Posted On: October 6, 2022

On February 26th, 1965, sometime between 3 and 4 p.m.  an unidentified craft of the famous type photographed by George Adamski in 1952 (and others subsequently) described a series of maneuvers over Madeleine Rodeffer's front yard, retracting and lowering one of its three pods and making a gentle humming and swishing sound as it did so.

George Adamski began filming the craft with Madeleine's 8mm camera. "It looked blackish-brown or gray-ish-brown at times," Madeleine advised, "but when it came in close it looked greenish and blueish, and it looked aluminum: it depended on which way it was tilting. Then at one point it actually stood absolutely still between the bottom of the steps and the driveway."

The craft then disappeared from view, but reappeared above the roof and described maneuvers once more before finally disappearing vertically. Madeleine advised that she could make out human figures at the portholes, but details were obscured.

When the film was developed the following week, something was obviously wrong with many of the frames and it was apparent that it had been interfered with. Obviously faked frames had been substituted by person or persons unknown. "They took the original film," Madeleine believes, "and what I think they did was re-photograph portions of the original, and then fake some stuff. The film I got back is not the original film at all."

Fortunately enough frames showing the craft as they had remembered it survived out of the twenty-five feet that had been taken, and these were analyzed by William T. Sherwood, an optical physicist who was formerly a senior project development engineer for the Eastman-Kodak Company in Rochester, NY.

William T. Sherwood provided a brief technical summary of his evaluations as they related to the prints he made from the "original" film.

It’s hard to capture the nuances of the original film. None of the movie duplicates are good: too much contrast. The outlines look "peculiar" due to distortions, I believe, caused by the "force field."

The glow beneath the flange is, I think, significant. Incidentally, the tree [near the top of which the craft maneuvered] is very high (90 ft?).

In 1977 Bill Sherwood sent me further details of his evaluations:

"The camera was a Bell & Howell Animation Autoload Standard 8, Model 315, with a fl.8 lens, 9-29 mm, used in the 9mm position. As you can measure, the image on the film (original) is about 2.7mm maximum. So for a 90ft distant object, [the diameter] would be about 27 feet. It was a large tree, and the limb that the saucer seems to "touch" could have been about that distance from the camera, but unfortunately I could not find a single frame where the saucer could clearly be said to be behind the limb. So it is not conclusive as for distance, and therefore for size. In some of the frames of the original, portholes are seen."

In reply to a query as to whether it was possible to authenticate the film unequivocally, Bill said that there is no absolutely foolproof way of assessing whether a photo is "real" or not.

One must just take everything into account, including as much as one can learn about the person involved, and then make an educated guess. In the final analysis, he said, it comes down to this question: "Is this the kind of person whom I can imagine going to all the trouble and expense of simulating what only a well-equipped studio with a large budget could begin to approximate, and defending it through the years with no apparent gain and much inconvenience?"

One of the peculiarities of the film is that the outlines of the craft look peculiarly distorted at times. Bill Sherwood believes this is due to a powerful gravitational field that produces optical distortions, an opinion that is shared by Leonard Cramp, an aeronautical engineer and designer who has worked for De Havilland, Napier, Saunders-Roe and Westland Aircraft companies (at Napier he patented the invention of an Induction Mixed-Fluid Ramjet). In his pioneering book, Piecefor a Jig-Saw, Cramp proposed a theory to account for this peculiar effect:

"Earlier, when discussing light in terms of the G [gravitational field] theory, we saw how we might expect such a field to form an atmospheric lens, producing optical effects which might be further augmented by other field effects as well as the gravitational bending of light, Now it follows that if there would be a local increase in atmospheric pressure due to a powerful G field, then similarly we could expect a decrease in atmospheric pressure to accompany a powerful R [repulsion] field, and again we would not be surprised to find optical effects, we can now say, while a G field might produce optical magnifying properties, an R field could produce optical reducing properties."

Leonard Cramp had not seen the Silver Spring film prior to publishing his book, and was delighted that it seemed to confirm his hypothesis. Like Bill Sherwood and myself, he is in no doubt that the film is authentic.

On 27 February 1967, (two years after it had been taken), the film was shown to twenty-two NASA officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Discussion afterward lasted for an hour and a half, and just before Madeleine left, one of the two friends with her was allegedly told that it was "a very important piece of film" and that the craft was 27 feet in diameter (the figure calculated independently by Bill Sherwood).

