Mariana UFO film
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🛸 Case
Contents 5
| Type | Case |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Mariana film, Montana movie, Nick Mariana |
The Mariana UFO film, also called the Montana movie, is a 16-millimetre colour film shot on 15 August 1950 by Nick Mariana, general manager of the minor-league baseball team in Great Falls, Montana. It shows two bright objects crossing the sky and is one of the earliest films of what came to be called UFOs. Air Force and independent studies over two decades reached conflicting conclusions.[1][2]
The sighting
At about 11:30 a.m. Mariana and his 19-year-old secretary, Virginia Raunig, were at the empty Legion Stadium when he saw two bright, silvery objects moving over the city. He fetched his camera from his car and filmed them for about 16 seconds.[1] The local Great Falls Evening Leader reported the story the same day, joking that the objects might be home-run baseballs.[3] At one point in the film the objects pass behind a water tower, which later gave analysts a fixed reference point.[2]
Air Force investigations
An Air Force officer took the film to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where Project Grudge quickly decided the objects were sun reflections from two F-94 jets known to be in the area.[1][2] When the film came back, Mariana said that about 35 frames from the start, which he claimed showed the objects most clearly as spinning discs, were missing. The Air Force said it had removed only one damaged frame.[1]
In 1952 Edward Ruppelt, head of Project Blue Book, reopened the case. The photo lab found the objects too fast to be birds, too slow to be meteors and moving against the wind, so they were not balloons. Mariana and Raunig had said they saw the two jets in another part of the sky shortly after the objects vanished, and the analysts did not find the jet explanation convincing; Ruppelt recorded the film as unknown.[1][2] In January 1953, however, the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel concluded that the objects were reflections from aircraft known to be in the area.[1]
Later studies
Robert M. L. Baker Jr., an engineer at Douglas Aircraft, analysed the film for a 1956 documentary and found the jet explanation "quite strained". In 1968 he told a congressional hearing that neither birds nor aircraft reflections seemed to fit.[1] For the University of Colorado's Condon Committee, astronomer William Hartmann concluded that aircraft remained the main working hypothesis but that this strained credibility and could not be fully confirmed. The committee's two investigators disagreed: psychologist David Saunders was impressed by the film, while physicist Roy Craig remained sceptical of Mariana's account of missing frames.[1]
Legacy
Copies of the film are held in the US National Archives.[1][3] In 2008 the Great Falls baseball team was renamed the Great Falls Voyagers in honour of the sighting.[1]
References
- Mariana UFO film — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956), Project Gutenberg · gutenberg.org · archived copy
- "Mariana UFO Incident: Great Falls' Visiting Voyagers", The History Museum, Great Falls · greatfallshistorymuseum.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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