Between Coos Bay & Portland, OregonSeptember 1956

In September 1956, a passenger on a commercial airline flying between Coos Bay and Portland, Oregon took a photograph from cruising altitude of what she believed to be a spacecraft. The woman, traveling at 27,000 feet, used a Brownie camera and only discovered the object in her photograph after the film was developed in mid-September. She described the object as elliptical with tiny perforations along its long axis.

The Air Force asked her to submit detailed information about the sighting, but she could not provide specifics. She had not seen the object herself during the flight, only discovered it on the film. She knew only that she had left Coos Bay around 2:30 p.m. and arrived in Portland around 3:45 p.m., and estimated she had taken the picture around 3 p.m. She could not supply a flight number, the exact location, or whether other passengers had observed anything unusual. She also could not locate the original negative.

Air Force photo analysts examined the prints she provided and concluded the object was almost certainly a flaw in the film's emulsion. They noted that Brownie cameras have a slow shutter speed (between 1/25 and 1/30 of a second) and a simple lens that cannot freeze fast-moving objects. Any actual object passing rapidly outside an airplane window would appear as a blur. The sharp, clear image in her photograph suggested a stationary defect on the film itself, possibly caused by the emulsion sticking together during development. The tiny perforations she observed were consistent with damage that occurs during standard photo processing.

The Air Force also checked whether any aircraft, balloons, missiles, or other objects matching her description had been reported in the area at that time. They found no corroborating reports from military or civilian sources, nor any reports in the heavily trafficked airspace between Coos Bay and Portland, which is surveyed by extensive radar networks around the clock. The file of 14 pages is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.