Mariana UFO Incident

The Mariana UFO Incident occurred in August 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The event garnered national media attention, as the concept of UFOs and alien invasion was extremely popular amongst Americans at the time.

The Incident

At 11:25 am on August 5 or August 15, 1950, Nick Mariana, the general manager of the Great Falls "Electrics" minor-league baseball team, and his nineteen-year old secretary, Virginia Raunig, were inspecting the empty Legion Stadium baseball field before a game. The Electrics were a farm club of the Brooklyn Dodgers. A bright flash caught Mariana's eye and, according to his reports, he saw two bright silvery objects, rotating while flying over Great Falls at a speed he estimated to be two hundred to four hundred miles per hour. He believed that they were roughly fifty feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet apart.

Mariana ran to his car to retrieve his 16 mm movie camera and filmed the UFOs for sixteen seconds. The camera could film objects in color, but could not record sound. Ms. Raunig also witnessed the objects.

Local Reaction

The day after Mariana's sighting the "Great Falls Tribune", the city's daily newspaper, described his sighting and the film in an article which was picked up by many media outlets around the nation. For several weeks after the sighting Mariana showed his film to local community groups, such as the Central Roundtable Athletic Club. ("The UFO Book", p.397)

Air Force Investigation

After seeing the film, a reporter for the "Great Falls Tribune" called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and informed them of Mariana's sighting and film. U.S. Air Force Captain John P. Brynildsen interviewed Mariana at nearby Malmstrom AFB outside of Great Falls. When Mariana and Ms. Raunig both told him that they had seen two jet fighters pass over the baseball stadium shortly after the sighting, Brynildsen felt that perhaps the jets were the objects Mariana had seen and captured on film. ("UFO Book", p.398) With Mariana's permission, Capt. Brynildsen sent the film to Wright-Patterson AFB for analysis. He told a reporter in Great Falls that he had "picked up about eight feet of film from Mariana." However, in his message to Wright-Patterson he said that he was sending "approximately fifteen feet of moving picture film" to the base for study. According to UFO historian Jerome Clark, this discrepancy was never cleared up. ("UFO Book", p.398)

At Wright-Patterson AFB the film was briefly examined and determined to be the reflections from two F-94 jet fighters that were known to be flying over Great Falls at the time of Mariana's sighting. Lt. Col. Ray W. Taylor returned the film to Mariana with a cover letter stating that "our photoanalysts were unable to find anything identifiable of an unusual nature." ("UFO Book", p.398) However, according to Air Force officer Edward J. Ruppelt, who would become the supervisor of the Air Force's Project Blue Book investigation into the UFO mystery in 1951, "in 1950 there was no interest [by the Air Force] in the UFO, so after a quick viewing, Project Grudge had written them off as the reflections from two F-94 jet fighters that were in the area." ("UFO Book", p.398)

Controversy soon arose when Mariana claimed that the first thirty-five frames of his film - which he said most clearly showed the UFOs as rotating disks - were missing. People in the Great Falls area who had viewed Mariana's film supported his claims. ("UFO Book", p.398) They claimed that the missing frames clearly showed the UFOs as spinning, metallic disks with a "notch or band" along their outer edges. The Air Force personnel denied this accusation, and insisted that they had removed only a single frame of film which was damaged in the analysis. ("UFO Book", p.398) The controversy over the "missing frames" was never resolved.

