The Montana UFO Film (Great Falls)

Briefing

At approximately 11:25 a.m. on the fifteenth of August 1950, in Great Falls, Montana, near the local baseball stadium and roughly three miles from what was then Great Falls AFB, Nick Mariana — general manager of the city’s minor-league baseball team — filmed two bright silvery objects crossing the sky [1]. The resulting sixteen seconds of 16mm colour film became one of the most examined pieces of photographic evidence in the early UFO record, passing through the US Air Force, the 1953 Robertson Panel and the University of Colorado study, which catalogued it as Case 47 [1][5].

Sequence of events

The fifteenth of August 1950

• Two bright silvery objects were seen in the sky over Great Falls. The Condon study notes the date itself was somewhat uncertain; the fifth of August also appears in the record [1].
• Mariana stated that he retrieved a 16mm movie camera from his car and filmed the objects for about sixteen seconds before they moved off [1][3].
• His nineteen-year-old secretary was present as a second witness. The Condon Report identifies her only as “Witness II”, described as “fairly reliable”; secondary accounts name her as Virginia Raunig [1][3].
• Mariana reported that, after filming, two F-94 jet aircraft came in to land at the nearby airbase behind him — a detail later used to argue that the filmed objects were not those jets [1][3].

The official examinations, 1950–1968

• c. 1950 — the Air Force’s initial assessment at Wright-Patterson held that the objects were reflections from two F-94 jet fighters known to be in the area [5][3].
• c. 1952 — a later re-examination set aside the reflection hypothesis and reclassified the objects as “unknown” [5][3].
• January 1953 — the CIA/Air Force Robertson Panel reviewed the film among Blue Book’s best cases and returned to the aircraft-reflection explanation [5][3].
• Mid-1950s — Dr Robert M.L. Baker, Jr., a scientist associated with Douglas Aircraft, performed a photogrammetric analysis in connection with a documentary and concluded the images were not adequately explained by known aircraft or bird phenomena [3][5].
• 1968 — the University of Colorado study published Hartmann’s analysis as Case 47 [1][2].

Documentary record

The Condon Report, Case 47 (Montana) is the fullest official analysis this archive has verified directly. It records the date, time and location, describes the two witnesses — “Witness I”, the baseball team’s general manager, a Montana State University journalism graduate and Army Air Forces veteran considered reliable, and “Witness II”, his secretary — and sets out the photographic analysis by the University of Arizona astronomer Dr William K. Hartmann [1]. Hartmann concluded that while aircraft remained the principal working hypothesis, “it strains credibility to suppose that these were airplanes”, though “the possibility nonetheless cannot be entirely ruled out”. Among his arguments: it is very unlikely that two aircraft could maintain such constant reflections across the full arc filmed and the longer period observed visually [1][2].

The film itself is reported to run to roughly 315 frames of 16mm daylight Kodachrome, shot on a Revere turret-type camera; copies are held by the US National Archives, and surviving footage was used in a mid-1950s United Artists / Greene-Rouse documentary titled U.F.O. [4][5]. The Project Blue Book and Robertson Panel findings summarised above are drawn from secondary repositories; this archive did not fetch the underlying Blue Book file pages [5][3].

The objects were described as silvery and disc-like, placing this file within the archive’s record of disc and saucer sightings rather than the later structured-craft reports such as the Tic Tac encounters.

Open questions

1. The primary Condon text does not definitively settle the sighting date — the fifteenth or the fifth of August 1950 [1].
2. No official document consulted here conclusively identifies the objects. The F-94 reflection explanation is asserted and retracted across sources rather than proven in the primary record [1][5].
3. Whether frames were removed from the returned film remains unresolved. Mariana insisted that about thirty opening frames — some accounts say thirty-five — were gone, and that they had shown the discs larger and clearer, with a notch or band indicating that they rotated in unison. The Air Force denied removing footage and stated the film was returned intact, or that only a single damaged frame was at issue; Condon notes a claim that permission was sought only to remove that one frame [1][3].
4. The exact time of day varies by source, from approximately 11:25 to 11:30 a.m. [1][3].
5. Baker’s mid-1950s analysis is reported to have placed the objects at roughly two miles’ distance, arguing that at that range jet interceptors should have been recognisable as aircraft. This archive has not verified the underlying working [3].
6. The frame count of 315 is widely repeated but appears only in secondary case-file summaries; it could not be traced to a primary document [4]. The particulars of the 1951 Mariana v. Considine lawsuit, said to have been filed and then dropped in 1955, are likewise recorded only in secondary summaries [5].

Status

This file is CONFIDENTIAL — admitted to the archive on the strength of a US government–commissioned scientific study, the Condon Report’s Case 47, which provides the date, witness descriptions, film specifications and photographic analysis [1][2]. The footage is documented; what it shows is not. The Air Force’s aircraft-reflection explanation, the c. 1952 “unknown” reclassification and the Robertson Panel’s return to the reflection hypothesis are all recorded here from secondary compilations rather than fetched primary files, and are flagged accordingly [5][3]. Later commentators differ on how to read Condon’s disposition — some characterise it as a formal “identified” finding retaining substantial analytical doubt, while Baker held the film to be genuinely unidentifiable. The sources conflict and this archive does not adjudicate between them.

References

1. Condon Report, Case 47: Montana (Great Falls / Mariana Film) — Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (Condon Committee), University of Colorado, 1968; reproduced by NCAS. US government–commissioned study, public domain.
2. The Great Falls, Montana UFO Color Film — Condon Report Case 47 (reproduction) — ufologie.patrickgross.org. Reproduction of the Condon Case 47 text; licence unverified.
3. The Great Falls (Montana) UFO Film — NICAP. Secondary case compilation; licence unverified.
4. The Great Falls, Montana UFO Film — Black Vault Case Files — The Black Vault case files, FOIA repository.
5. Mariana UFO film — Wikipedia, CC-licensed. Secondary summary of the Blue Book, Robertson Panel and lawsuit material.