Correspondence regarding McMinnville, Oregon UFO photographs

This document collection contains correspondence from 1965 regarding the famous 1950 McMinnville, Oregon, UFO sighting. A citizen named W.C. Case wrote to the Department of Science in Washington, D.C., requesting information and copies of photographs taken by a couple on their farm near McMinnville on May 11, 1950. Case described the object as a 'gently rocking, circular thing' hovering about 100 feet above the ground. He also inquired about a separate incident involving a 'saucerman' and a tourist in the American desert, asking if the Air Force had classified that case as an 'unknown.' The correspondence was forwarded to the Air Force's Project Blue Book office. On March 10, 1965, Lt. Colonel John P. Spaulding of the Air Force Office of Information responded to Mr. Case. Spaulding stated that the Air Force had no information regarding the McMinnville photographs. Furthermore, he provided a standard dismissal of such evidence, asserting that all photographs submitted in conjunction with UFO reports were merely misinterpretations of natural or conventional objects and that the objects in such photographs had been positively identified. The document also includes a brief, partially illegible report from 1950 regarding a sighting at Ladd AFB, Alaska, involving 'many AF personnel' observing a gray object that seemed to float in a fixed area for 45 minutes. The primary focus of the correspondence, however, remains the official Air Force stance on the McMinnville photographs, which was one of denial and categorical dismissal of the photographic evidence as misidentified conventional objects.