Mariana film, Great Falls

Nick Mariana, manager of the Great Falls Electrics baseball team, and his secretary Virginia Raunig saw two bright rotating objects over the stadium and Mariana filmed them for about sixteen seconds on 16 mm colour film. Both told an Air Force investigator that two jet fighters passed overhead shortly afterwards, and the Air Force first concluded the images were sun reflections from two F-94s, later reopened the case, and the 1953 Robertson Panel again judged them reflections from aircraft known to be in the area. Mariana said the first 35 frames, which he said showed spinning discs, were missing when the film came back; the Air Force said it had removed only one damaged frame. Robert Baker's study for a 1956 documentary called the film unidentifiable, and Hartmann's re-analysis for the Condon study (Case 47) found that aircraft strained credibility but could not be ruled out.

Aircraft reflections remain the working hypothesis; the film lacks range and scale data to settle it

• Condon Report, Case 47: Great Falls movie filmfiles.ncas.org
• Wikipedia: Mariana UFO incidenten.wikipedia.org