In reply to queries, NASA scientist Paul D. Lowman Jr., of the Geophysics Branch at Goddard, stated that according to one of those present, Herbert A. Tiedemann, everyone considered the Silver Spring film to be fake. Dr. Lowman, who had helped set up the meeting but was unable to attend, offered the following comments on the color photos from the film that were sent:

"First, it is not possible to make any precise determination of the object’s size from the relationship (which is basically correct) quoted by Mr. Sherwood. Given any three of these quantities, one can calculate the fourth. The focal length and image size are obviously known, but not the distance, which can only be roughly estimated. The equation can be no better than its most inexact quantity, and one might as well just estimate the size of the object directly. My own strong impression is that these frames show a small object, perhaps up to 2 or 3 feet across, a short distance from the camera. Judging from the photo of Mrs. Rodeffer’s house, a 27 foot UFO would have occupied most of the cleared area in the front yard, and from such a short distance would have been a very large photographic object."

 Although Bill Sherwood readily concedes that his estimate of the precise distance from the camera is arbitrary, he is sure that it is reasonably accurate, and my own tests at the site show that, with the camera lens set on wide angle (as it was at the time), an object of this approximate size and distance would appear exactly as it does on the film. That either Adamski or Madeleine (or both) could have faked the film using a small model, and then have the audacity to show it at NASA, seems far-fetched in the extreme. Moreover, to produce the distortion effects as well as the lowering and retracting of one of the pods with a small model, is out of the question.

Following the death of Adamski, Madeleine Rodeffer experienced a great deal of ridicule and harassment, and nearly all copies of the film have been stolen, in the United States and elsewhere. Two photographs of an identical craft were taken by young Stephen Darbishire in the presence of his cousin Adrian Myers in Coniston, England, in February 1954. For the benefit of those who contend that Darbishire had faked the pictures and recanted later, the following statement from a letter he wrote to me in 1986 is illuminating:

"when I said that I had seen a UFO I was laughed at, attacked, and surrounded by strange people. In desperation I remember I refuted the statement and said it was a fake. I was counter-attacked, accused of working with the "Dark Powers", or patronizingly "understood" for following orders from some secret government department. There was something. It happened a long time ago, and I do not wish to be drawn into the labyrinth again. Unfortunately the negatives were stolen and all the prints gone"

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988.

My Take: I have to say that my non expert opinion about this clip is that it is NOT too impressive. The movement seems all wrong and faked. I am assuming that I am looking at the correct clip though. It might not be.

Posted On: October 6, 2022

On February 26th, 1965, sometime between 3 and 4 p.m.  an unidentified craft of the famous type photographed by George Adamski in 1952 (and others subsequently) described a series of maneuvers over Madeleine Rodeffer's front yard, retracting and lowering one of its three pods and making a gentle humming and swishing sound as it did so.

George Adamski began filming the craft with Madeleine's 8mm camera. "It looked blackish-brown or gray-ish-brown at times," Madeleine advised, "but when it came in close it looked greenish and blueish, and it looked aluminum: it depended on which way it was tilting. Then at one point it actually stood absolutely still between the bottom of the steps and the driveway."

The craft then disappeared from view, but reappeared above the roof and described maneuvers once more before finally disappearing vertically. Madeleine advised that she could make out human figures at the portholes, but details were obscured.

When the film was developed the following week, something was obviously wrong with many of the frames and it was apparent that it had been interfered with. Obviously faked frames had been substituted by person or persons unknown. "They took the original film," Madeleine believes, "and what I think they did was re-photograph portions of the original, and then fake some stuff. The film I got back is not the original film at all."

Fortunately enough frames showing the craft as they had remembered it survived out of the twenty-five feet that had been taken, and these were analyzed by William T. Sherwood, an optical physicist who was formerly a senior project development engineer for the Eastman-Kodak Company in Rochester, NY.

William T. Sherwood provided a brief technical summary of his evaluations as they related to the prints he made from the "original" film.

It’s hard to capture the nuances of the original film. None of the movie duplicates are good: too much contrast. The outlines look "peculiar" due to distortions, I believe, caused by the "force field."

The glow beneath the flange is, I think, significant. Incidentally, the tree [near the top of which the craft maneuvered] is very high (90 ft?).

In 1977 Bill Sherwood sent me further details of his evaluations:

"The camera was a Bell & Howell Animation Autoload Standard 8, Model 315, with a fl.8 lens, 9-29 mm, used in the 9mm position. As you can measure, the image on the film (original) is about 2.7mm maximum. So for a 90ft distant object, [the diameter] would be about 27 feet. It was a large tree, and the limb that the saucer seems to "touch" could have been about that distance from the camera, but unfortunately I could not find a single frame where the saucer could clearly be said to be behind the limb. So it is not conclusive as for distance, and therefore for size. In some of the frames of the original, portholes are seen."

