The 1962 Nuclear Test and the Non-Human Craft in the Fireball: KETTLE Footage, EG&G, and a Classified Sanitization
During the 1962 Bluegill Triple Prime nuclear test, EG&G cameras filming for Los Alamos recorded an anomalous object tumbling from the nuclear fireball. The camera operator abandoned the primary filming objective to track it. Parallel KETTLE 2 footage has a classified triangular sanitization mark applied over the same region. Naval recovery logs document a retrieval operation. EG&G was also a primary UAP contractor at Area 51.
The 1962 Bluegill Triple Prime Test
On 26 October 1962 — four days after the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis — the United States detonated a nuclear warhead 48 kilometres above Earth as part of Operation Fishbowl. The test, designated Bluegill Triple Prime, was designed to study how high-altitude explosions affect ballistic missile systems using X-ray effects to disable re-entry vehicles. EG&G — the same contractor involved in Area 51 operations and UAP retrieval testimony — filmed the test using modified KC-135 aircraft with specialised cameras under contract with Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.
The KETTLE Footage Anomaly
The EG&G footage, designated KETTLE 1 and KETTLE 2, records something that was not on the test agenda. KETTLE 1 shows an anomalous object tumbling out of the nuclear fireball. The camera operator abandoned the primary filming objective — tracking fireball expansion — to follow the object, a decision that cost critical test data. Something in the fireball was considered more important to track than the nuclear detonation itself.
KETTLE 2, filmed simultaneously, covers the same event but includes a white triangular sanitization mark applied during a later declassification review — obscuring precisely the region where the anomaly appears in KETTLE 1. Two films of the same event, reviewed by different laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and the Defence Atomic Support Agency), produced inconsistent classification decisions about the same object.
This mark obscures the same region where the anomalous object appears in KETTLE 1. The inconsistency between the two films suggests a divergence in classification judgments between the laboratories responsible for analysing the footage.
— Liberation Times analysis of Bluegill Triple Prime footage
The Retrieval Connection
Naval recovery logs from the test period document a retrieval operation. The timing — a nuclear detonation at high altitude, an anomalous object in the fireball, a classified sanitization of parallel footage, and a naval recovery — follows the pattern documented across other cases. At Roswell in 1947, the US detonated nuclear weapons at Trinity in 1945 and 1946 at nearby White Sands. UAP activity has been historically concentrated around nuclear test sites and weapons facilities.
EG&G’s presence at Bluegill Triple Prime is significant. EG&G held contracts at Area 51, was identified by Annie Jacobsen as having had ‘direct interactions with beings recovered from crash sites,’ and is named in the dossier as a primary contractor in the UAP reverse engineering network. Their cameras were pointed at this anomaly two years before the public record of UAP government programmes begins.