The Roswell Incident

Who's Who In The Roswell Incident

A brief introduction to principle characters involved in the Roswell incident.

RAWIN: radar-wind reflector or radar target; a reflective kite attached to weather balloons, first widely launched in the spring & summer of 1947, made of balsa wood, paper and tinfoil, held together with masking tape. Used for tracking balloons with radar.

KENNETH ARNOLD: traveling salesman flying near Mt. Rainier, Washington, on June 24, 1947, when he spotted nine shiny objects in the sky. These were the first "flying saucers," and were undoubtedly a weather balloon with multiple rawin targets attached.

FLYING DISK CRAZE: Arnold's sighting was followed by a 2-week media-driven mass hysteria involving hundreds of people reporting flying saucers of every conceivable shape, size, color and velocity. Besides weather balloons, witnesses reported birds, planes, fireworks, search lights, meteors and a fallen road sign as "flying saucers."

FLYING DISK MYSTERY: it's important to note that most speculation about the saucers tended to favor the US military or private sector as the source of the mystery objects, followed by Russia, Japan, mass hallucination, the end of the world, and - last and certainly least - men from Mars. The latter was usually stated with tongue in cheek. It wasn't until 1949-1950 that saucers became synonymous with "alien spacecraft" in the public imagination. When people today read the headline "Army Captures Flying Saucer" it has a different meaning than it had in early July of 1947. Most thought "top secret Army stuff" not "aliens."

MAC BRAZEL: sheep rancher northwest of Roswell. On June 14 (10 days before the saucer mystery began), he found rawin debris on his ranch from a New York University balloon (Project Mogul) launched from Alamogordo on June 4. He thought it was an Army weather device but not like any he had ever seen. When he learned about the flying saucer panic (July 5) he wondered if the debris he found might be one of the "saucers" everyone's been talking about. On a trip to Roswell (July 7), he spoke to the local sheriff

GEORGE WILCOX: Roswell sheriff, didn't see the debris, but was told by Brazel that it was made of sticks, foil & tape - a description he would soon share with the press. But first, he contacted Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).

JESSE MARCEL: intelligence officer at RAAF. Drove to the ranch 80 miles away, gathered the debris and brought it to Ft. Worth, Texas, for examination on July 8.

WALTER HAUT: communications officer at RAAF. Upon hearing that debris had been collected, Haut (who had neither seen the debris nor heard it described) issued a press release stating that the Army had "captured a flying disk" and that the 2-week mystery would soon be solved.

ROGER RAMEY: Brigadier General at Ft. Wort, issues a statement to the press describing the "disk" as being kite-like, with sticks, foil and tape, but that they can't seem to bend it into the shape of a disk.

IRVING NEWTON: weather officer at Ft. Worth, enters Ramey's office and immediately identifies the "saucer" as a rawin from a weather balloon. Explains this to the press, bringing the Roswell case (and much of the flying saucer hype) to an end, temporarily.

FRANK SCULLY: humorist, publishes Behind the Flying Saucers (1950), the supposedly "true" story of saucers recovered by the Army near Aztec, New Mexico, with diminutive alien corpses inside. His sources, two con men, are later convicted of fraud involving their claims that "alien technology" from captured saucers powered their space-age dowsing rod which could locate oil deposits & precious metals underground, enabling them to boost the resale value of cheap real estate.

SCIENCE FICTION: From 1951 to 1989, Hollywood films would inspire much of UFO lore, including what would become the Roswell myth - indestructible material, alien hieroglyphs, captured aliens, "the Grays," suction-cup fingers, alien autopsies, military cover-up - it's all there: The Thing, The Man From Planet X, The Day The Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, Phantom From Space, Target Earth, This Island Earth, Earth vs the Flying Saucers, The Brain Eaters, The Cosmic Man, Plan 9 From Outer Space, 12 to the Moon, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, Alien, Hangar 18 and E.T. all contain elements of the 80s/90s Roswell story.

PROJECT BLUE BOOK: 1950s-60s investigation of UFOs conducted by the US Air Force. These files contain no mention of Roswell. Conspiracy theorists believe this is due to a cover-up. In reality, Blue Book simply didn't investigate cases that were already solved.

ROBERT CARR: resurrects the Aztec hoax as the Hangar 18 conspiracy theory in 1974.

STANTON FRIEDMAN: full-time UFO lecturer and conspiracy theorist, learns about a guy in Louisiana who brags to his friends about having once held a real flying saucer in his hands. That guy is Jesse Marcel. Friedman interviews him, but doesn't find his story all that compelling.

BARNEY BARNETT: a geologist who once (c. 1950) saw strange humanoid bodies in the New Mexico desert being loaded onto an Army truck. He didn't know the bodies were crash test dummies dropped from balloons. In 1978, years after Barnett's death, a friend attended a Stanton Friedman lecture and related the second-hand story. As it happened, this was 6 months after the telephone interview with Jesse Marcel and 6 years since Friedman had heard another crashed saucer story involving New Mexico.

LYDIA SLEPPY: worked for a radio station in Albuquerque in the 1940s. Claimed to have been ordered by the FBI not to send a teletype about a crashed flying saucer. In 1972, she told this story to Stanton Friedman. So, by the end of 1978, Friedman had the foundation for his very own New Mexico UFO scoop. Only problem was NONE of these people could give him an approximate date beyond "late-40s/early-50s."

BILL MOORE: school teacher turned UFO researcher, learns the date of Jesse Marcel's incident in early 1979. The date (July 1947) is erroneously assigned to all three New Mexico accounts - Marcel's debris, Barnett's bodies and Sleppy's FBI teletype. Marcel's account still lacks a distinctively alien element. That will soon change.

JESSE MARCEL JR.: son of the Roswell intelligence officer, writes to Bill Moore in April of 1979 to inform him that his father's two previous interviews (a year earlier), and his own previous letter, had omitted a minor detail - that the Roswell debris included what appeared to be alien hieroglyphs.

CHARLES MOORE: NYU professor who launched the balloon that crashed in 1947, was interviewed by Bill Moore in 1979 for the 1980 Roswell Incident book. He mentions his balloon launches and how the Roswell debris might have been from one of his balloons, but this detail doesn't make it into the book. Professor Moore would later positively identify his balloon from the descriptions of pink and purple floral patterns on the sticks from the masking tape used in constructing the rawin targets in late 1946. A post-war shortage of clear tape occasioned the use of seasonal holiday tape. These patterns inspired Jesse Marcel's son to recall "hieroglyphs" on the Roswell debris.

BILL BRAZEL JR.: son of the sheep rancher. In 1979, when interviewed for the Roswell Incident, he recalled finding strange foil-like material that, unlike foil, would unfold itself if you crumpled it into a ball. But when and where was this? He wasn't there in 1947. He didn't live on the Foster Ranch, but 100 miles south, near Alamogordo. Researchers later deduced that Brazel's alien foil was mylar that had blown onto his own ranch from balloons used for target practice at Holloman Air Force testing grounds in the 1950s.

