McMinnville UFO Photographs
On May 11, 1950, Paul and Evelyn Trent photographed a slow-moving metallic disc-shaped object near their farmhouse in McMinnville, Oregon, producing two of the most famous and extensively analyzed UFO photographs ever taken. The images show a disc-shaped craft with a prominent dome or protrusion on its upper surface, suspended in daylight against a clear sky backdrop.
| Date | 1950-05-11 |
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Physical Description and Comparison to Other Evidence
The craft depicted in the McMinnville photographs exhibits a distinctive upper protrusion on the disc's top surface, described as dome-like or resembling "half of a ping-pong ball"— a characteristic that closely matches descriptions provided by Robert Jacobs in his 1964 Big Sur warhead shootdown footage testimony. This same upper dome feature is visible in the Flyby Footage, creating a consistent morphological pattern across three separate incidents spanning from 1950 to 2008.
The object in the McMinnville photos is relatively small in the frame, with ongoing debate about whether it represents a distant large craft or a closer small object (the "hoax via suspended model" hypothesis). However, photographic analysis has not definitively resolved this question, and the photos have withstood decades of scrutiny.
Historical Context and Analysis
The McMinnville photographs were taken during the early modern UFO era, just three years after the Kenneth Arnold sighting that initiated widespread "flying saucer" reports. The images were analyzed by the Condon Committee (University of Colorado UFO Project) in the late 1960s, which concluded they showed "an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial"— one of the few cases the generally skeptical Condon Report treated as potentially genuine.
Subsequent analyses have produced mixed results, with some investigators claiming evidence of hoaxing (suspension wires, inconsistent lighting) while others maintain the photos show an authentic unidentified object. The photographs remain iconic representations of the "classic flying saucer" morphology.