Great Falls: Baseball manager films two silver disks at stadium
Two bright disk-shaped objects were observed and filmed by a baseball team manager and his secretary at a stadium in Great Falls, Montana. The witness captured the objects on 16mm film while they moved across the sky at high speed. The incident became a significant case in Project Blue Book and was later analyzed by the Condon Committee.
Background
On the morning of August 15, 1950 (though some uncertainty exists regarding the exact date), the general manager of a local baseball team was inspecting the field at a stadium in Great Falls, Montana. While checking wind direction near the grandstand, he noticed two bright stationary lights aligned with a nearby smokestack. After realizing these were not aircraft, he retrieved his 16mm movie camera from his vehicle approximately sixty feet away.
The witness used a Revere turret camera with telephoto lens to record the objects as they moved southwestward across the sky. He captured several seconds of footage showing two silver, disk-shaped lights estimated to be fifty feet in diameter. The objects displayed spinning motion and occasional wobbling before accelerating at high speed. The film became one of the earliest motion picture records of a UFO sighting.
Military investigators from Project Blue Book later examined the film and witness statements. The case generated significant documentation including Air Force reports from 1950 and 1953. Decades later, the Condon Committee reviewed the incident as part of its comprehensive study of unidentified aerial phenomena, noting discrepancies in the dating of the event through newspaper records.