1950 Great Falls Montana ufo sighting, never explained.

Came across this oldie but goodie sighting from 1950 in Great Falls Montana. Keep your eyes on the center of the screen as you watch two circular ufo move from right to left and then it looks like they disappear. This is called the Nick Mariana sighting and has never been explained.

First and foremost is the Mariana UFO incident from August 1950 when Nicolas Mariana filmed 16 mm color movies of two UFOs that appeared as shiny, circular craft. It has withstood years of research conducted by a slew of investigators, including the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the Air Force, and Dr. Robert M. L. Baker, as well as others, without being debunked, and is believed to be one of the strongest cases supporting the existence of unidentified flying objects and remains unexplained.

Thanks for posting this. Hadn't seen it before.

I did find this article

www.outerplaces.com...

Which casts some doubts about the veracity of the film. The following I found particularly interesting

Mariana had claimed the footage was shot on the morning of August 15th, but documents from Craig's investigation showed that the Physicist had done some digging and revealed that not only were the Electrics not scheduled to play at home that day, but they weren't even scheduled to play in the state and were instead playing 500 miles away at Twin Falls, Idaho. 

Hardly definitive proof of a hoax but does bring his testimony into question nonetheless.

I like the older I UFO films as it was much harder to fake footage. People had to rely on physically faking evidence as opposed to more modern day methods (CGI etc.), which made it a LOT harder to produce something that appeared credible.

To be honest though, as much as I'd love to see some real proof, we only ever have shaky footage, questionable stories, circumstantial evidence and unverified claims.

I feel like we've entered an age now where we will never really be able to hold up video footage as definite proof due to the enormous advances in the technology available to create footage out of nothing at all. But, if we can't trust film or photos, what does that leave us with?

I don't think anything short of an explicit, public confirmation of the existence of UFO's by the govt. would do... and even then I'd be inclined to think it was a ruse. Haha...

Thanks for sharing anyway

as is typical of anything ufo, there will always be some doubt and skeptics will try to take everything and anything apart, but the bottom line for this sighting is that it has never been explained.

a reply to: data5091

Well, as per the linked article:

After much cajoling, Mariana agreed to hand over the footage to Brynildsen and an official investigation was soon underway. It would eventually transpire that this investigation was somewhat of an anticlimax. Mariana was given a straightforward response by investigators who said his film showed nothing of note and that the objects were simply reflections of the aforementioned fighter jets. 

So, it has been explained, just not to your satisfaction (or others, as the article would indicate).
I wasn't trying to take anything apart. I was just offering another source and perspective regards this film

The last paragraph of the article:

But is calling Mariana's character into question enough to throw this case out? The fact is, official analysis of the footage has not been able to comprehensively conclude what exactly the objects are. This fact alone makes the Mariana UFO incident such a compelling story, a story that will likely be debated for years to come.

originally posted by: Indrasweb
Hardly definitive proof of a hoax but does bring his testimony into question nonetheless.

He was a promoter according to his ex-secretary, which further raises questions about him.

Mariana UFO incident

'What you have to remember in all this is... that Nick Mariana is a promoter'

There were some UFO eyewitnesses that nobody doubted, like Kenneth Arnold and Lonnie Zamora, but Nick Mariana was not such a witness.

As for Lonnie Zamora, he stayed in Socorro, had a good full career as a police officer, and was buried there in town when he died in 2009. Not a word written about him by anyone cast the slightest doubt on his sincerity, his honesty, or the integrity with which he conducted himself in all the official interviews that were thrust upon him.

That's the kind of witness we would prefer, but unfortunately I don't think we can say anything like that about Nick Mariana, and some researchers of this case came to the same conclusion.

I don't know if it was two F-94s but I wouldn't rule it out, and I don't know why Baker ignored his own test photograph showing that possibility:

Can you fool all the UFOlogists all of the time?

Could it have been F-94s? Dr. Baker seemed to indicate that there was a probability but ignored one of his own test shots. The key may be Dr. Craig's interview with the only other witness present. A possible scenario is that Mariana filmed the event not realizing what he was recording. He then presented the film as UFOs. When it was suggested the F-94s were the cause, he could only take two possible routes (assuming F-94s were the source). The first would be to "brass it out" and figure that nobody would doubt his word or the film. The other was to admit that he had made a mistake and filmed two jets getting ready to land and tried to pass them off as UFOs. For those that suggest this as good evidence of alien visitation, look at the film closely. There are no drastic maneuvers and no distinct images to indicate anything out of the ordinary. The coincidence of two jets (the same number of aircraft as the UFOs) making a landing around the time of the sighting makes one consider that this is a likely source for the images.

Even if you don't believe it's two F-94s, I think you have to admit there's nothing particularly "alien" about the motions seen in the film.