by majority opinion, and the minority is neither counted nor described. The figures rest on three assumptions, one of which the report calls a fallacy and another arbitrary. Every one of those qualifications was put there by the people who did the work.
What the document says
What arrived, and from whom. Four references are cited and none is enclosed. Reference (a), a DNI letter of 27 October 1952, carried the Air Force’s request, roughly 30 feet of processed 16 mm colour film exposed in Utah on 2 July 1952, and a list of questions to guide the analysis. Reference (b), a Chief, Topical Division, USAF memorandum of 24 November 1952, added a second film taken in Montana in 1950. Reference (c) is PIC’s own earlier report, serial 0263 of 5 December 1952, which this one supersedes. Reference (d), of 16 February 1953, asks for spectrophotometric analysis. The work was done by the Photogrammetry Division, Evaluation Department, and the report says it does not necessarily represent the official attitude of the Department of the Navy or the Center.
The bench. The Utah film arrived dry, brittle and inclined to break, so it was duplicated; the print the analysis ran on is a duplicate of a copy. A stop-frame projector was mounted rigidly at a fixed distance from a finely ground glass screen, magnification 22 times, format 14.2 inches wide. Red and green spots lasting one or two frames were set aside, water spots eliminated. The Utah film was split into three parts: Part I at f8, Part II at f16 panning, Part III at f16 with the camera steady. Three definite groups of lights were observed. Densities were read with a Densichron Model 2150 by the Welch Scientific Company, scale 0 to 3, sky background set to 3.0: three readings each of seven objects in Part I and of the single object in Part III, and the whole of the Montana film. Those readings may be questioned, the report says, the probe having covered the entire object at minimum size and only part of it at maximum.
The arithmetic. Velocity rests on three assumptions the report sets out in order: that the camera was held steady during Part III, that the objects moved perpendicular to the optical axis, and that they were five miles from the camera. It calls the second a fallacy, notes that it therefore yields a minimum, and calls the five-mile figure arbitrary, defending it only by arguing that an object 50 feet across at that range would have resolved identifiable detail. At five miles a shift of one millimetre per frame works out to 3,780 mph, and 16 frames per second set the acceleration interval at one sixteenth of a second.
The numbers it returns. From 55 measurements in Part III of the Utah film: maximum and minimum velocities of 2,457 and 378 mph, maximum acceleration 21,168 mph per second or 965 g, minimum 1,104 or 50 g, maximum deceleration 32,448 or 1,479 g, minimum 272 or 12 g. The Montana film had terrestrial objects in frame to hold to as control, which the report says makes those figures more reliable: from 322 measurements, left object 1,374 and 361 mph, right object 1,117 and 189 mph, maximum accelerations of 639 g and 576 g, maximum decelerations of 601 g and 651 g, minima of zero. The values fall in approximate multiples of 12.5, which the report says may be of significance, adding that no study has been conducted.
The answers. Section 3 is a numbered list keyed to a question list that is not in the file. Answer 1 sets the reflecting-surface possibility aside: at 16 frames per second, over roughly 90 seconds and through roughly 60 degrees, blinking would be expected; that premise would have allowed highly reflective balloons or spheroids, but the velocity and acceleration figures rule them out. It is then the majority opinion of the group that the images are light sources, which explains the absence of blinking but not the velocity or acceleration; in either case the objects are of a nature the analysts cannot identify. Answer 2 rules out birds, aircraft and balloons on the computed figures, and says the objects must be of a construction, design and material not commonly known. Answer 3 has objects within a group moving counter-clockwise on an elliptical track, two fusing as they cross the line of sight and seeming to split again at roughly every 25th frame. Answer 5 gives shape as oblate or disk shaped, colour blue-white, size 98 feet at maximum and 16 at minimum, conditional on the five-mile assumption. Answer 10e records abrupt changes of direction through large angles; 10g, that certain objects disappear while still well within the field of view.
The discussion. Preliminary data were shown to cleared experts in astronomy and physics. They offered natural-phenomena theories that worked under some conditions but not under the conditions of the photography, and could not recognise the objects as man-made. No attempt was made to corroborate those opinions. Lack of equipment, money and personnel limited the investigation; obvious tests would prove or disprove some of the findings, and the report suggests they be undertaken. On the spectrophotometry, a preliminary plan of test is under way.