MAJESTIC-12: documents which appeared on a ufologist's doorstep in 1984, seeming to prove a vast government conspiracy to hide aliens. Internal evidence exposes the documents as crude forgeries. Still, they remain largely accepted as genuine by true believers.

90s ROSWELL HOAXERS: beginning in the late 1980s, the Roswell story acquired a flood of self-proclaimed eyewitnesses all breaking their supposed silence after 40 years to tell their stories of strange material and alien bodies. Each of these stories has been proven a fabrication, forcing (some) retractions by the very ufologists who initially believed and endorsed them, leaving the Roswell incident essentially where it was in August 1978 with three true but mundane accounts: one witness to a weather balloon, one 2nd hand witness to unrelated crash test dummies, and one non-witness being told not to publish an unrelated non-story.

USAF REPORT: In the early '90s, the Air Force investigated the Roswell incident, releasing a report on the debris in 1994 and a follow-up in 1997 addressing supposed alien bodies. These reports, and Karl Pflock's book from 2001, *Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe,* are essential reading for their full unedited witness interviews & affidavits. Still, the legions of True Believers remain steadfast in their conviction that this is all a cover-up. Every few years, new crash sites emerge with new "witnesses." Countless books, films and TV shows are produced, and thousands make the pilgrimage to Roswell, the Mecca of the UFO religion.

Weather balloons with foil radar reflectors. These devices, called radar-wind targets or "rawin," were brand new in 1947 and were responsible for many flying saucer reports, including, very likely, the "silver box kites" observed by Kenneth Arnold near Mt. Rainier on June 24.

The most famous rawin reflector of all time was found on the Foster Ranch near Corona NM, 60 miles north of Roswell, on June 14, 1947. Ten days later, Kenneth Arnold saw the first "flying disks," igniting the flying saucer craze, at the peak of which, July 8, the Foster Ranch debris was identified as the remains of a "flying disk" by Maj. Jesse Marcel, Intelligence Officer at Roswell Army Air Field.

Rancher Mac Brazel found a rawin on his ranch on June 14, 1947. He didn't know what it was, regarding it as junk. The flying saucer craze began 10 days later, on June 24. Brazel heard about the saucers 11 days after that, on July 5. On July 7, Brazel informed Roswell's sheriff, George Wilcox, that he might have "one of them flying discs" on his ranch. The sheriff contacted the Roswell Army Air Field.

Army Intelligence Officer Jesse Marcel  drove to Foster Ranch to investigate.

House on Foster Ranch where Jesse Marcel spent the night of July 7 before gathering debris on July 8.

Walter Haut, RAAF Public Information Officer, hastily issued a press release on July 8, 1947, stating that the Army had captured one of the mysterious flying discs and was inspecting the object in Ft. Worth, Texas. The puzzle would soon be solved; for many, it was solved: the "saucers" were new weather devices, not a Soviet invasion, nor secret Army planes, mass hallucinations, Martians, Atlanteans or the Biblical apocalypse. That's why the story disappeared for three decades. In the ensuing years, the ill-defined concept of "flying saucers" quickly spawned legends, mythologies, conspiracy theories and a new religious faith predicated on the assumption that "flying saucer" is synonymous with "alien spacecraft." Such was the case when Jesse Marcel told his story to a professional UFO lecturer and conspiracy theorist in February of 1978, initiating the modern Roswell myth and the lucrative industry which has grown around it.

Jesse Marcel at Carswell Army Air Field in Ft. Worth, Texas, July 8, 1947. When shown this photo in 1980, Marcel identified the object in the photo as the genuine flying saucer. The cover-up he alleged in 1978 was the identification of this object as a weather balloon, not the supposed substitution of a "real" saucer with a weather balloon. He never saw the debris after July 8, and didn't think much about it for the next 30 years. It appears he convinced himself that the debris wasn't a balloon, and that he had been lied to by Army brass. He evidently never learned about rawin targets and probably didn't read the news explaining the Roswell material in various newspapers the following day. Marcel died in 1986, still unsure what the debris was.

Gen. Roger Ramey, Ft. Worth, July 8, 1947. He thought the debris was weather related, but needed a confirmation from a weatherman on the base. So he called Irving Newton. But not before describing the "saucer" to the press over the phone: sticks & foil, held together with tape.

Warrant Officer Irving Newton, Ft. Worth, July 8, 1947. Newton, a meteorologist, was the first to positively identify the Roswell debris as a rawin from a weather balloon. He recognized it from its use in Okinawa during the war, a clear indication that there were no rawin targets at the Ft. Worth base in early July of 1947. This is important because, according to the Roswell myth, a battered rawin was sought and instantly obtained at the Ft. Worth base and a switch occurred in General Ramey's office at a time when the building was being mobbed by reporters. Had a rawin been available on the base, they almost certainly would have brought one in to compare with the wreckage and demonstrate to the press the shape of a fully-constructed radar reflector. Instead, the reporters quote Newton's verbal description of a "six-sided star" covered in foil. There were demonstrations elsewhere on July 9th and 10th: an Army base (Alamogordo NM) and a Navy base (Atlanta GA) launched rawin balloons for the press. In Atlanta, this led to multiple saucer sightings two days in a row. Thus, after two weeks, the saucer puzzle was finally solved in the minds of many: flying disks were weather balloons. End of story. Even if Marcel didn't read the papers, he might have heard something about this. In his mind, he (not unreasonably) linked these events. He probably thought, later, that what occurred at Alamogordo & Atlanta also happened at Ft. Worth the moment he was dismissed from Ramey's office and sent back to Roswell.

UFO lecturer Stanton T. Friedman.

In any case, Marcel never sought publicity, even 30 years later. Instead, UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman contacted him in 1978 after hearing his story from a friend of Marcel's. To Friedman, this might prove to be evidence of a vast government coverup which he was already calling a "Cosmic Watergate."

He needed evidence that ETs were involved in Marcel's crash. In 1979, he claimed to have found that evidence.

 

Alien bodies in the New Mexico desert from a supposed second crash site as depicted in Stanton Friedman's film, UFOs Are Real (1979).

U.S. Air Force crash test dummies, 1950s.

Crash-test dummies were dropped from high-altitude balloons by the Air Force in New Mexico between 1953 and 1959. Geologist Barney Barnett witnessed one of these dummy drops around 1953 on the plains of San Agustin, NM. He didn't know what the strange humanoids were, strewn around what looked like a crashed space module. Army officers arrived on the scene to retrieve the bodies. Barnett told family & friends about this in the mid-1950s. He died in 1969. In October 1978, his friend Vern Maltais relayed the story to UFO enthusiast Stanton Friedman at one of his UFOs Are Real lectures. Friedman connected this and two unrelated New Mexico stories (Lydia Sleppy & Jesse Marcel) to create the first version of the Roswell myth in 1979.