In reply to a query as to whether it was possible to authenticate the film unequivocally, Bill said that there is no absolutely foolproof way of assessing whether a photo is "real" or not.

One must just take everything into account, including as much as one can learn about the person involved, and then make an educated guess. In the final analysis, he said, it comes down to this question: "Is this the kind of person whom I can imagine going to all the trouble and expense of simulating what only a well-equipped studio with a large budget could begin to approximate, and defending it through the years with no apparent gain and much inconvenience?"

One of the peculiarities of the film is that the outlines of the craft look peculiarly distorted at times. Bill Sherwood believes this is due to a powerful gravitational field that produces optical distortions, an opinion that is shared by Leonard Cramp, an aeronautical engineer and designer who has worked for De Havilland, Napier, Saunders-Roe and Westland Aircraft companies (at Napier he patented the invention of an Induction Mixed-Fluid Ramjet). In his pioneering book, Piecefor a Jig-Saw, Cramp proposed a theory to account for this peculiar effect:

"Earlier, when discussing light in terms of the G [gravitational field] theory, we saw how we might expect such a field to form an atmospheric lens, producing optical effects which might be further augmented by other field effects as well as the gravitational bending of light, Now it follows that if there would be a local increase in atmospheric pressure due to a powerful G field, then similarly we could expect a decrease in atmospheric pressure to accompany a powerful R [repulsion] field, and again we would not be surprised to find optical effects, we can now say, while a G field might produce optical magnifying properties, an R field could produce optical reducing properties."

Leonard Cramp had not seen the Silver Spring film prior to publishing his book, and was delighted that it seemed to confirm his hypothesis. Like Bill Sherwood and myself, he is in no doubt that the film is authentic.

On 27 February 1967, (two years after it had been taken), the film was shown to twenty-two NASA officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Discussion afterward lasted for an hour and a half, and just before Madeleine left, one of the two friends with her was allegedly told that it was "a very important piece of film" and that the craft was 27 feet in diameter (the figure calculated independently by Bill Sherwood).

In reply to queries, NASA scientist Paul D. Lowman Jr., of the Geophysics Branch at Goddard, stated that according to one of those present, Herbert A. Tiedemann, everyone considered the Silver Spring film to be fake. Dr. Lowman, who had helped set up the meeting but was unable to attend, offered the following comments on the color photos from the film that were sent:

"First, it is not possible to make any precise determination of the object’s size from the relationship (which is basically correct) quoted by Mr. Sherwood. Given any three of these quantities, one can calculate the fourth. The focal length and image size are obviously known, but not the distance, which can only be roughly estimated. The equation can be no better than its most inexact quantity, and one might as well just estimate the size of the object directly. My own strong impression is that these frames show a small object, perhaps up to 2 or 3 feet across, a short distance from the camera. Judging from the photo of Mrs. Rodeffer’s house, a 27 foot UFO would have occupied most of the cleared area in the front yard, and from such a short distance would have been a very large photographic object."

 Although Bill Sherwood readily concedes that his estimate of the precise distance from the camera is arbitrary, he is sure that it is reasonably accurate, and my own tests at the site show that, with the camera lens set on wide angle (as it was at the time), an object of this approximate size and distance would appear exactly as it does on the film. That either Adamski or Madeleine (or both) could have faked the film using a small model, and then have the audacity to show it at NASA, seems far-fetched in the extreme. Moreover, to produce the distortion effects as well as the lowering and retracting of one of the pods with a small model, is out of the question.

Following the death of Adamski, Madeleine Rodeffer experienced a great deal of ridicule and harassment, and nearly all copies of the film have been stolen, in the United States and elsewhere. Two photographs of an identical craft were taken by young Stephen Darbishire in the presence of his cousin Adrian Myers in Coniston, England, in February 1954. For the benefit of those who contend that Darbishire had faked the pictures and recanted later, the following statement from a letter he wrote to me in 1986 is illuminating:

"when I said that I had seen a UFO I was laughed at, attacked, and surrounded by strange people. In desperation I remember I refuted the statement and said it was a fake. I was counter-attacked, accused of working with the "Dark Powers", or patronizingly "understood" for following orders from some secret government department. There was something. It happened a long time ago, and I do not wish to be drawn into the labyrinth again. Unfortunately the negatives were stolen and all the prints gone"

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988.

My Take: I have to say that my non expert opinion about this clip is that it is NOT too impressive. The movement seems all wrong and faked. I am assuming that I am looking at the correct clip though. It might not be.