The
McMinnville UFO photographs were taken on a farm
near McMinnville,
Oregon
in 1950. The photos were reprinted in
LIFE magazine and in newspapers across
the nation, and are often considered to be among the most famous
ever taken of a
UFO. The photos remain
controversial, with many UFO researchers claiming they show a
genuine, unidentified object in the sky, while many UFO skeptics
claim that the photos are a
hoax.
The incident
At 7:30 pm on May 11, 1950 Evelyn Trent was walking back to her
farmhouse after feeding rabbits on her farm. Mrs. Trent and her
husband Paul lived on a farm approximately nine miles from
McMinnville. (Clark, p. 372) Before reaching the house she spotted
a "slow-moving, metallic disk-shaped object heading in her
direction from the northeast." (Clark, 372) She yelled for her
husband, who was inside the house, and he came out and also saw the
object. After a short time he went back inside the house to obtain
a camera. He managed to take two photos of the object before it
sped away to the west; Paul Trent's father also briefly viewed the
object before it flew away. (Clark, 372)
Publicity and investigation
It took some time for Paul Trent to have the film developed, and he
apparently sought no publicity immediately following the incident.
(Clark, 373) When he mentioned the incident to his banker, Frank
Wortmann, the banker was intrigued enough to display the photos
from his bank window in McMinnville. (Clark, 373) Shortly
afterwards Bill Powell, a local reporter, convinced Mr. Trent to
loan him the negatives. Powell examined the negatives and found no
evidence that they were tampered with or faked. (Clark, 373) On
June 9, 1950 Powell's story of the incident - accompanied by the
two photos - was published in the local McMinnville newspaper. The
story and photos were subsequently picked up by the
International News Service (INS)
and sent to other newspapers around the nation, thus giving them
wide publicity. (Clark, 373)
LIFE
magazine published the photos in July 1950. The Trents had been
promised that the negatives would be returned to them; however,
they were not returned -
LIFE magazine
told the Trents that it had misplaced the negatives. (Clark,
373)
In 1967 the negatives were found in the files of the
United Press International (UPI),
a news service which had merged with INS years earlier.
(Clark,
374) The negatives were then loaned to William Hartmann, an
astronomer who was working as an
investigator for the Condon
Committee, a government-funded UFO research project based at
the University of Colorado at
Boulder
. (Clark, 374) The Trents were not
immediately informed that their "lost" negatives had been found.
Hartmann interviewed the Trents and was impressed by their
sincerity; the Trents never received any money for their photos,
and he could find no evidence that they had sought any fame or
fortune from them. (Clark, 375) In Hartmann's analysis, he wrote to
the Condon Committee that "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." (Clark, 375)
After Hartmann concluded his investigation he returned the
negatives to UPI, which then informed the Trents about them. In
1970 the Trents asked Philip Bladine, the editor of the
McMinnville Register, for the negatives; the Trents noted
that they had never been paid for the negatives and thus wanted
them back. (Clark, 374) Bladine asked UPI to return the negatives,
which it did. However, for some reason Bladine never told the
Trents that the negatives had been returned. (Clark, 374) In 1975
the negatives were found in the files of the
Register by
Dr.
Bruce Maccabee, an optical
physicist for the U.S. Navy and a
ufologist. Maccabee did his own extensive analysis
of the negatives and concluded that they were not hoaxed and showed
a "real, physical object" in the sky above the Trent's farm.
(Clark, 373) He then ensured that the negatives were finally
returned to the Trents.
In the 1980s two UFO skeptics,
Philip
Klass and
Robert Sheaffer, would
argue that the photos were faked, and that the entire event was a
hoax. Their primary argument was that shadows
on a garage in the left-hand side of the photos proved that the
photos were taken in the morning rather than in the early evening,
as the Trents had claimed. Klass and Sheaffer argued that since the
Trents had apparently lied about the time the photos were taken,
their entire story was thus suspect. (Clark, 375) They believed
that the Trents had suspended the "UFO" from power lines visible at
the top of the photos; and that the object may have been the
detached rear-view mirror of a vehicle. When Sheaffer sent his
studies on the case to William Hartmann, Hartmann withdrew the
positive assessment of the case he had sent to the Condon
Committee. However, Dr. Maccabee offered a rebuttal to the
Klass-Sheaffer theory by arguing that cloud conditions in the
McMinnville area on the evening of the sighting could have caused
the shadows, and that a close analysis of the UFO indicated that it
was not suspended from the power lines and was in fact located some
distance above the Trent's farm; thus, in his opinion, the
Klass-Sheaffer theory was flawed. (Clark, 375)
Aftermath
Today the Trent/McMinnville photographs remain among the
best-publicized in UFO history; and are among the most-discussed
and debated. To many ufologists, the two photos rate as being among
the most reliable and persuasive in arguing for the existence of
UFOs as a "real", physical phenomenon. To many skeptics, however,
the photos are likely hoaxes and/or fakes. Evelyn Trent died in
1997 and Paul Trent in 1998; they both insisted to their deaths
that their sighting, and the photos, were genuine.
The interest
surrounding the Trent UFO photos led to an annual "UFO Festival"
being established in McMinnville; it is now the largest such
gathering in the Pacific
Northwest, and is the second-largest UFO "festival" in the
nation after the one held in Roswell, New Mexico
.
Source
- The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial.
Jerome Clark, author. Visible Ink
Press, 1998. Pgs. 372-375
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