National Enquirer, 1980. The first appearance of the Roswell myth in print. Note: no mention of weather balloons, alien bodies, a second crash site or the silencing of Lydia Sleppy.

The 1979 version had 2 crash sites (Brazel & Barnett). This number doubled & tripled in the 1990s as "witnesses" began contacting Roswell researchers after seeing Roswell TV segments. First, Gerald Anderson inserted himself into crash site #2. Then Jim Ragsdale, Frank Kaufmann and others invented additional sites. The existence of Ragsdale's co-witness - "Trudy Truelove" - was never verified.

In 1989, retired Roswell mortician Glenn Dennis claimed that a nurse at RAAF drew sketches, like these, of strange crash victims being autopsied. In fact, he got the idea from similar sketches in a 1987 Stanton Friedman piece in the Roswell Daily Record. The detail of fingers tipped with suction cups was undoubtedly inspired by science fiction sources (George Pal's 1953 version of War of the Worlds, for example). When asked about the nurse, Dennis provided multiple fake names and claimed that she was killed in a mysterious plane crash. No such nurse has ever been found.

Roswell TV movie (1994): supposed gouge in the Earth at the Foster ranch.

Roswell TV movie (1994): alien hieroglyphs on saucer wreckage.

Alien Autopsy hoax, 1995.

Roswell TV movie (1994): mystery nurse observes alien autopsy. 

Roswell TV movie (1994): saucer stashed at Area 51 in Nevada.

Mortician Glenn Dennis (standing) at the Roswell UFO Museum, a business venture undertaken (no pun intended) in 1991 by Mr. Dennis and Walter Haut (the RAAF information officer famous for the premature 1947 press release).

1. ROSWELL DEBRIS FACT CHECK

QUESTION: "For something as mundane as a weather balloon, how could it generate all the excitement it evidently did?" -Tom Carey & Don Schmitt, Witness to Roswell 2009, p. 43

ANSWER:

1) a little-known device called "rawin"

2) two weeks of media hype about silver disks

3) $3,000 reward offered for a captured disk

4) A premature press release

5) Other balloons, rawins, IFOs & hoaxes also received attention from the government & the press

6) No serious assumption that a "disk" = ET

CLAIM: The Army said they captured an "alien spacecraft."

FACT: No reference was ever made to "alien spacecraft," only to a "flying disk" or "flying saucer" - terms which had been in the English lexicon for all of two weeks. Most people thought the flying discs were a new technology, not aliens or spacecraft of any kind. The myth of alien saucers had yet to catch on in the minds of most people outside the world of occultists, the Fortean society & the mid-1940s "Shaver Mystery" clubs.

CLAIM: "There was nothing new or unusual about the [Mogul] balloon arrays. They should have been easily recognizable to those who found them in the field." - Kevin Randle, Operation Roswell, 2002

FACT: In July, 1947, rawin targets were (a) brand new and (b) not ubiquitous, even on military bases. Roswellists assume that everyone knew about rawin targets. Yet, in every article referencing them in 1947, newspapers and magazines felt compelled to provide detailed descriptions and explanations of their function. In articles about bicycles, the word "bicycle" is sufficient for the average reader to know what it's about. Words like ray-wind, rawin and rabal weren't common to most people in 1947, and neither were the objects themselves.

CLAIM: "The prosaic rubber balloons, tinfoil radar targets, and balsa wood struts used in the project were of the exact same types that were used in most weather balloons and radar targets of the time—materials that any 6-year-old would have no trouble identifying!" - Carey/Schmitt 2009, p.28

FACT: The news in early July, 1947, was full of people seeing, finding and photographing weather balloons and radar targets, believing them to be flying saucers. The first photo of a "saucer" was a weather balloon photographed by a member of the US Coast Guard near Seattle. Had he been a 6-year-old, I suppose he could have saved his film.

CLAIM: The debris field was too big for a weather balloon.

FACT: Tiny fragments of the rawin were carried by the wind, spreading them out in all directions.

CLAIM [Don Schmitt]: The debris couldn't be from Project Mogul (a US Army spy balloon designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests), because the government wasn't combing the New Mexico desert in search of it (after June 4).

FACT: The lost balloon only carried a rawin target. Nothing top secret about rawin targets. And the few top brass who knew about Mogul expected 100% of the balloons to fall to earth & possibly be found. The payload was a microphone not unlike a typical radiosonde found on standard weather balloons. If someone picked it up, it's highly doubtful they'd suspect it to be listening in on the Russians seven thousand miles away. They'd either send it to the Army, Navy or Weather Bureau or they'd throw it in the trash. Once it's in the air, it's as good as gone. This is why the supposed "Mogul coverup" is ludicrous.

CLAIM: "Any responsible rancher will tell you that there is absolutely no way that Mack Brazel would allow the remains of any type of discarded wreckage, Mogul included, to be left lying out in that open pasture. You see, cattle and sheep are like goats. They'll eat anything in their path, and all that Neoprene rubber from cluster balloons in a Mogul device could suffocate the poor animals." - Carey/Schmitt 2009. p.44-45

FACT: Sheep and cattle don't "eat anything in their path." If they did, they'd eat through fences and wander off, & millions would die choking on balloons and old tires. This assertion insults the intelligence of farm animals.

QUESTION: "This [1947 Hoover memo re the Shreveport hoax] demonstrates that some of the UFO crash stories had thick files at Project Blue Book. This case [Shreveport] did not make the national news the way the Roswell crash did but there is a [Blue Book] file. For Roswell there is nothing and if the Air Force believed in 1947 that the logical response was a weather balloon and radar reflector, then why no similar report[?]" - Randle, Roswell in the 21st Century 2016

ANSWER: 1) Shreveport did make headlines. 2) Hoaxes were a greater threat to national security than weather balloons. There was some concern about the hoaxers of '47, and the possibility that some of the saucer eyewitnesses (Arnold, et al) might be hoaxers as well, and that these pranks could lead to mass panic about Russian superweapons - which some suspected may be the intended purpose of the pranksters. There was serious concern that Soviet sympathizers were spreading rumors of advanced Russian - not Martian - technology. These views can be found in an FBI memo from the Dallas field office, dated July 10, 1947 (same day as the Shreveport hoax). No one suspected Roswell of being a hoax.

CLAIM: "Air Force investigators concluded that anthropomorphic dummies, dropped from high altitude to test ejection systems and parachute escape mechanisms, were responsible for the claims of alien bodies. The problem...was that the experiments had begun six years after the events in Roswell." [Randle, 2002]

FACT: Of the "body" witnesses, (a) Barney Barnett's niece and friends (1978) couldn't remember what year Barnett found the bodies, and (b), Henderson, Dennis, Anderson, Ragsdale, Kaufmann and Rowe (80s-1990s) were clearly weaving tall tales from bits of pre-existing Roswell/Aztec/Hangar 18 crashed-saucer lore. So Barnett is the only legitimate witness, and his story is consistent with a 1950s dummy drop. Not only were the late Barnett's 2nd-hand witnesses unable to recall the year: neither could Maj. Jesse Marcel, Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., or Lydia Sleppy - the three original 1978 Roswell witnesses. That's a total of six out of six of the first witnesses, all of whom were confused about the date.

