Historical Film of Reported UFOs, Utah, July 2, 1952 — Department of War Video

Incident Overview

On July 2, 1952, in Tremonton, Utah, the Department of War preserved a motion-picture film that was declassified and published on September 18, 2026 as part of the sixth tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).

What the government released

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. 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. The film later became one of the visual cases reviewed by Project Blue Book, the 1952–1969 U.S. Air Force program that investigated the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The film’s limited detail and lack of fixed reference points prevented a conclusive resolution. From the 55-second mark onward, the film transitions to unrelated footage appearing to show a demonstration of sewing equipment. 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. 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.

Related records

This film was released with the Navy Photographic Interpretation Center film analysis, Project Blue Book File on Tremonton Film, Utah, Project Blue Book Photo File Relating to Tremonton Film, Utah, Final Personnel Record for Newhouse, Delbert C., U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force Flying Discs File, the paperwork its investigation generated, so the footage and the official reasoning about it can be read side by side.

The case in this archive

This record is a primary source for the Tremonton film of 1952, written up here at length from the contemporary record. The file and the case history are worth reading against each other: the document is narrower and more cautious than the account that grew up around it, which is usually the point.

Status of the case

This is an archival record, and it should be read as one. It records what a particular office believed, or was willing to commit to paper, on the day it was written — not a present-day finding. The mid-century investigations worked from witness testimony, sparse instrumentation, and the strategic anxieties of the early Cold War, and the great majority of the sightings they catalogued were eventually attributed to aircraft, balloons, astronomical objects, and misidentification. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made no modern determination about the incidents described here, and the record’s release is not an endorsement of the conclusions inside it. Its value is as evidence of how the United States government investigated the question, and of what it chose to keep.

Sources

• DVIDS asset 1023402
• Department of War UFO Disclosure Portal
• AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office)
• PURSUE record identifier: DOW-UAP-PR159 (Release 06, September 18, 2026)