McMinnville (Trent) photographs
Farmers Paul and Evelyn Trent photographed a metallic disc over their Oregon farm; Life magazine printed the pictures.
1950 CE · 45.10, -123.33 · status: disputed
The account
On 11 May 1950 Evelyn Trent saw a slow disc approach and her husband took two photographs. Local reporter Bill Powell examined the negatives and found no sign of tampering, and Condon Committee investigator William Hartmann argued that signs of aerial perspective in the images count against a small model.
The sceptical view
Philip Klass and Robert Sheaffer argued that lighting discrepancies show a hoax and that the object resembles a vehicle mirror hung near the camera.
The researched reading
Two clear photographs of a disc that the Condon study could not dismiss. Later analyses of shadows and geometry point to a small model hanging from the wires, though the case is still argued.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Undetermined | 57% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 20% | Condon photo-analyst William Hartmann argued that haze in the image places the object far away and large; Bruce Maccabee still defends that reading, so a real unknown object is not excluded. |
| Something known, misidentified | 6% | A distant ordinary object (a part blown into the air, an unusual aircraft) is unlikely given the clear disc shape. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Shadows on the garage suggest morning rather than the evening time claimed, the object sits under overhead wires, and a 2013 IPACO photogrammetric study found the geometry most consistent with a small model hanging from a wire. |
| Secret human technology | 5% | No secret disc-shaped aircraft is known to have flown over Oregon in 1950. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 3% | The witnesses’ account may have been shaped by retelling, but the photographs are the core evidence. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | No natural phenomenon looks like this. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | Nothing points to an unusual natural effect. |
Official position: The Condon Committee called it one of the few cases where all factors are consistent with a genuine extraordinary flying object, while sceptics Klass and Sheaffer argued it was a model.