CLAIM: "The most shocking revelation to date is that the U.S. military resorted to physical threats against American civilian witnesses. Children were terrorized in their homes and parents were warned that their children would be killed if they ever spoke one word about the true nature of the event. What possible secrets could children possess about a secret weather balloon project?" - Carey/Schmitt 2009, p. 41

FACT: This assumes that they were threatened in the first place. And that's the problem with Roswell researchers: they make assumptions based on unverified claims.

WHY DIDN'T THEY KNOW WHAT IT WAS?

"Rawin targets simply were not used by the regular weather services in peacetime. Therefore, the people who had previously found radiosondes and weather balloon debris would not have recognized the ML-306/AP targets because they would not have seen them before." - Charles Moore, Prevailing Winds, vol. 1, c. 1995

Professor Charles Moore in the 1990s, displaying the type of radar target he launched from Alamogordo in June of 1947.

In the public record from 1946 and 1947, we find discussion of radar targets on weather balloons as an emerging new technological wonder, expected to be in use "by 1947":

"New and automatic radio sending and recording equipment developed during the war to aid in obtaining accurate information about wind and weather conditions in the upper atmosphere ranging to a height of more than twelve miles has been installed in the weather station in Hatteras, N.C. ...

     The new method of recording weather information at high altitudes is known technically as “radiosonde" and "radio winds aloft observation" or "rawinsonde observation” ...

     Radiosonde is a miniature radio sending set which is carried aloft by a helium-filled balloon and automatically transmit[s] to earth signals designating the temperature, air pressure, and humidity as it ascends.

     Coupled with this is a radar direction finder which is [observed] from the ground to keep accurate check on the course of the balloon, its rate of ascension, height and drift from which can be computed the direction and velocity of winds aloft...

     ...the U. S. Weather Bureau hopes eventually to install this equipment at 70-odd weather stations in the United States, Alaska and the Caribbean area, thus largely replacing the old method of determining weather conditions aloft by visual observation of a balloon through a theodolite."

- Lincoln Times, (Lincolnton, NC), Hatteras Has A Radar Device, January 31, 1946

"Improved weather reports—which may save farmers millions of dollars — are expected as a result of the weather bureau's decision to use balloons, radio and radar to gather information twelve miles above the earth.

     The method is highly technical—but there is every reason to believe that it will result in greatly increased accuracy, both for short and long-term reports. Present methods of observation are greatly handicapped by fog and clouds, but the new method, known as 'rason,' will have no such handicaps.

     By 1947 it's expected that 'rason’' reports will have replaced the present methods of getting weather information."

- Coolidge Examiner (Coolidge AZ), Good Weather Ahead, February 8, 1946

U.S. Senate hearing, 1946:

MR. REICHELDERFER: "The winds above the clouds determine the direction of the movement of the hurricane. The hurricanes arise in the tropics as a violent rotary system that moves fairly definitely with the general drift of the atmosphere at intermediate levels, say from 10,000 to 20,000 feet. Unless you know what that drift is, you cannot forecast hurricane movements accurately. In the past we have not been able to determine this drift because the pilot balloons disappear in the clouds which are always associated with that kind of a system."

SENATOR McCARRAN: "What have you now?"

MR. REICHELDERFER: "There is a development both of radar and the radio direction finder. There are two general principles used. We attach to the balloon in the one case a little transmitter that sends a signal...

     The other method is a radar method by which, instead of having a transmitter on the balloon you tie on a radar wave reflector so that the radar impulse from the ground is reflected back and you get the information just as you would if you had a transmitter attached to the balloon.

     We want to equip enough of our stations, not all of them, but enough of our stations to give us outposts and key points in significant places so that in cases of general storms we can tell just how strong the winds are above the clouds."

- Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, April or May, 1946

"Radar and radio direction finding are being put to new civilian uses for weather studies. The detection of certain kinds of storms by radar was begun early in World War II when radar technicians noticed 'ghost echoes.' later recognized as thunderstorms.

     The location, extent, intensity, speed and direction of thunderstorms can now be detected by radar within a 100-mile radius, reports David Brunt, professor of meteorology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. A violent hurricane on September 1, 1945, came so close to a radar station that new information about the nature of the hurricane was obtained, including the general shape and the variations in rain intensity within the storm.

     Radar and radio direction finding have increased the range of pilot-balloon weather observation, making it possible to follow balloons or radiosondes - robot weather observers - through all types of weather. Formerly such observations were restricted to clear skies or to the atmospheric layer beneath the clouds."

- Weather Forecasters Now Using Radar Equipment, Ft. Covington Sun, Aug. 8, 1946

"At the turn of the last century, colored free balloons inflated to rise to various heights were released and watched through binoculars for charting wind drifts at various levels. However, cloud banks have constituted a serious hindrance to complete observation on this basis.

     Soon: Through the use of radar, weather forecasters will be able to follow the courses of such balloons even if clouds hide them. In addition, to supplement general and rain forecasting, such radar screens are to be used to observe speed and direction..."

- The Globe-Independent (Hagerstown MD), August 22, 1946

Weather Forecasters Now Using Radar Equipment [quoted above] reprinted in the Fulton Patriot, Nov. 7, 1946:

     "Meteorologists can now 'photograph' the top currents of a hurricane, thereby making possible better predictions as to the progress of such storms.

     The trick is done through use of radar and was a top secret during the war...

     The new development includes use of a metal reflector, sent aloft in a weather balloon.

     The radar signals bounce off this tiny reflector and are recorded on the ground."

- Daily News (Los Angeles), March 4, 1947

     The advent of radar opened new possibilities for the observation and tracking of balloons during any sort of weather or even in total darkness. In order that the radar could "see" the balloons it was found necessary to add some device which would make the target balloon "visible" to the radar. These devices are called RAWIN. The name is a contraction of the words Radar and WINd.

     Rawins were first experimented with by weather vessels during the summer months of 1944, but their use was abandoned as being impracticable due to the limitations of existing equipment. However, during 1945-46, a staff member of the Commander, North Atlantic Ocean Patrol, Commander R. T. Alexander, initiated a program of experimentation with various types of Rawins and developed targets and techniques which have proved of considerable value in the collection of data on winds aloft. Much experimenting was also done by individual commanding officers of weather patrol vessels.

