THE DOCUMENTS
DOW-UAP-D102, “Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, and DOW-UAP-D103, “Project Blue Book Photo File Relating to Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, two Department of War records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 06, published at war.gov/ufo on 18 September 2026. Both titles are the release’s, taken from the file names; neither record carries a title of its own, the nearest in DOW-UAP-D102 being the location typed on its PROJECT 10073 RECORD CARD, TREMONTON, UTAH. DOW-UAP-D102 is the Project Blue Book case folder on a sighting of 2 July 1952, case 1377, in 156 pages: teletypes, memoranda, letters, two U. S. Naval Photographic Interpretation Center reports, an Air Force laboratory report in two copies, a contractor’s report of 1956, ATIC forms, handwritten notes and two printed comic pages. Its dated papers on this case run from 11 August 1952 to 18 March 1954, with a second block from May and June 1956, and they are not in date order. The case ends at a green divider at p. 150 reading, in blue ink, End of Tremonton, Utah case 1377 7/2/52; six pages of unrelated 1952 material follow it. DOW-UAP-D103 is five pages: a typed caption sheet, a summary card with a small photographic print mounted on it, a blank card back, one large print, and a General Mills Research Laboratories photo mount sheet carrying a handwritten note and sketches. The papers in DOW-UAP-D102 carry typed or stamped UNCLASSIFIED and RESTRICTED headings and a printed downgrading stamp, and heavy black marker bars are struck across lines on many pages, most of them at the head and foot; DOW-UAP-D103 carries no classification marking. Neither record carries a FOIA exemption code. The release footer reads DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 923007 on DOW-UAP-D102 and NND 923007 alone on DOW-UAP-D103.
Why this one is worth your time
DOW-UAP-D098, the one document Release 05 published from this case, was the Navy’s analysis of 4 May 1953, and Release 05 Briefing 4 recorded that it named neither film it measured, that the question list its answers were keyed to and the earlier report it superseded were not in the file, and that it carried no witness, time, camera or weather and no record of what anyone made of its findings.
D102, the Air Force case folder on the Utah film, holds a second copy of that report with the question list, the superseded report, the memorandum that asked for the work, the witness and his camera, and papers from 1952 to 1956 on what the film showed. Three of the Navy report’s four references are not in D102, among them the Director of Naval Intelligence letter that carried the request, and neither are the charts or the film; a memorandum matching one of the three, reference (b), is in DOW-UAP-D105 (below).
What the documents say
The witness, and his own account. Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse sent one fifty-foot roll of processed 16mm colour film to the Commanding Officer at Hill Air Force Base on 11 August 1952 (p. 113). His letter and statement (p. 70) put him about 7 miles north of Tremonton at 1110 on 2 July 1952, with a handheld B&H Automaster and 3 inch telephoto lens at 16 frames per second. His wife noticed a group of objects she could not identify; he saw about ten or twelve milling about in a rough formation and exposed approximately thirty feet. Towards the end one object reversed course and he held the camera still for three or four passes. The 28th Air Division’s interview report records over 19 years in the naval service and over 1,000 claimed hours in the air as a photographer, and puts the site approximately 10 miles north of Tremonton (p. 6). His wife and two children were the other witnesses; their names, and the children’s ages, are on that page.
The Air Force photographic laboratory. Asked on 16 September 1952 for a complete analysis, the Photo Reconnaissance Lab answered on 10 October (p. 67). Its report, with no letterhead, author or date of its own, is here twice, each copy with its two figures: a legible typed copy at pp. 136 to 144, and a photostat negative at pp. 99 to 103, 105 to 107 and 110, with a copy of the witness’s statement bound in at p. 104. It concludes that the film apparently records ten unknown aerial objects alike in observed movement and size, that their exact nature cannot be determined, that there is apparently some coordination of movement among them, and that the photography would probably be extremely difficult to imitate for fraudulent purposes.
The Navy reports, and their reception. The progress report of 5 December 1952, serial 0263, runs pp. 129 to 133, and its last two items read: conclusions, none; recommendations, none. The report of 4 May 1953, serial 0105, runs pp. 71 to 77 and is the document Release 05 published as D098; this copy matches that briefing’s account of its letterhead, references, subject and signature. The enclosure line calls for Charts 2 to 13 and none follows, where Release 05 published fourteen chart sheets with D098. Every page is stamped UNCLASSIFIED, with heavy black bars across one or two lines at its head. No indorsement, comment or reply by the Air Force is attached. The folder also carries a reaction Release 05 could not show: two astronomers who heard a Navy briefing and said the method used to measure the brightness of each spot was wrong, and therefore the results of the entire study were wrong (p. 39).
