McMinnville UFO photographs
[3] According to astronomer William K. Hartmann's account, on 11 May 1950 at 7:30 p.m., Evelyn Trent was walking back to her farmhouse after feeding rabbits on her farm.
After a short time he went back inside their home to obtain a camera; he said he managed to take two photos of the object before it sped away to the west.
[3] Hartmann's version of the incident traces back to an interview the Trents gave to Lou Gillette, host of the radio station KMCM (later KLYC), and quoted in The Oregonian newspaper on 10 June 1950.
However, the Trents had given a slightly different version of the incident to the local McMinnville newspaper, the Telephone Register, two days earlier on 8 June 1950.
[5][1] In a 1997 interview, the Trents claimed that they initially thought the object they had photographed was a secret military aircraft, and feared the "photos might bring them trouble".
]"[6] 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.
The negatives were then loaned to Dr. William K. 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 Boulder.
and concludes "These tests do not rule out the possibility that the object was a small model suspended from the nearby wire by an unresolved thread.
[9] Maccabee analyzed the photos and concluded that the photographs were not hoaxed and showed a "real, physical" object in the sky above the Trent farm.
[9] He also stated, in response to the IPACO sceptical photoanalysis, that "regarding [their] photogrammetric analysis, I showed that the sighting lines did not cross under the wires and they did not refute this...I still stand on my original work.
"[11] In the 1980s, Philip J. Klass and Robert Sheaffer, journalists and notable skeptics, concluded that the photos were faked and that the entire event was a hoax.
[12] Additionally, Klass found several contradictions in the Trents' story of the sighting and noted that their version of the incident changed over the years.
[14] In April 2013, three researchers with IPACO posted two studies to their website entitled "Back to McMinnville pictures" and "Evidence of a suspension thread.
"[15] They argued that the geometry of the photographs is most consistent with a small model with a hollow bottom hanging from a wire suspended from the power lines above.
[2] Since 1950, the Trents have been invariably described by the media as unassuming, simple farm folk who never attempted to profit from the photos, nor the notoriety they brought them.
