THE SOURCE
DOW-UAP-PR159, “Historical Film of Reported UFOs, Utah, 1952”, a Department of War video record from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 06, published at war.gov/ufo on 18 September 2026 and on DVIDS as video 1023402. The title is the release’s, the DVIDS title; the clip carries none of its own, the nearest being the number on its slate, 341.PBB.345. One clip, the asset file DOD_111985807.mp4: 70 seconds, 1,682 frames at 24 frames per second, a 4:3 picture 1,440 by 1,080 pixels centred in a 1,920 by 1,080 frame, with black bars either side. DVIDS gives the VIRIN 520702-D-D0360-8575, date taken 07.02.1952, length 00:01:10 and location TREMONTON, UTAH, US. The official description is seven sentences of prose, with no timed entries and without the closing caveat that 14 of the 16 Release 06 descriptions carry. It calls the footage a digitisation of a 16mm print, names the paper file submitted with the film, and does not say who made the digitisation. The clip opens on a National Archives card and a slate and closes on a card reading End of Recording; there is no redaction box, caption or time code anywhere in the picture. What the Department says of the footage is taken from the description. What the footage shows is read from the frames or measured on them for this briefing; frame numbers count from 1 at 24 frames per second.
Why this one is worth your time
Release 05 Briefing 4 recorded that DOW-UAP-D098, the Navy’s 1953 analysis of this film, held no film and no photograph, not a frame and not a still, and that the print the Navy measured was a duplicate of a copy. Release 06 Briefing 1 found that the Air Force case folder, DOW-UAP-D102, holds no film either; a hand-written sheet at p. 61 gives a 16mm film, the date, the place, the witness’s surname, a file number and the words Custody of Audio-Visual Archives, read from the page image.
PR159 is footage: by its official description, a digitisation of a 16mm print of that film, in a description that names D102. That makes it a record in which the Department’s words, the frames and the paper file can be read against each other line by line. At several points they do not say the same thing.
What the clips show
The cards. From 00:00 to 00:03 (frames 1 to 72) a card fades up and out: an eagle device, NATIONAL ARCHIVES, and www.archives.gov beneath. From 00:03 to 00:06 (frames 73 to 144) the slate reads 341.PBB.345, and below it Source: over 16mm RSK (P Copy). The clip ends on End of Recording, 01:07 to 01:10 (frames 1611 to 1682).
The lead-in, 00:06 to 00:08. A grey field, across which, in six frames (145 to 150), large dark hand-drawn characters pass on their side, one or two whole characters to a frame. Read in order they give 3, 4, 1, P, B, B, 3, 4, 5, the characters of the slate number (read from the frames). Nine near-white frames follow, then a dark blue-green field that sinks almost to black. For four frames at 00:07 (181 to 184) pale horizontal bars crossed by uprights fill the lower third of that field; nothing in the clip or its description identifies them.
The blue field, 00:08 to 00:55. From frame 214 to frame 1330, 46.5 seconds, the picture is an even blue field with grain, dirt and fine vertical scratches, broken only by single brighter frames at 00:15, 00:24 and 00:49. It is brighter up to 00:24; at frame 600, just before 00:25, it drops to a very dark blue for the last 731 frames, about 30 seconds. Small pale points a few pixels across lie on it, singly and in loose groups. At 00:20 a group of four keeps its arrangement and moves together across the picture over frames 486 to 500. In the dark stretch they are few and faint, visible only when the frames are brightened.
The band. From 00:07 to 00:53 a dark vertical band, about 6 to 7 per cent of the picture’s width, runs its full height between 41 and 44 per cent of the way across from the left, drifting slowly rightwards. In the bright stretch it falls to about a fifth to a quarter of the brightness beside it. It holds to frame 1284; in frame 1285 it bends and sweeps to the right, tapering, and from frame 1286 (00:53) it is gone while the blue field continues.
The tail, 00:55 to 01:07. At frame 1332 the picture changes to warm colour and a close shot: a dark machine head with scrolled decoration over a flat bed, two spools behind it, one blue and one orange, and a hand pointing with a slender tapered object; at 01:00 a closer shot of fingers at a knob on the side of the head. At 01:01 the picture turns to a pale cream field, across which dark brown strokes veined with pale cracks pass at about 01:02 and at 01:05. At 01:06 an olive-grey field carries dark strokes that, turned on their side, look like hand-drawn characters, none of which could be read with confidence (read from the frames).
What the description says of it. Of the objects, it says only that the witness reported observing and filming “a group of bright airborne objects”, and it does not say which frames show them. It gives one time within the clip: the unrelated footage appearing to show sewing equipment runs “From the 55-second mark onward”. The close shots that fit that phrase run from 00:55 to 01:01; the cream and olive-grey passages after them, to 01:07, are not described separately.
What the clips do not show
There is no horizon, cloud, ground, aircraft or other fixed feature anywhere in the 46.5 seconds of blue field. The description speaks of the film’s “lack of fixed reference points”, and the witness wrote in 1952 that there was “no reference point in the sky” (D102 p. 113; the same words at p. 70).
There is no mountain scene. The description says the mountain scenery from Idaho is not preserved in this digitisation, and no stretch of the 70 seconds shows a mountain.
Nor is there sound: measured by this project on the issued file, the audio track is digital silence, mean and maximum volume minus 91.0 dB.