The explanations the file offers. The record card gives possible mirage effect and possible migratory birds (p. 2); the worksheet’s handwritten comments give mirage, birds and aircraft, the last as highly improbable (p. 58), both read from the page images. Pillow balloons came from Office of Naval Research officers and a Minnesota screening (pp. 26, 28), sea gulls from papers of 1953 and 1956 (pp. 42, 80, 126), and light sources of a nature the analysts could not identify from the Navy (pp. 74, 130). A memorandum for record notes that the absence of sound almost rules out aircraft; a red pencil hand has ringed the note and written not so beside it, read from the page image (p. 37). For its final evaluation the worksheet ticks Unknown; the record card carries a blue ink X against Other with BIRDS written beside it, and a heavy blue mark in the Unknown box; whether that mark is a tick, a fill or a strike out cannot be told from the image.
The film, and the press release. The Air Force kept the original with the witness’s permission (p. 44) and returned the tail footage, a mountain scene, between 8 September and 24 October 1952 (pp. 118, 124). He was sent copies in 1953 and 1954 (pp. 44, 47) and in December 1953 asked for the original back (p. 54). The folder’s latest answer on where it went is the Navy’s, of 18 March 1954: the Center had never had possession of it and did not know its whereabouts (p. 45). A draft press statement came back to ATIC for coordination on 26 February 1953 (pp. 42 to 43). The memorandum for record on the release concludes that a quick release should state that the Air Force cannot positively identify the objects but is reasonably sure they are balloons or gulls, and, if the Navy and Air Force reports are requested, that they must be discounted because of the meagre data they used; it would be rather poor policy, it adds, to state that the Navy had made an error at the beginning of its analysis (p. 38).
D103. The caption sheet reads Files 1377 & 1415, July 7, 1952, Tremonton, Utah, 2 photos, the last digit of the year in blue (p. 1). The card at p. 2 summarises the sighting in eight typed lines, from CPO Delbert C. Newhouse to a probable explanation of pillow balloons or birds, with Pillow balloons ringed in pencil and a question mark drawn beneath; the small print mounted on it is captioned in blue, PILLOW BALLOONS. The large print at p. 4, inked FIG. 6, shows three people in overcoats on snow-covered ground under a cluster of translucent angular objects. The mount sheet at p. 5, date line blank, carries a note in blue that these are pillow balloons, two feet by two feet, which at altitudes and against a cloud or adverse background could give a saucer appearance when lying flat, above at least six sketched outlines in the same blue. Everything here but the typed lines is read from the page images.
What the documents do not say
Reference (a) is still not here. Both Navy reports cite it as a Confidential letter from the Director of Naval Intelligence dated 27 October 1952, with enclosures (pp. 71, 129), and it is nowhere else in the folder. D102 does carry the Air Force memorandum of 24 October 1952 asking for a Navy interpretation, an unsigned stayback copy at pp. 124 to 125 whose seventh inclosure is the list of questions, and the Navy endorsement at p. 128 forwards the progress report in compliance with, among others, the request in that memorandum. That the 27 October letter carried the memorandum onward is an inference from the matching enclosures and the three-day gap, not something either page states.
No panel of any kind, and no CIA: Robertson, panel, Scientific Advisory, Central Intelligence and C.I.A each return zero hits in D102, and the two astronomers are never named. The ornithologist proposed at p. 9 never answers in the file: thologist and Smithsonian return hits only on p. 9, where the word is broken across a line, and ornith only an 1874 title in a reference list (p. 97). The spectrophotometric analysis planned in May 1953 never materialised, the Navy wrote in March 1954 (pp. 77, 45). The Minneapolis travel report ends on List of consignees: with no list after it (p. 29).
No radar or interception: radar appears once in the released text, in a 1956 footnote on chaff (p. 86), and four more times only in this project’s OCR of a section on a different case (p. 66); the worksheet ticks No against ground radar, observation from the air and aircraft scrambled (p. 57).