Lawsuit

In January 1951, Bob Considine, a writer and UFO skeptic, wrote an article for "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Entitled "The Disgraceful Flying Saucer Hoax", it debunked the most famous UFO sightings to that date, including Mariana's sighting and film. Claiming that Considine's article implied that he was "a liar, prankster, half-wit, crank, publicity hound and fanatic", Mariana filed a lawsuit against Considine. The lawsuit was eventually dropped in September 1955. ("UFO Book", p.398)

Later Studies

In July 1952, Captain Ruppelt was able to convince Mariana to let the Air Force see the film again for a more detailed analysis. Mariana reluctantly agreed, but only after requiring the Air Force to sign an agreement that they would not remove any frames of the film. ("UFO Book", p.398) The film analysts at Wright-Patterson AFB concluded that the objects in Mariana's film were not "birds, balloons, or meteors". The original conclusion - that the objects were reflections from the F-94 jets - was also ruled out. According to Ruppelt in his memoirs: "The two jets weren't anywhere close to where the two UFOs had been...we studied each individual light and both appeared too steady to be reflections. We drew a blank on the Montana Movie, it was an unknown." ("UFO Book", p.398)

In January 1953 the Air Force and CIA convened a committee of prominent scientists to examine the "best" cases collected by Project Blue Book. Called the Robertson Panel, after its chairman, physicist H.P. Robertson, it briefly viewed Mariana's UFO film. The scientists (who according to Jerome Clark were "already skeptical" of UFOs) judged that the objects in the film were "reflections of aircraft known to have been in the area." ("UFO Book", p.399)

The Baker Analysis and Condon Report Analysis

In 1954 Greene-Rouse productions decided to film a documentary-movie about the UFO phenomenon. They asked Nick Mariana for the rights to use his film in the documentary, and Mariana agreed. To analyze the film, they hired Robert M.L. Baker, Jr., a scientist and engineer for the Douglas Aircraft company. Baker completed his analysis of Mariana's film in early 1956. He concluded that the explanation that the objects were simply reflections from the F-94 jets was "quite strained". In 1968 Baker would write in the "Journal of Astronautical Sciences" magazine that "on the basis of the photographic evidence, the images cannot be explained by any presently known natural phenomenon." ("UFO Book", p.399)

In 1966 the U.S. government established and funded a major study of the UFO phenomenon. Located at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and chaired by Dr. Edward U. Condon, a prominent physicist, the committee's researchers decided to "reinvestigate" Mariana's UFO film. The Condon Committee assigned two investigators to study the case: Dr. Roy Craig, a physicist who was generally skeptical of UFOs, and Dr. David Saunders, a psychologist who had long been interested in the Mariana UFO incident. Saunders and Craig soon added a new problem to the case - they were not sure whether the film had been taken on August 5 or August 15, 1950. After interviewing Mariana, the two researchers came to different conclusions about the film. Craig remained skeptical of Mariana's claims that 35 frames had been removed from the footage: "the comment I considered most significant, which Mr. Mariana's ex-secretary made to me during a telephone interview...when I pressed for information or beliefs regarding clipping of the film by the Air Force. The very hesitant comment was, 'What you have to remember in all this is...that Nick Mariana is a promoter'. That comment was adequate to close our conversation." ("UFOs: An Insider's View of the Official Quest for Evidence", p.230) However, David Saunders came to the conclusion that Mariana's film "was the one sighting of all time that did more than any other single case to convince me that there is something to the UFO problem." ("UFO Book", p.400)

Dr. William Hartmann, an astronomer for the University of Arizona, analyzed the Mariana UFO film for the Condon Report. His conclusion was that "the [Mariana] case remains unexplained...the images on the film are difficult to reconcile with aircraft or other known phenomena, although aircraft cannot be entirely ruled out." ("UFO Book", p.400)

The Film Today

Nearly six decades after it was filmed, what remains of the Mariana UFO film has become a popular piece of study amongst UFO buffs. It is still featured in documentaries, television programs, and shared online.

Although often-disputed, it remains one of the strongest cases supporting the existence of UFOs ever captured on film. Since the "Incident", over 100 other UFO sightings have been made in Great Falls, Montana, making it one of the most active locations for UFO sightings in North America.

ources

*"The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial", Jerome Clark, author. Visible Ink Press, 1998. pgs. 397-401
*"UFOs: An Insider's View of the Official Quest for Evidence", Dr. Roy Craig, author. University of North Texas Press, 1995.