What does Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 reveal?

Newhouse's 11 August 1952 letter to the commanding officer of Hill Air Force Base enclosed one 50-foot roll of processed 16mm color film and fixed the particulars: about 7 miles north of Tremonton on U.S. Highway 30S, 1110 on Wednesday 2 July 1952, a hand-held B&H Automaster with a 3-inch telephoto lens at 16 frames per second, the first few feet at f:8…

Which agency produced Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952?

Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 is a primary-source record from Department of War. Its original classification was UNCLASSIFIED on release; individual items originally marked RESTRICTED or CONFIDENTIAL with DOD DIR 5200.10 downgrade stamps.

When is Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 dated?

Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 is dated 1952-07-02 (incident); file items dated 11 August 1952 through 1 June 1956. It was disclosed 2026-09-18.

What programs and topics appear in Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952?

Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 references Project Blue Book, Crusade for Freedom pillow balloon releases (checked as a candidate source), Navy Skyhook balloon flights (Tillamook, Oregon, September 1952, obtained for comparison), Tremonton Utah, daylight formation of 10 to 14 objects and single object reversing course.

What does Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 say, in its own words?

"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." (source p. 113).

← Files

DISCLOSURE / FILE

Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952

DOW-UAP-D102, Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film, Utah, 1952

Project Blue Book's case file on the 2 July 1952 Tremonton, Utah color film shot by U.S. Navy Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse, tracing the Air Force and Navy laboratory analyses, the balloon and seagull inquiries, the 1953 release debate, and the paper trail of a deteriorating original.

Brief

Delbert C. Newhouse, a U.S. Navy Chief Photographer (service number 177283) with a 1935 Naval Photographic School diploma and more than 1,000 logged aerial-photography hours, exposed about 30 feet of 16mm Kodachrome at 11:10 MST on 2 July 1952, seven miles north of Tremonton on U.S. Highway 30S, after his wife spotted a group of bright objects, ten or twelve by his 1952 count, milling in a rough formation. The Wright Field Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory counted ten objects, judged their brightness beyond that of any bird, and clocked a lone reversing object at 2.1 degrees per second; the Navy Photographic Interpretation Center, in a study the Air Force put at about 1,000 man-hours, called the images light sources and computed 378 to 2,457 mph and up to 965 g on an admittedly arbitrary five-mile range. ATIC ran the film for balloon experts in Minneapolis (consensus: pillow balloons, though none were traced to the area), weighed a gull reading it could not confirm, and in February 1953 recorded that releasing the film without comment was a "calculated" risk of another big "flap". By 1956 the Air Force position had settled on seagulls reflecting sunlight, while the file's own letters show the original film damaged by repeated showings, duplicated to preserve it, and misdescribed as 35mm in ATIC correspondence.

Metadata

Agency: Department of War
Release: 9/18/26
Incident: 7/2/52
Location: Tremonton, Utah
Type: PDF • .pdf
Length: 156 pages
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED on release; individual items originally marked RESTRICTED or CONFIDENTIAL with DOD DIR 5200.10 downgrade stamps
Programs: Project Blue Book, Crusade for Freedom pillow balloon releases (checked as a candidate source), Navy Skyhook balloon flights (Tillamook, Oregon, September 1952, obtained for comparison)
Tags: Tremonton Utah, 1952, Project Blue Book, daylight formation of 10 to 14 objects, single object reversing course, 16mm Kodachrome motion picture film, Bell & Howell Auto Master camera, oblate or disk shape (Navy reading), light sources versus reflections, seagull hypothesis, pillow balloon hypothesis, Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory Wright Field, Naval Photographic Interpretation Center, Douglas Aircraft photogrammetric analysis, Montana 1950 film co-analyzed, family of four witnesses

Key points

Newhouse's 11 August 1952 letter to the commanding officer of Hill Air Force Base enclosed one 50-foot roll of processed 16mm color film and fixed the particulars: about 7 miles north of Tremonton on U.S. Highway 30S, 1110 on Wednesday 2 July 1952, a hand-held B&H Automaster with a 3-inch telephoto lens at 16 frames per second, the first few feet at f:8 and the balance at f:16, roughly thirty feet exposed, and no reference point in the sky for estimating speed, size, altitude or distance.p.113
The 28th Air Division's 12 September 1952 message records that Newhouse, his wife, his 14-year-old son and his 12-year-old daughter were all interviewed at their Berkeley home, that none had sighted unidentified objects before, that Newhouse and his wife appeared extremely honest and reliable, and that he was a 1935 graduate of the Naval Photographic School claiming over 1,000 hours in the air on aerial-photography missions, enough for the interviewer to class him as an expert photographer.p.6
The Wright Field Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory's October 1952 answers found ten objects in every sequence but the last, judged their reflection brightness to exceed that of any natural diffusing reflector such as white birds, ruled out large translucent spherical balloons but not bright aluminum-surfaced aircraft, measured the single reversing object at about 2.1 degrees per second (plus or minus 15 percent), and concluded the photography would be extremely difficult to imitate for fraudulent purposes.p.100
On 24 October 1952 AFOIN-2A2 asked the Director of Naval Intelligence for an independent laboratory interpretation, calling the movies possibly the best documentary evidence yet obtained on unidentified flying objects, and noted that the detached Idaho mountain footage showed almost no camera motion from Newhouse's hand-holding, a deduction the Air Force then applied to the single-object sequence.p.124
The Navy Photographic Interpretation Center's 5 December 1952 progress report and 4 May 1953 final report read the images as light sources rather than reflections, found no bird known to be sufficiently actinic, excluded aircraft and balloons, described the objects as oblate or disk shaped and blue-white, and, on the stated assumptions of a steady camera, motion perpendicular to the optical axis and an arbitrary five-mile range, computed velocities of 378 to 2,457 mph from 55 measurements, sizes of 16 to 98 feet, and accelerations from 50 g to 965 g.