     During this period, Rawins took many shapes. Some were large and small corner reflectors con-structed of paper-backed foil. Others were dipole antennas, stacked arrays, and trailing ribbons of foil. - U.S. Coast Guard Engineer's Digest, May-June 1947

     "Brigadier General Donald N. Yates, chief of the AAF weather service, said only a very few of them [radar targets] are used daily, at points where some specific project requires highly accurate wind information from extreme altitudes...

     Between the army and the weather bureau, hundreds of weather balloons without the metallic target are released daily from points all over the country." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 9, 1947

The following item appeared the day after Roswell, of which no mention is made:

     "Lt. Comdr. Thomas H. Rentz, of the Naval Air Station, said the mysterious sailing discs that have been baffling the nation are without doubt 'ray winds,' or tinfoil screens borne aloft by balloons...

    At a cost of $25, Lt. Zelle Moore, aerology officer at the [Atlanta Naval] Air Station, launched a 'ray wind,' the first ever to be released here...

     Although the 'ray wind' released here Wednesday [July 9] was about four-by-ten feet, it appeared completely round at a high altitude. The tinfoil is stretched on crossbars of light balsam wood, somewhat similar to a box kite...

     Although the 'ray wind' was invented several years ago, its use became general only recently.

   'People are just beginning to see these things', reasoned Comdr. Rentz, 'and that's probably why they are all excited about them now.'"

- Atlanta Constitution, July 10, 1947

"This part was added to weather balloons recently when the weather bureau began following them with radar rather than field glasses, the tin-foil showing up better on radar screens. Several such balloons have been reported found over the country in recent days, since the 'mystery of the flying saucers' began sweeping the nation." - Union County Journal (Marysville OH), Weather Balloon is Found on Dover Township Farm, 7/10/1947

     "The 'raywin' released Thursday [July 10] was the second 'saucer' demonstrated by Lt. Zelle Moore, aerology officer at the Air Station. He launched the first Wednesday...

     ...As the helium-filled balloon carrying a tin-foil screen soared over Stone mountain, calls poured into Atlanta newspapers reporting 'flying discs.'

    The 4 by 10 foot screen looked like a round aluminum disk at a high altitude."

- Atlanta Constitution July 11, 1947

"Neither the local weather station nor the Davis-Monthan station use the radar target kite. According to the airbase weather men, El Paso and Albuquerque are the closest stations using the tinfoil kite." - Arizona Daily Star, July 13, 1947

Maybe Albuquerque, but not El Paso:

     "High-altitude radar targets, such as the one found recently by a Roswell rancher on his property, are used only by Army meteorologists...

     At the El Paso Weather Bureau we use only radio sonde instruments housed in 10-inch rectangular cases. The cases are painted white and are gently lowered from their balloons by parachutes." - Arthur Brooks, El Paso Herald-Post, July 9, 1947

"The 'ray wind,' or weather target borne aloft by balloons, was reported to be the same type discovered mutilated by Rancher Brazell in New Mexico and thought to be a 'flying saucer'... They were invented only a few years before and their use became general only a short time before the saucers." - Wennergren, The Flying Saucers Episode, 1948

     "In July 1947, I was stationed with the weather detachment at the 509th at Roswell...

     Our forecaster had a telephone conversation with the forecaster in Fort Worth [Irving Newton], who informed us that, as far as he could determine, the fabric was a piece of weather balloon or possibly another weather device, and that the excitement caused was unnecessary. But no one was listening to him.

     We could use pages to describe these rather new weather devices. The enlisted weather men had more knowledge of these devices than any intelligence officer - or any officer, up to general." - Herbert H. Summer, letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug 15, 1996

In the summer of 1947, radar reflectors were unfamiliar to most observers outside the field of meteorology.

Circleville, OH, July 5, 1947.

Fulton County, GA, July 1953.

The evidence, as Stanton Friedman used to say, is overwhelming.

WHEN WAS IT FOUND?

"Sheriff George Wilcox of Roswell said the disc was found about three weeks ago."

- Wyoming Eagle, July 9

This is consistent with the date given by Mac Brazel (June 14).

DESCRIPTIONS OF DEBRIS

"Sheriff Wilcox says that [Brazel] said he didn't know what it was, but that at first it appeared to be a weather meter...Wilcox quotes [Brazel] as saying that 'it more or less looked like tinfoil.' Wilcox says that [Brazel] said that the disc was broken some, apparently from the fall. The sheriff said that [Brazel] described the object about as large as a safe in the sheriff's office...about three and one half by four feet." - UP wire 7/8/1947

"The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by a cable, which balloon was approximately twenty feet in diameter.... the object found resembles a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, but...telephonic conversation [between Ft. Worth & Wright Field] had not borne out this belief...disc and balloon being transported..." - FBI Dallas office, teletype message to DC Headquarters, 7/8/1947

"General Roger Ramey described the object as being of a flimsy construction, almost like a box-kite. He said that it was so battered that he was unable to determine whether it had a disc form, and he does not indicate its size. Ramey said that so far as it can be determined, no one saw the object in the air, and he described it as being made of some sort of tin-foil. Other Army officials said that further information indicates that the object has a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet, and that nothing in apparent construction indicates capacity for speed, and that there was no evidence of a power plant. The disc also appeared too flimsy to carry a man." - ABC radio news bulletin, July 8, 1947

"Brig-Gen. Roger Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force with headquarters at Fort Worth, Texas, who received the 'saucer' from Roswell Air Base, said it was being sent by air to the Army Air Force Research Center at Wright Field, Ohio. In a telephone call to Army Air Force headquarters in Washington, he described the object as of 'flimsy construction, almost like a box kite.' It was so badly battered that he was unable to say whether it was shaped like a disc. The material of which it was made was 'apparently some sort of foil.'" - London Daily Telegraph, July 8, 1947

Mac Brazel's daughter Bessie was 14 in 1947. 36 years later, she described the wreckage:

"There was a lot of debris scattered sparsely over an area that seems to me now to have been about the size of a football field. There may have been additional material spread out more widely by the wind, which was blowing quite strongly.

     The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst. The pieces were small, the largest I remember measuring about the same as the diameter of a basketball. Most of it was a kind of double-sided material, foil-like on one side and rubber-like on the other. Both sides were grayish silver in color, the foil more silvery than the rubber. Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape. The tape was about two or three inches wide and had flower-like designs on it. The 'flowers' were faint, a variety of pastel colors, and reminded me of Japanese paintings in which the flowers are not all connected. I do not recall any other types of material or markings, nor do I remember seeing gouges in the ground or any other signs that anything may have hit the ground hard....

     We spent several hours collecting the debris and putting it in sacks, I believe we filled about three sacks, and we took them back to the ranch house. We speculated a bit about what the material could be. I remember dad saying 'Oh, it's just a bunch of garbage.'

     Soon after, dad went to Roswell to order winter feed. It was on this trip that he told the sheriff what he had found...I am quite sure it was no more than a day trip, and I do not remember dad taking any overnight or longer trips away from the ranch around that time.

