The Montana Incident
In August 1950 Nick Mariana then the general manager of the Great Falls “Selectrics” baseball team, with his secretary reported seeing two disc-shaped objects in the daytime which he was able to capture as small white dots on 16-mm colour movie film. The case was carried in the Condon Report as unexplained. The film was taken from the vacant Legion Ball Park in Great Falls, Montana; on the fifteenth of August no sceptics of debunkers have yet been able to prove this can be explained. I find the video amazing it’s a very good video especially for the time in which it was taken.
Mariana was inspecting the field before a game and with him was his secretary the nineteen-year-old Virginia Raunig. It was 11:25am when a bright flash of light caught his eye and Mariana noticed two bright, silver objects that appeared to be rotating as they flew over Great Falls. He estimated that the objects speed was between 200 and 400 miles per hour. He called his secretary to get his 16-mm movie camera, which he normally kept in the car. Marina was then able to film two circular UFO’s as they passed over a building behind a water tower. The objects were filmed for only 10 seconds by the film is amazing never the less. Mariana was excited about the event and called the local paper to report it such a reaction could be significant hoaxers would usually wait for their film to be returned before they tell anyone. Processing of Mariana’s film took over a week it was probably early September before he saw the results. When Mariana showed the films one man suggested he contact the US Air Force to analyse the footage the man then wrote a letter to the Wright-Patterson Air Force base on Mariana’s behalf.
In October the AF sent an officer from Maelstrom AFB to interview Mariana and obtain his footage of the strange objects. Easy analysis of the film proved nothing and the air force officers said the images were caused by two jet interceptors that were in the area at the time and that sunlight reflected from the fuselages washed out the other detail and they explained that is why Mariana did not know what they were.
Then in 1952 the AF Officers at Wright-Patterson contacted Mariana and asked for the film again and Mariana agreed and sent the film. The AF investigators found records of two F-94 fighters that had landed in Melstrom AFB about the time that the UFO’s were seen. As concrete as this may sound Mariana claimed that both him and his secretary saw some jets in another part of the sky just after seeing the UFO’s this rules out the jet explanation that is of course if the two witnesses are lying which I very much doubt. The AF labelled the case as a possible Air Craft and then left it at that. But when the film was returned he was a bit upset the air force had removed the first thirty frames from the film and according to Mariana those frames showed larger images of the two objects. Mariana then demanded that the AF return the first frames.
However the AF denied removing anything from the film all the project blue book records show is that permission was asked to remove one frame only because the sprockets were damaged but otherwise the movie was said to be intact. Mariana on the other hand, claimed he had a letter concerning the removal of thirty frames, which he unfortunately could not produce.
In 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency organized the Robertson Panel which examined the Mariana film along with other selected cases. And, as before the aircraft solution was adopted at the time however the possible was dropped from the file and it was marked simply as aircraft. The case was no closed in 1955 Dr. Robert M. L Baker, then employed by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation conducted his own detailed analysis of the film. His conclusion was that the imaged could not be explained by presently known natural phenomena but baker went further than just looking at the film he ran a series of tests including his own films of aircraft at varying distances. At twelve miles using a camera similar to the one Mariana had Baker filmed a DC-3 so that is duplicated the Montana film. Those results however, were not completely satisfactory. Studying the Mariana film, Baker had determined the objects were two miles from the camera at that range the jet interceptors should have been clearly identifiable as aircraft. As the range increased so did the rate of speed, until at ten miles, the objects had to be moving at 600 miles per hour, and at twelve miles, they were going faster than jets could fly in 1950. Baker’s duplicate needed a DC-3 at twelve miles, but a DC-3 did not have half the needed speed. Another problem was the short time that the DC-3 duplicated the objects in Mariana’s film. The plane was only masked by the reflections for a short time.
The film remained locked until the University of Colorado’s UFO project, headed by Dr. Edward U. Cpmdpm was organized in 1966. The film was studied again, Baker’s files were examined, Mariana was re-interviewed, and the complete AF file was seen. The Condon Investigators added a new problem to the case. They were not sure whether the film was actually taken on August 5th or August 15th. If it was August 5th, the aircraft explanation was unlikely. Further checking uncovered the fact that the August 15th date was not possible if Mariana was in the ball park to inspect the filed before the game. Newspaper records showed that there were no home games for the Great Falls team between August 9th and August 18th.
AF Records indicated that Mariana said he had seen the jets after the UFO’s disappeared. That would tend to fix the date as August 15th unless he was referring to planes other than the two F-94 fighters. The principal photoanlyst of this case for the Condon Committee, University of Arizona astronomer William. K Hartmann, summed up his report as follows –
"Assuming that 15 August was the correct date, Air Force investigators found that there were two F-94 jets in the vicinity and that they landed only minutes after the sighting, which could well have put them in circling path around Malstrom AFB, only three miles ESE. of the base ball park. However, Witness I [Mariana] reported seeing two planes coming in for a landing behind him immediately following the filming, thereby accounting for those aircraft."
This footage has not been proven as being as a space craft neither something we can explain this remains a UFO.
Interesting Video and very historic encounter the full video can be viewed at the following link –
http://www.astrosurf.com/lunascan/montana.mpg
Written by Sam Willey