No card or slate names the Air Force, Project Blue Book, the Navy, Newhouse, Tremonton or a date. The slate’s number does not occur in D102’s text layer (341 and PBB, zero hits each, this project’s OCR included), and the folder’s hand-written sheets number the film 7-3745-345 (p. 147) and File # 1003345 (p. 61), both read from the page images. Neither the description nor those pages says how the numbers relate.
The description does not mention the band, the pale points, the hand-drawn characters or the bars at 00:07. It does not say what the pale points are, and nothing in the clip does.
From the record
This archival footage is a digitization of a 16mm print of Kodachrome color motion-picture film shot on a handheld Bell & Howell Auto Master camera near Tremonton, Utah, on July 2, 1952.
DOW-UAP-PR159, the official description, its first sentence, whole
U.S. Navy Chief Warrant Officer Delbert C. Newhouse reported observing and filming a group of bright airborne objects and shortly thereafter submitted the footage to the U.S. Air Force.
DOW-UAP-PR159, the official description, its second sentence, whole
The film’s limited detail and lack of fixed reference points prevented a conclusive resolution.
DOW-UAP-PR159, the official description, its fourth sentence, whole
From the 55-second mark onward, the film transitions to unrelated footage appearing to show a demonstration of sewing equipment.
DOW-UAP-PR159, the official description, its fifth sentence, whole, the only point at which it gives a time within the clip
The presence of unrelated sewing-equipment footage suggests that the surviving footage may be a composite or reused print, though the available record does not establish how or when the materials came to be combined.
DOW-UAP-PR159, the official description, its sixth sentence, whole
As documented in records submitted with the film, contained in this collection under the title DOW-UAP-D102, the footage originally was paired with mountain scenery from Idaho, which is not preserved in this digitization.
DOW-UAP-PR159, the official description, its seventh and last sentence, whole
Where the case connects
The description’s third sentence, not quoted here, says the film later became one of the visual cases Project Blue Book reviewed. D102 is that project’s case folder on it, case 1377, and Release 06 Briefing 1 covers it.
Rank. The description calls the witness a U.S. Navy Chief Warrant Officer. D102’s Air Force papers of 1952 call him CPO (for example p. 116); his own covering letter, Chief Photographer (p. 113); a teletype of 7 February 1953 records the correct official title he stated as Chief Photographer, a commissioned warrant officer in the Navy (p. 34, read from the page image); a draft press statement of 26 February 1953, Warrant Officer (p. 42). The one Chief Warrant Officer in D102’s text layer is in a contractor’s report dated 16 May 1956 (pp. 83, 88).
How soon. The description says he “shortly thereafter submitted the footage”. His covering letter to the Commanding Officer, Hill Air Force Base, is dated 11 August 1952 (p. 113), forty days after the sighting by this briefing’s count, and the headquarters office that sent it on recorded it received on 5 September (p. 116).
Camera and film. The description’s handheld Bell & Howell Auto Master and 16mm Kodachrome agree with the witness’s letter: a B&H Automaster with a 3 inch telephoto lens at 16 frames per second, handheld, on EKCo Kodachrome Daylight (p. 113). In March 1954 the Navy’s photographic interpretation centre wrote that it understood the photography was taken with a Revere 16mm camera (p. 45).
The Idaho footage. The description says the footage was originally paired with Idaho mountain scenery that this digitisation does not preserve. D102 records the witness spending the balance of the roll on “a mountain somewhere in Idaho” (p. 113); an Air Force recommendation of 8 September 1952 that the final footage, of the mountain scenery, be returned to him (p. 118); a laboratory note of 10 October that the remainder of the film not associated with the aerial phenomena had gone to Captain Ruppelt (p. 67); and a memorandum of 24 October that the final footage had been detached and returned to CPO Newhouse (p. 124). The last two are read from the page images.
The composite reading. Against the description’s composite or reused print, sew returns no hit anywhere in D102’s text layer, this project’s OCR included. The folder does record a splice. A typed list of requirements for duplication at p. 19 asks for copies leaving out a portion with a sound track “spliced to the end of the film”, and places a loose portion of 17 frames at the end of the footage having “a deep blue background and no sound track”. A pencil note at its head, read from the page image, reads To L/C Adams w/orig film, with a date that reads as 10/24/52 but not with certainty. Neither the description nor p. 19 says whether that spliced portion is any part of this transfer.
What the film was judged to show. The description says no conclusive resolution was reached. D102 holds a contractor’s report of May 1956 calling the evidence rather contradictory (p. 88) and a memorandum of 1 June 1956 finding little reasonable doubt that the objects in the Newhouse film were seagulls (p. 127). The Navy analysis Release 05 Briefing 4 covers named the film only as Utah, 2 July 1952, and D102 holds a second copy of it (Release 06 Briefing 1).
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-PR159, “Historical Film of Reported UFOs, Utah, 1952”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 06 and on DVIDS at dvidshub.net, video ID 1023402. DOW-UAP-D102, “Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film Utah 1952”, is in the same release; the witness’s letter is page 113 of its PDF, and the papers on the Idaho footage pages 67, 118 and 124.
Watch the clips. 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.
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-PR159, “Historical Film of Reported UFOs, Utah, 1952”, PURSUE Release 06, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo and on DVIDS, video ID 1023402
- 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
- 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 06 Briefing 1, on DOW-UAP-D102 and DOW-UAP-D103, the Project Blue Book case folder and photo file on the same film
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 4, on DOW-UAP-D098, the Navy’s 4 May 1953 analysis of the same film