     Within a day or two, several military people came to the ranch. There may have been as many as 15 of them. One or two officers spoke with dad and mom, while the rest waited. No one spoke with [brother] Vernon and me. Since I seem to recall that the military were on the ranch most of a day, they may have gone out to where we picked up the material. I am not sure about this, one way or the other, but I do remember they took the sacks of debris with them.

     Although it is certainly possible, I do not recall anyone finding any more of the material later. Dad’s comment on the whole business was, 'They made one hell of a hullabaloo out of nothing.'" - Bessie Brazel, affidavit, 9/22/1993

Jason Kellahin visited the Foster Ranch in 1947 as a reporter for the Roswell Morning Dispatch. His description 36 years later:

"There was quite a lot of debris on the site—pieces of silver colored fabric, perhaps aluminized cloth. Some of the pieces had sticks attached to them. I thought they might be the remains of a high-altitude balloon package, but I did not see anything, pieces of rubber or the like, that looked like it could have been part of the balloon itself. The way the material was distributed, it looked as though whatever it was from came apart as it moved along through the air." - Jason Kellahin, affidavit, 9/20/1993

Other descriptions:

"I recall the adults at first thought it was some kind of newfangled weather balloon, then deciding, no, there was no way it could be anything like that." - Mary Strickland Tadolini (Brazel neighbor), affidavit, 9/27/1993

"Maj. Jesse A. Marcel, intelligence officer of the 509th Bombardment Group, reportedly told Brazel, the finder of the object, that it 'has nothing to do with Army or Navy so far as I can tell.'” - Daily News (Los Angeles), July 9

"Those who saw the object said it had a flowered paper tape around it: bearing initials 'D.P.'" - ibid.

JESSE MARCEL: "[Cavitt and I] spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon looking for any more parts of the weather device... we found a few more patches of tinfoil and rubber." - Ft Worth Star, July 9, 1947

IRVING NEWTON ON ROSWELL DEBRIS:

"[General Ramey] called and said, 'get your ass over to my office, we've got something here we want you to look at'...and when I saw [the debris], I said 'is that your flying saucer?'...I said 'that's a rawin target and balloon. If it isn't, I'll eat it without salt or pepper. I know what that is.'" - TV interview, c. 1994

     "When I got in there, inside the room, the general was in there and Marcel was there assuring me that this was the flying saucer he had picked up in New Mexico. I told him that it was a rawin balloon and a rawin target and if it wasn't I'd eat it without salt or pepper and I said there's no doubt in my mind what that is." - different TV interview, c. 1994

"Newton explained the object, when rigged up, looks like a six pointed star, is silvery in appearance, and rises in the air like a kite, mounted on a 100 gram balloon. He said a radar set is used to follow the balloon and winds aloft are charted thru a triangulation process. He added he had used similar balloons during the invasion of Okinawa to get ballistics information for heavy guns."

- Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1947

[Note: this statement proves rawin were not in use at Ft. Worth at the time, creating a problem for the Roswellists: there would be no logical reason for the Ft. Worth base to have an old, battered rawin balloon lying around to use as a substitute for a "real" saucer].

DR. JESSE MARCEL JR: "Imprinted along the edge of some of the beam remnants, there were hieroglyphic type characters. I recently [1979] questioned my father about this, and he recalled seeing these characters also, and even described them as being a pink or purplish-pink color." - letter to Stanton Friedman, April, 1979. [Crash At Corona, 1992]

Scotch tape from the 1960s. A similar pattern was in use in the 1940s and 50s. Of all the tape designs examined by Yours Truly, these most closely match the descriptions of the markings on the Roswell debris. Found on Etsy, 7/8/2025 - 78 years after the Roswell incident. I had been searching for pastel pink patterns for years, but the Roswell debris was faded by a month of sun and rain and dirt, so what appeared pink or purple flowers might have once been red, like poinsettias. I searched for Christmas tape. Compared several designs and found a perfect match.

MAJ. JESSE MARCEL ON ROSWELL DEBRIS: "It was not anything from this Earth, that I'm quite sure of. Being an intelligence officer, I was familiar with just about all the materials used in aircraft and or air travel. This is nothing like that; it could not have been." - 1980 interview

Note: weather balloons aren't "aircraft."

DR. JESSE MARCEL JR. ON INDESTRUCTIBLE MATERIAL: "Years after this event occurred, I heard my father talk of how he had people try to bend it with a sledgehammer. Even as thin of material as this appeared to be, apparently it could not be dented even with a 16 pound sledgehammer. I heard my father talk about trying to burn it with a cigarette lighter, and he said it would not burn. He tried...to see if it would shrivel up like tin foil under a cigarette lighter; apparently it did not." - TV interview c. 1994

Note: they tried in vain to bend the rawin into a disk shape.

MAJ. JESSE MARCEL: "I didn't actually see [an Army officer] hit the matter with a sledgehammer." - interview, 1979

2. WITNESS CREDIBILITY

THE 4 ORIGINAL ROSWELL CONSPIRACY WITNESSES DIDN'T KNOW THE YEAR OF THE INCIDENT: "Marcel's story [2/21/1978] certainly sounded exciting and important, but Friedman had no reason to connect it with anything else, because it lacked so much as an approximate date..."

     Vern and Jean Mattais [10/24/1978] told [Friedman]... that a very good friend of theirs, 'Barney' Barnett, had related a story of seeing a crashed saucer with alien bodies down in New Mexico in the late forties. They too were unable to pin down a specific year, let alone a month or day." - Don Berliner, Crash At Corona, 1992

Alice Knight, 1991: "[Barnett mentioned the encounter] in the middle or latter 40s or early 50s. Real early 50s. I feel like it was the early 50s."

If you include Jesse Jr., that's 3 first-hand and 3 second-hand Roswell witnesses - a full 6 out of 6 - who, when interviewed, couldn't recall the year of the supposed incident.

The original date was finally determined by William Moore in early 1979, one year after Friedman's first contact with Marcel.

Something else was revealed shortly thereafter: the supposed "hieroglyphs" on the debris, which are mentioned in an April '79 letter to Friedman from Jesse Marcel Jr. Neither he nor his father had mentioned these "strange symbols" in the previous 14 months.

The following is from a Jesse Marcel (Sr.) interview dated 12-8-1979:

MARCEL: There had been a lot of reports about flying saucers in that area. In fact, I’m not sure—I wouldn’t swear to this, but one night about eleven-thirty...the provost marshal called me and said, “You better come out here in a hurry.” He wouldn’t elaborate on the telephone what it was. So I got in my car and put my foot on the accelerator and [got] going as fast as I could go, and it was a straight road. Something caught my attention. It was a formation of lights moving from north to south. But it was so—I mean, we had nothing that traveled that fast anyway. I knew that. We had no aircraft that traveled at that speed, because it was visible only maybe three or four seconds from overhead to the horizon. They were bright lights flying a perfect vee formation. And I hesitated to open my mouth about that because I knew nobody would believe me, but two or three days later some GI said, “I saw something in the skies the other night.” And he described exactly what I'd seen.