Verbatim

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.
p.113
The attached movies (see Incl. 1) are possibly the best documentary evidence yet obtained on unidentified flying objects.
p.124
They are reasonably certain that the brightness of the images on the film exceeds that of any bird.
p.37
It is the majority opinion of the group conducting this analysis that these images are light sources.
p.74
If aircraft is assumed to be close enough to permit velocities of present aircraft, they would be close enough for positive identification. If they are too far away for positive identification, then the velocity is too great for any aircraft as we know them.
p.131
It was brought out by two astronomers who heard a Navy briefing on the analysis of the movies that the method used to measure the brightness of each spot was wrong, therefore, the results of the entire study were wrong.
p.39

Most interesting

The file disagrees with itself about the camera: Newhouse's own statement names a hand-held Bell & Howell Automaster with a 3-inch telephoto lens (page 113), while NPIC's 18 March 1954 letter says the photography was taken with a Revere 16mm magazine-loading camera with an F1.9 lens (page 45).
Newhouse's description of the objects changes between accounts: the September 1952 interview has them about as long as they were wide, thin, identical in shape and light colored (page 5); the Douglas report of 1956 relays his description of gun-metal-colored objects shaped like two saucers, one inverted atop the other, subtending about the angle of a B-29 at 10,000 feet (page 83). His flying hours also grow, from over 1,000 in the 1952 interview (page 6) to some 2,200 in the 1956 report (page 83).
Hill Air Force Base reported weather balloons released at 0200 and 0800 on 2 July 1952, hours before the 11:10 sighting, with winds generally from the west at 10 to 12 knots (page 24); its 2100Z sounding that day showed a 70 degree F surface temperature and no inversion layer (page 62).
Douglas's R. M. L. Baker Jr. considered ballooning spiders, whose wind-borne silk streamers reflect sunlight as bright moving points, as a candidate, then doubted their reflections could be intense enough against a bright sky and noted that no streamers appear in the footage (page 87).
NPIC did its densitometry with a Welch Scientific Densichron Model 2150 at 22 times magnification on a duplicate of a copy, and flagged that the centers of the images might have burned out in duplication (page 73); the spectrophotometric analysis of the original that the Air Force requested never happened because NPIC never received the original (page 45). NPIC's December 1952 progress report ends with Conclusions: None and Recommendations: None (page 133).
The 1956 Eriksen memo describes the 1952 Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory conclusion as a strong possibility of seagulls, credited to identifiable seagulls in some frames (page 126); the laboratory's October 1952 answers in this same file say the brightness exceeded that of white birds against the sky and describe ten unknown aerial objects (page 100).
Filed with the case is an illustrated pamphlet reproducing Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe's 2 October 1953 telegram to Brig. Gen. Sory Smith, which asserts that a planned Air Force press showing was cancelled and asks where the original film went; the pamphlet gives the film length as about 40 feet, against the roughly 30 feet in Newhouse's own statement (pages 145 to 146).
A page of unsigned, undated handwritten notes lists a breakdown of 20% research (US), 20% unknown phenomena, 30% psycho. and 30% extraterrestrial next to a reference to OPNAV notice 3820; the file gives no context for who wrote it or what the percentages describe (page 111).

Cross-references

PDF1953 Film Lab Flags Utah And Montana ObjectsDepartment of War
PDFCPO Newhouse's Tremonton Film, Pillow-Balloon AnalysisDepartment of War
VIDNewhouse's Tremonton UFO Film, 1952Department of War
PDFSenator Sparkman's Alabama Meteorite Referral to ATICDepartment of War
PDFTwo UFO Films Sent to Naval Intelligence, 1952

Cited in

FINDINGWright Field's lab found brightness beyond any bird. By 1956, the answer was seagulls.War.gov September 18, 2026
TAKEAWAYTremonton: Four Readings, One Film, No Rangep.113War.gov September 18, 2026

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Common questions

What is Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952?: Project Blue Book's case file on the 2 July 1952 Tremonton, Utah color film shot by U.S. Navy Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse, tracing the Air Force and Navy laboratory analyses, the balloon and seagull inquiries, the 1953 release debate, and the paper trail of a deteriorating original.
What does Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 reveal?: Newhouse's 11 August 1952 letter to the commanding officer of Hill Air Force Base enclosed one 50-foot roll of processed 16mm color film and fixed the particulars: about 7 miles north of Tremonton on U.S. Highway 30S, 1110 on Wednesday 2 July 1952, a hand-held B&H Automaster with a 3-inch telephoto lens at 16 frames per second, the first few feet at f:8…
Which agency produced Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952?: Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 is a primary-source record from Department of War. Its original classification was UNCLASSIFIED on release; individual items originally marked RESTRICTED or CONFIDENTIAL with DOD DIR 5200.10 downgrade stamps.
When is Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 dated?: Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 is dated 1952-07-02 (incident); file items dated 11 August 1952 through 1 June 1956. It was disclosed 2026-09-18.
What programs and topics appear in Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952?: Newhouse Films Formation Over Tremonton, 1952 references Project Blue Book, Crusade for Freedom pillow balloon releases (checked as a candidate source), Navy Skyhook balloon flights (Tillamook, Oregon, September 1952, obtained for comparison), Tremonton Utah, daylight formation of 10 to 14 objects and single object reversing course.

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