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Case · C-107

Great Falls 1950: two lights filmed by the baseball team manager

Baseball stadium (Legion Stadium), Great Falls, Montana · United States · Aug 15, 1950

In flight Civilian witnesses Video

Disputed explanation

What happened
On August 15, 1950, Nicholas Mariana, general manager of the Great Falls baseball team, and his secretary saw two white lights slowly cross the sky near the stadium; Mariana filmed them for about 16 seconds with a 16 mm color movie camera. The film, re-examined by the Air Force in 1952, was shown in January 1953 to the Robertson panel together with the Tremonton one. Mariana maintained that the first frames were missing from the returned film, whereas according to the Air Force a single damaged frame had been removed; there is also uncertainty about the date (August 5 or 15).
Proposed explanation
In 1950 Project Grudge attributed the lights to sun reflections on two F-94 fighters in the area. In 1952 Ruppelt and the Air Force photographic laboratory rejected this explanation and considered the case unknown (“unknown”); in 1953, however, the Robertson panel strongly suspected that they were reflections from aircraft present in the area, and an Air Force memo of June 1956, kept in the Blue Book case file, reiterated that they were most probably the two F-94s. The Condon report (1968) instead classified it among the unidentified cases after analysis: the images are difficult to reconcile with aircraft or other known phenomena, although aircraft cannot be entirely ruled out.
Official investigation
U.S. Air Force (Project Grudge and Project Blue Book); Robertson Panel convened by the CIA (1953); University of Colorado (Condon Report, case 47)
Words of the document
The case remains unexplained.

Official documents

  1. Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (rapporto Condon), sezione IV, caso 47: Great Falls Movie Film · University of Colorado for the U.S. Air Force (full text, NCAS copy) · 1968
  2. Report of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects (panel Robertson, CIA-UAP-002) · CIA – Office of Scientific Intelligence (released by PURSUE in 2026, The Black Vault copy) · Jan 17, 1953
  3. Project Blue Book – Mariana UFO Incident, Great Falls, Montana, 1950 (fascicolo del caso, con la scheda Project 10073 e il promemoria del 1° giugno 1956) · U.S. Air Force – Project Blue Book (The Black Vault copy, from NARA) · 1950

Sources

  1. Wikipedia – Mariana UFO film (other)
  2. Edward J. Ruppelt, “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” (1956), chapter on the Great Falls and Tremonton films (text reproduced by Patrick Gross) (book)

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