PRATT: Was this before the debris incident?

MARCEL: Just slightly before. Anyway, I figure there’s some credence to this UFO business. I believe in it. Even my son, Jesse, one afternoon—he has two little boys...he was going into town...and one of the boys said, “Dad, look at that!” My son stopped the car and looked up there and he saw a shiny circular object that all of a sudden took off like nobody’s business.

Note: Marcel says "I figure there's some credence to this UFO business" while recounting unrelated stories of his son, his grandson, himself, the Roswell provost marshal and "some GI" all seeing various lights in the distance. That's a far cry from "I know saucers are real because I saw tangible evidence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft."

DID MARCEL GET A GOOD LOOK AT IT?

“It's pretty difficult to assimilate in [my] mind just what it was because I wasn't with it that long.” - interview, 12/79

THE SUPPOSED "GOUGE"

“One thing I did notice: Nothing actually hit the ground or bounced on the ground. It was something that must have exploded above the ground and fell.” - interview, 12/79

WALTER HAUT ON WHY HE BELIEVES IN ET

"The thing that convinced me that it was a flying object was Jesse Marcel more than anybody else, and that was quite a number of years afterward." ... "Major Marcel told me personally, in about 1980, that the materials that they had picked up were not from this planet." - TV interview, Larry King Live, 1994

3. CRASH WITNESSES

"You [Kevin Randle] have repeatedly cited the testimony of the nun's log [and] Sgt. Pyles... Neither the nun's log nor Sgt Pyles testified to a saucer in the sky, nor to a crash, or, obviously, a crash location. Pyles didn't recall the date or direction of flight of the fireball. No connection of any kind has been established between the log entry, or Pyles testimony, both about fireballs, and the supposed disc crash at a new crash site." - Stanton Friedman, letter to Randle, Nov. 10, 1995

4. ALIEN WITNESSES

HOW COULD BARNETT HAVE MISTAKEN DUMMIES FOR DEAD ALIENS?

"I don't think he got that close to them." - Alice Knight, 1991 interview, when asked if Barnett could tell whether the bodies on the San Augustin Plain were dead or alive.

GERALD ANDERSON

"The bulk of the detail on the San Agustin crash comes from one man who had been just a youngster at the time of the incident. Charges have been made that Gerald Anderson invented the story of seeing wreckage and bodies." - Crash At Corona [they go on to suggest that Anderson passed a polygraph and convinced Stan Friedman - and a hypnotherapist hired by Friedman - of his sincerity.]

Where did Gerald Anderson get his extraordinarily clear recollection of the San Agustin crash? From the existing Roswell story:

"The geologist looked like Harry Truman."

This description of Barnett comes from a picture of Barnett featured on Unsolved Mysteries, where he bears a striking resemblance to Harry Truman.

A soldier named "Armstrong."

Reading Anderson's account from Crash At Corona, I wondered where he got the name "Armstrong" for his angry soldier. I found the answer in Berlitz/Moore's The Roswell Incident (1980), where a soldier named Armstrong can be found confiscating leftover debris from Bill Brazel, some time in 1949 or the early '50s.

FRANKIE ROWE

Frankie Rowe derives her childhood memories from the same sources. The officer who threatened to bury her in the desert can be found in the account of Glenn Dennis receiving a similar threat from an Angry Red-Haired Sergeant (who seems to have been omnipresent at the time).

WALTER HAUT ON ALIEN BODIES: "I put out a press release to the effect that we have in our possession a flying saucer. From that, people started adding to it and all of a sudden we had a bunch of aliens on board the ship and it just grew and grew and grew." - TV interview, 2001

COL. THOMAS FEREBEE ON PEOPLE INSERTING THEMSELVES INTO HISTORY: "Enola Gay...was just another airplane like all 15 [bombers at Roswell]... I have people tell me they remembered it when it came through the line at Wichita and other places; their mother worked on it and all kinds of stuff." - interview, 1993

SIZE DISCREPANCY

In Witness to Roswell, Carey and Schmitt ridicule the Air Force's claim that witnesses saw crash test dummies. This, they say, is absurd because the dummies were "6-ft-tall," while the alien drunk drivers were reported to be 3'6".

One of Schmitt's star witnesses to the bodies was Frank Kaufmann. In a TV interview conducted shortly after the publication of Randle & Schmitt's 1994 book, The Truth About The UFO Crash At Roswell, Kaufmann estimated the height of the crash victims at around 5'3" to 5'4" - towering two feet above the diminutive gnomes described by Glenn Dennis, Schmitt's other star witness.

5. ALLEGED MILITARY COVER-UP

1) They were already sworn to secrecy:

"Airman stationed at the [Roswell] base in those days have all told us of the tight security that was always in place, 24 hours a day, every day. The need for security was 'drummed into us' from the moment of their first arrival, as one witness told us. 'Need-to-know' has always been a way of life in the military, but it was carried to an extreme at Roswell, as 509th personnel were told not to discuss with anyone, not even their wives and family - at the risk of federal imprisonment - anything that took place on the base or in the course of carrying out their duties. As a reminder just in case anyone might have thought that the quote loose lips sink ships and quote mentality of WWII was a thing of the past, large signs were placed at strategic locations on the base that warned:

WHAT YOU HEAR HERE

WHAT YOU SEE HERE

WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE

LET IT STAY HERE!!"

- Carey/Schmitt, 2009

This is an admission by Carey & Schmitt that their best witnesses - decades-late military whistleblowers - are not men of their word. The whole Roswell case began, after all, with the story of an RAAF intelligence officer supposedly bringing classified and potentially hazardous material home to show off to his wife and son.

2) No big deal:

     "I [Walter Haut] didn't think much of it and the whole thing died on the base."

     In fact, Haut said he'd forgotten the whole affair until Charles Berlitz contacted him. - Roswell Daily Record, Jan 2, 1981

"I didn’t attach any great importance to this particular incident at the time." - Col. Duffy, letter, November 1991

"It wasn't really a big deal." - Jed Roberts, on supposed roadblocks near Corona; interview, 1991

“I cannot honestly remember whether I wrote [The press release]. How the colonel passed that information on to me I cannot honestly tell you. It was not that big a production at that time, in my mind.” - Walter Haut, interview, 1995

"I don't think there was anything to it myself. I never have... That's my opinion... It might have been something we were testing... Never bothered to go any further with it, but I was in the testing business for a long time myself back in those days. I was aware of a lot of things that went on, but I don't know what it was. But that's my guess: it was some of our equipment." - Col. Thomas Ferebee, interview, 1993

"After looking at the material [on the Foster ranch], I walked over to the military men. They said they were from RAAF and were just looking around to see what they could find. They said they were going back to Roswell and would talk with me further there. They had a very casual attitude and did not seem at all disturbed that the press was there. They made no attempt to run us off." - Jason Kellahin, affidavit, 9/20/1993

"To get [the press] off my back I told them we were recovering a downed weather balloon." - Jesse Marcel, interview, 4/1978

In this version, Marcel is the one deciding to call it a weather balloon because he's annoyed at having to do his job, not because he's been ordered by his superiors.

