1950.05.11
[Click images to clarify and enlarge]
19.45
The Trent photographs
UFO sightings occurred frequently in the McMinnville area. Mr and Mrs Paul Trent had previously observed a number of them from their small farm, which stood near the Salmon River Highway about ten miles (fifteen km) southwest of town…
Mrs Trent said she was outside feeding her rabbits at about 7.45 pm and saw a very bright, “almost silvery” object silently “sort of gliding” toward the farm. She called to her husband, who was inside the house. He didn’t answer, so she ran in to get him, and to fetch a camera. She took two shots before the UFO rapidly accelerated away to the northwest. (In another account, Mrs Trent said they were both outside when the UFO appeared, and her husband took the pictures.)
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
It resembled, [Paul Trent] said later, “a good-size parachute canopy without the strings, only silvery-bright mixed with bronze,” and he assumed it was some sort of army secret weapon.
(Borderlands, Dash)
The images were clear and sharp, with plenty of foreground detail… They… show a large, distant object of unexplained origin that displays the effect of dust in the intervening air.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
The Trents waited until the film was finished before having it processed, at first showed the pictures only to friends, and took little care of the negatives. A local banker learned of the pictures and alerted the local newspaper. The McMinnville Telephone Register printed them on 8 June 1950.
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
The photographs… were later featured in Life magazine, causing something of a national sensation. At the time they were some of the best flying saucer photographs available.
(UFOs: The Definitive Casebook, Spencer)
The Trents did not seek to use [the photos] to make money.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
The Trents later claimed that they were visited by two “FBI men” some weeks afterward, but the FBI has denied any involvement or interest in the case.
Astronomer William Hartmann analyzed the shots for the Condon Committee and calculated by photometry that the “craft” was about 0.8 miles (1.3 km) from the camera in the first shot. He concluded they were probably genuine.
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
Hartmann… acknowledged that these photographs were the only ones that the committee had not dismissed (the Condon Committee was notorious for its unscientific, dismissive attitude towards the UFO phenomenon). He stated that the photographs were consistent with the witness’s testimony…
(UFOs: The Definitive Casebook, Spencer)
The Condon Report conclusion to Case #46, McMinville, Oregon: “This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical, appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.”
(Beyond Earth, Blum and Blum)
[Robert] Sheaffer speculated that the UFO was a model suspended on a string from an overhead power line that is clearly visible in the original pictures. Hartmann accepted his argument.
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
In the 1970s, Dr Bruce Maccabee repeated both [Hartmann’s and Sheaffer’s] sets of tests and concluded there was no time lag between the shots, while the object was over 0.6 miles (one km) distant, with a diameter of approximately 100 feet (30 metres).
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
[Click images to clarify and enlarge]
Ground Saucer Watch digitally “interrogated” the original negatives, found no trace of any string from which a model might have been suspended, and calculated that the object was 65 – 100 feet (20 – 30 metres) in diameter.
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
An investigation by a group called Ground Saucer Watch concluded that the object was… some distance from the camera.
(Borderlands, Dash)
This case… is one of the few to have been tested exhaustively by computer enhancement methods developed out of the NASA space programme. It passed without reservation.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
In the four decades since the photographs were taken there have been many more sophisticated analysis techniques employed to study the photographs such as “edge enhancement” (which would show any cut-outs photographed through glass, or expose any supporting wires or struts for example) and colour-contouring. None have yet suggested that the photographs were faked, and the indications suggest that some large object flew over the Trents’ farm that day.
(UFOs: The Definitive Casebook, Spencer)
A computer-enhanced version of the other Trent photograph. The color-coding technique makes details of light and shade in the picture easier to read, and here shows the object has a flat bottom.