Neither record holds the film itself; a hand-written sheet at p. 61, read from the page image, gives 16 MM FILM, the date, the place and the witness’s surname, a file number, the words Custody of Audio-Visual Archives and an underlined 1975. No Air Force document in the file says whether the press release was issued. Only two printed comic pages at pp. 145 to 146, a popular source with no publication name, date or credit, say what became of it: that the press showing was cancelled and the plan for a public disclosure killed, read from the page image.
D103 says nothing of who took its photographs, when or where. Film, Blue Book, ATIC, Navy, UAP, UFO and unidentified each return zero hits across its five pages, the witness’s rate, CPO, on the card being its only link to the Navy, and neither record explains the second file number, 1415.
From the record
The following questions are suggested for guidance regarding the
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 134, the preface of the question list Release 05 Briefing 4 reported missing from DOW-UAP-D098; the sentence continues: general type of analysis desired
a hand crank and frame counter. It was found that the objects are ten in number,
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 136, the introduction to the Air Force photographic laboratory report; the line closes the sentence on the projector, which lets the operator examine any length of film frame by frame, and opens the next, which continues: in every one but the last of the motion sequences photographed
5. It would probably be extremely difficult to imitate this photography
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 139, the fifth and last conclusion of the typed copy, which the photostat copy carries alone on its printed page 4 at p. 103; the sentence continues: for fraudulent purposes
It is the majority opinion of the group conducting this analysis
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 74, answer 1 of the Navy letter report of 4 May 1953, the line Release 05 Briefing 4 quoted from DOW-UAP-D098; the sentence continues: that these images are light sources
None of the persons present placed much faith in the computations of
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 29, the travel report on the screening at the University of Minnesota on 30 December 1952; the sentence continues: angular velocity, since all were predicated upon Newhouse’s holding the camera still
This is a “calculated” risk of another big “flap”.
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 39, paragraph 4 of the memorandum for record on the press release, a complete sentence following the decision to release the movies without comment as to what they were
The unanimity of opinion present in all evaluations
DOW-UAP-D102, p. 127, the closing finding of Col John G. Eriksen’s memorandum of 1 June 1956 to the Director of Intelligence, answering a request from Mr M. A. Monts of the Air Force Press Room; the sentence continues: made in this case leaves little reasonable doubt that the UFOs in the Newhouse film were indeed seagulls
No reference points by which to estimate speed, distance or size
DOW-UAP-D103, p. 2, the sixth of the eight typed lines on the summary card, between the line on the objects milling about and the line on image size
Where the case connects
The principal link is Release 05 Briefing 4, whose list of what D098 did not carry D102 largely answers. D102’s copy of the question list headed SUGGESTED POINTS FOR ANALYSIS (pp. 134 to 135) runs question 4 as shape, colour, relative size and motion, the order of the Navy’s answer 4 (p. 75), where a second version at p. 69 puts size before colour; that this is the copy the answers were keyed to is an inference from that order, not something either page states.
D105, the Air Force flying discs file in this release, carries a copy of the 24 October 1952 memorandum with a typed signature block and no signature over it (pp. 26 to 27) and a memorandum of 24 November 1952 sending the Navy a further roll of Kodachrome (p. 18), which matches reference (b) of the Navy report in date, office and the title in its typed signature block; D102 has no copy of it. DOW-UAP-PR159 is, by its official description, a digitisation of a 16mm print of the film, and that description names D102; Release 06 Briefing 2 covers the film. On the January 1953 scientific panel that the public literature, outside the record, associates with this case, D102 is silent.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D102, “Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, and DOW-UAP-D103, “Project Blue Book Photo File Relating to Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 06. In DOW-UAP-D102 the Navy report of 4 May 1953 is pages 71 to 77 of the PDF, the laboratory report in its legible copy pages 136 to 144, and the question list pages 134 to 135.
Read the files. 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
- Delbert C. Newhouse
- Project Blue Book
- Air Technical Intelligence Center
- Naval Photographic Interpretation Center
- Flying Discs File 1952
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D102, “Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, PURSUE Release 06, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOW-UAP-D103, “Project Blue Book Photo File Relating to Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, PURSUE Release 06, 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 4, on DOW-UAP-D098, the Navy’s 4 May 1953 analysis of the same film