What the document does not say
It never names either film. They are “Utah, 2 July 1952” and “Montana, 1950” and nothing else. Tremonton, Great Falls, Newhouse, Mariana, Robertson, Blue Book, ATIC and seagull appear zero times in 23 pages. These are the films generally known as the Tremonton and Great Falls films, an identification that comes from context and not from this document.
There is no film and no photograph in the file, not a frame and not a still. What stands in for the imagery is fourteen sheets of hand-drawn charts, plotted from a print that was itself a duplicate of a copy.
The question list is missing. Every answer is keyed to enclosure 7 of reference (a), and none of the four references is in the file, so the numbered answers arrive without their questions.
The enclosures are incomplete on their own terms. Chart 1 is neither present nor called for; the line reads Charts 2 to 13. Table I marks one plotting run “Not enclosed”, and calls for charts 7a and 7b for the Montana film where only one sheet numbered 7 exists.
The dissent is invisible. “Majority opinion” is the only sign that the group divided; the report does not say how many held the minority view, or what it was.
There is no sighting narrative anywhere: no witness named, no time of day, no location beyond a state, no camera or lens specification, no film stock, no weather. The report leans on the sun angle and atmospheric condition reported at the time of photography without stating either.
Nothing records a reaction. The spectrophotometric analysis was not done, and neither, so far as the file shows, were the obvious tests it recommends to itself. The Bureau of Aeronautics route sheet sits at the front and its COMMENTS page is blank. No indorsement or reply appears, and there is no mention of Blue Book, of any Air Force panel, or of what anyone made of the findings.
From the record
U. S. NAVAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION CENTER
DOW-UAP-D098, the letterhead at the head of the letter report; as printed it reads U. S. NAVAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION CENTER, above U. S. Naval Receiving Station, Washington 25, D. C.
2 July 1952. Included among the enclosures are approximately 30 feet
DOW-UAP-D098, paragraph 1, on what reference (a) delivered; the sentence continues: of processed 16 mm colour motion picture film and a list of questions for guidance in determining the type of analysis desired
Velocity is computed to be 3780 mph for a shift of 1 mm per frame
DOW-UAP-D098, answer 8, the conversion the whole analysis runs on; the sentence continues: if the object is five miles from the observer, a distance the same paragraph calls arbitrary
It is the majority opinion of the group conducting this analysis
DOW-UAP-D098, answer 1, the finding on what the images are; the sentence continues: that these images are light sources
identify in terms of natural phenomena or commonly known man-made objects.
DOW-UAP-D098, answer 1, closing the same paragraph; the sentence begins: in either case, light source or reflective surface, it appears as if the objects are of a nature which we are not able to
the lack of proper equipment, money and personnel, the investigation
DOW-UAP-D098, section 4, on the limits of the work; the sentence continues: was limited, and the next sentence says there are obvious tests which can be conducted to prove or disprove some of the findings presented
Where the case connects
This is a Navy analytic product in a collection that is overwhelmingly Air Force paper. D098 is the other service, working to an Air Force question list, reporting up its own chain to the Director of Naval Intelligence, and putting the Air Force in the file only as the Topical Division of AFOIN.
It is also a different kind of document from the ones around it. Study 203 and the Sign report work on stacks of sighting reports and argue about what observers saw; D098 has no observers at all, and its output is a table of numbers derived from three assumptions it names and criticises in the same breath. The Air Materiel Command file in Release 05 Briefing 5 is the Air Force end of the same period. Release 03 carried the CIA historical block, which includes the Scientific Advisory Panel report on UFOs from the same winter, CIA-UAP-D002; D098 refers to no panel, and the two records do not cite each other.
The report names its own next steps and none of them are here: the spectrophotometry has a plan and no results, the obvious tests are suggested and not run, the minority is not described, and reference (c) is not published alongside it. If a later tranche releases any of that, it lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D098, “Film Analysis of Unidentified Objects, 1953”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 05. It is 23 pages and unredacted; the letter report is pages 3 to 9 of the PDF.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
- PURSUE
- Department of War
- Tremonton Film 1952
- Great Falls Film 1950
- Naval Photographic Interpretation Center
- Robertson Panel
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D098, “Film Analysis of Unidentified Objects, 1953”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 5, on the Air Materiel Command file and the Air Force end of the same period
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 04 Briefing 2, on the Project Sign progress report
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 03, on the CIA historical block