The Tremonton film: Project Blue Book's most-analysed footage, released from the National Archives with its case file

Delbert C. Newhouse was driving with his family near Tremonton, in Box Elder County, Utah, on 2 July 1952 when he stopped to film a group of bright objects overhead with a hand-held Bell & Howell Auto Master loaded with a 50-foot roll of 16mm Kodachrome. He reported observing 12 to 14 reflective objects and exposed roughly 30 feet of film on them, using the remainder later that day on mountain scenery in Idaho. He submitted the footage to the U.S. Air Force shortly afterwards, and it became one of the visual cases reviewed by Project Blue Book, the Air Force's 1952–1969 investigation into the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects.

The Blue Book file (DOW-UAP-D102) records the Air Force's assessment of the principal witness as honest and reliable, and as an expert with more than 1,000 hours of aerial-photography experience — a characterisation supported by his final Navy personnel record (D104), which documents his career as a Photographer's Mate and his departure from service as a Chief Warrant Officer 4, then the highest warrant grade. The file also reflects an Air Force assessment that evolved over several years. Early documentation weighed sunlight reflecting from birds or balloons and a mirage effect without reaching a conclusion; later assessments became more confident that the objects were seabirds reflecting sunlight, citing identifiable seabirds and comparable films showing seabirds as bright points of light under similar conditions. Throughout, the film's limited detail and lack of fixed reference points prevented any reliable determination of distance, size, altitude or linear speed.

The photo file (D103) records a different hypothesis. In December 1952 Blue Book investigators contacted General Mills, then the only known manufacturer of 'pillow balloons,' and in late December Blue Book personnel, balloon specialists and General Mills representatives reviewed the footage together. The consensus was that the objects closely resembled pillow balloons in flight and behaved consistently with that explanation — with one General Mills representative less convinced, noting the objects appeared somewhat too bright and seemed to maneuver too rapidly. The reviewers also questioned the earlier angular-velocity calculations that had suggested high speed, since those depended on the unverified assumption that Newhouse had held the camera still. Subsequent efforts to identify a pillow-balloon release in the Tremonton area were unsuccessful. The Air Force Director of Intelligence's 'Flying Discs' file for September–December 1952 (D105) carries the case at pages 26–36 amid the correspondence, reporting forms and routing material of the period.

The film itself (DOW-UAP-PR159) is a National Archives digitization of a 16mm print, 70 seconds long. AARO's comment on the case file resolves a long-standing confusion in the record: several documents describe a 35mm film, but the contemporaneous submission paperwork identifies the original as 16mm Kodachrome, from which 35mm positive and negative blow-ups were later produced; the original was also duplicated for preservation because of its deteriorating condition. From the 55-second mark the digitized print cuts to unrelated footage of a sewing-equipment demonstration, which the Department says suggests a composite or reused print, though the record does not establish how or when the materials were combined. The Idaho mountain scenery Newhouse described is not preserved in this copy. The Navy's own 1953 photographic analysis of the Tremonton and Montana films (DOW-UAP-D098) was published in PURSUE Release 05.