Holloman cigar-shaped object film (1950)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | July 1950 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Disinformation & hoaxes (topic) |
| People | Cliff Booth, Coral Lorenzen |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 42 |
| Year | 1950 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1950 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
In 1950 Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico's Tularosa Basin was a major missile test range, where civilian contractors ran Askania cinetheodolite cameras to track launches. Air Force records show that range crews photographed unidentified objects that year, and an account preserved by the civilian Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) describes the filming of a metallic, cigar-shaped object in July 1950.[1][2]
The July 1950 account
According to APRO director Coral Lorenzen, writing in 1962, an electronics engineer, identified in APRO's files as Cliff Booth, was eating lunch at a contractor's building at Holloman on a hot July day in 1950 when the range telephone reported an unidentified object. He and an Askania operator went to a station about three miles north of range control and locked a manually operated theodolite onto it. They saw a metallic, cigar-shaped object with a straw-coloured, iridescent sheen, fins about a third of the way back and at least three dark, oblong ports. It hovered almost horizontally to the northeast, turned to show a round front view, then dropped abruptly in stages. When the operator left the controls to alert other range stations, they lost it.[1]
The film
The exposed film went to the base's data-reduction division. A week or so later a young first lieutenant questioned the men repeatedly, and one of them was shown just 14 frames: a blurred ellipsoid with a dark centre and no detail. A mathematician working for the range contractor Land-Air suggested the blur came from the object oscillating. The men said their superiors told them to forget the whole thing.[1]
Official records
A secret March 1952 Blue Book status report confirms that Holloman's camera crews had photographed unknown objects, including Askania films taken on 27 April 1950, when only one station was tracking, and 29 May 1950, when two stations tracked two different objects; neither produced usable data. A Holloman report of 25 July 1951 described an organised camera watch. The July 1950 case is not in the Blue Book files, the account is missing from APRO's microfilmed records apart from its illustration, and the original films have never been released.[1][2][3]
Context
Holloman's crews were among several groups watching for unusual objects over New Mexico's ranges in 1950, at the same time as the Air Force's Project Twinkle camera watch for the "green fireballs".[4]
People and topics
- Holloman Air Force Base — An Air Force base next to White Sands.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- APRO — A civilian UFO research group founded by Coral and Jim Lorenzen in 1952.
- Cliff Booth — Engineer named in an APRO account of a cigar-shaped object filmed at Holloman AFB in 1950.
- Coral Lorenzen — Co-founder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).
- Project Blue Book — The Air Force's public UFO investigation from 1952 until its closure in December 1969.
On the Timeline
- RAND memorandum RM-365 (14 April 1950) — An Air Force-funded RAND paper studies using superstition and the paranormal for psychological warfare.
- Proposal to collect UFO home movies (1950) (6 July 1950) — An Air Force officer wants to quietly collect UAP home movies from the public with FBI help.
See every 1950 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "APRO's Holloman AFB 1950 case", Project 1947 · mail.project1947.com · archived copy
- "Holloman AFB report EHO-15", Project 1947 · project1947.com · archived copy
- Blue Book file: Holloman AFB, New Mexico, May 1950, UFO Scans · ufoscans.com · archived copy
- Project Twinkle final report (27 Nov 1951), Project 1947 · mail.project1947.com · archived copy
- project1947.com · project1947.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Holloman Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 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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