Lubbock Lights - The Hart Photographs

The Hart Photographs

On the evening of August 30, 1951, Carl Hart, Jr., a freshman at Texas Tech, was lying in bed looking out of the window of his room when he observed a group of 18-20 white lights in a "v" formation flying overhead. Hart took a 35-mm Kodak camera and walked to the backyard of his parent's home to see if the lights would return. Two more flights passed overhead, and Hart was able to take a total of five photos before they disappeared (Ruppelt, 100). After having the photos developed Hart took them to the offices of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. After examining the photos the newspaper's editor, Jay Harris, told Hart that he would print them in the paper, but that he would "run him (Hart) out of town" if the photos were fake. When Hart assured him that the photos were genuine, Harris paid Hart $10 for the pictures. The photographs were eventually sent to newspapers around the nation, and were printed in LIFE magazine (Clark, 346). The physics laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio analyzed the Hart photographs. After an extensive analysis and investigation of the photos, Lieutenant Edward J. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, released a written statement to the press that "the photos were never proven to be hoax, but neither were they proven to be genuine" (Ruppelt, 105-107). Hart has consistently maintained to this day that the photos are genuine. Curiously, the Texas Tech professors claimed that the photos did not represent what they had seen, since their objects had flown in a "u" formation instead of the "v" formation depicted in Hart's photos (Ruppelt, 106).