"Lieutenant Haught reportedly told reporters he had been 'shut up by two blistering phone calls from Washington.'" - Daily News (Los Angeles), July 9, 1947

If those phone calls were part of the "coverup," why are they mentioned on the front page of a Los Angeles newspaper?

"It definitely was not part of an aircraft, nor a missile or rocket... The one thing that I kept wondering—why no publicity was given about that by the Air Force. They probably got something they wanted to sit on. That’s my opinion." - Jesse Marcel interview, 12/1979

Marcel is puzzled by the military not wanting to share this new technology with the public. "I kept wondering why no publicity was given... They probably got something they wanted to sit on." That's a far cry from: "they used threats and intimidation to cover up a crashed Martian spacecraft."

3) The big follow-up investigation:

"I didn't have the time to go out there and find out more about it, because I had so much other work to do that I just let it go." - Jesse Marcel, interview, 1979

PRATT: “Were you ever told not to talk about this?”

MARCEL: “You don't have to be told, you just know. I couldn't jeopardize my part in the service and be criticized for what I said.”

Biggest story in human history, but he couldn't talk for fear of criticism. Not jail or execution or his family being killed and buried in the desert. Just...criticism.

From a 1991 interview with Jed Roberts from the Roswell radio station:

DON SCHMITT: Did you notice any extraordinary military activity in town at that time?

JED ROBERTS: No.

...

SCHMITT: The first chance you had to ask [Whitmore] about the wire recording...[why didn't you]?

ROBERTS: I do not know in retrospect why I didn't [inquire about it]. I just figured it was a dead story.

...

SCHMITT: Whitmore never told you what the rancher said?

ROBERTS: Just plain discussion, but the rancher didn't say much. Rancher said "hey, I was riding and I saw this, and this is what it looked like, and I couldn't figure out what it was, and so I came to town to tell some people and mentioned it to some people, and pretty soon there's great interest." So I don't think that he himself went in there and did a lot of pseudo-scientific experiments with this mystery material.

THE "COVER-UP," ONE YEAR LATER:

"Philip Klass, a long-time and dedicated UFO sceptic, has uncovered a subsequently declassified letter dated 27 July, 1948, a year after the Roswell 'incident', from Major General C.B. Cabell, then Director of Intelligence for the US Air Force... Cabell was inquiring of those who reported to him on what UFOs might be. He hadn't a clue. In an 11 October 1948 summary response, explicitly including information in the possession of the Air Materiel Command, we find the Director of Intelligence being told that nobody else in the Air Force had a clue either. This makes it unlikely that UFO fragments and occupants had made their way to Wright-Patterson the year before." - Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, 1996

4) Witness intimidation

"We can bury you in the desert where no one will ever find you."

In Witness to Roswell, Carey and Schmitt accuse Lt. Arthur Philbin of threatening the life of 12-year-old Frankie Rowe over her having seen some magic foil at the fire station where her father worked. Their method of deduction consisted of 1) guessing it might be Philbin, and 2) sending a Roswell yearbook page to Frankie Rowe and asking her to circle the guy who threatened her. There were 17 men on the page. According to Carey & Schmitt, Rowe chose Philbin. She had a one-in-17 chance of getting it right just by guessing.

5) The 90s "cover-up"

"Congressman Schiff had written to the Department of Defense Legislative Liaison Office for information on the Roswell incident and had been advised that it was part of the former UFO 'Project Blue Book' that had previously been turned over to NARA by the Air Force. Congressman Schiff subsequently learned from NARA that, although they did, indeed, have the Blue Book materials, the 'Roswell Incident' was not part of that report. Congressman schiff, apparently perceiving that he had been 'stonewalled' by the DoD then generated the request for the [GAO] audit." - USAF Roswell Report, 1994

To this day, people are surprised to find that Project Blue Book didn't cover Roswell, so anyone can see how a Pentagon bureaucrat might have blindly assumed it was in there. After all, it was the biggest UFO story of all time...in the 1990s. When Project Blue Book was conducting investigations in the 1950s & '60s, Roswell was a long-forgotten story about a weather balloon - a short-lived mystery which had been solved within hours and relegated to the dustbin of history. No one was being "stonewalled."

6. WITNESS CREDIBILITY

a) Debris witnesses:

JESSE MARCEL

"There are clear areas of resume inflation but none that is particularly egregious by itself. It is only in the aggregate that it suggests that Marcel had a habit of stretching the truth." - Kevin Randle, Roswell in the 21st Century (2016)

BARBARA DUGGER

“It was Inez's granddaughter who said that Inez said that [Roswell sheriff] George Wilcox had seen the big burned area and the debris. He sent deputies out... which means it was probably in Chavez County and not Lincoln County where the Brazel (Foster) ranch was located. But note that the information is third-hand at best. While the granddaughter is a nice woman and telling us what she believes to be the truth, when we filter data through so many witnesses, [the facts] are easily distorted.” - Kevin Randle, blog post, 12/15/2002

STANTON FRIEDMAN ON PHIL CORSO: "Corso seems to be taking credit for the single-handed introduction of a whole host of new technologies into American industry. All this is supposedly derived from the filing cabinet of Roswell wreckage over which he was given control by General Trudeau. He is very vague about details, and there is no substantiation for any of the claims on fiber optics, Kevlar, laser weapons, microcircuits, etc." - Review of Corso's book, The Day After Roswell (1998)

b) Body witnesses:

BARNEY BARNETT

"There were major problems with [Barnett's] account, not least of which was a complete lack of corroborating witnesses, the lack of a date for his encounter, and the distance of the alleged 'Plains of San Agustin' crash site from Roswell, which was much too far for the RAAF to have become involved in any recovery operation there." - Tom Carey & Don Schmitt, Witness to Roswell, 2008

FRANK KAUFMANN

"In 1994, Randall and Schmitt dropped the Barney Barnett story altogether from their Roswell UFO crash scenario, and again moved the final crash site - now termed the "impact site" - to a site much closer to Roswell. This site - known as the Corn Ranch site or the Kaufmann site - later turned out to be bogus, as its location was based upon the testimony of a single, alleged eyewitness who himself was later discovered to have been a purveyor of false information." - ibid., 2008

GLENN DENNIS

"Dennis was found to have knowingly provided false information to investigators and must technically stand impeached as a Roswell witness. There is no way to get around that fact without believable, clarifying information from Dennis himself. To date, such information has not been forthcoming." - Carey/Schmitt, 2008

DENNIS, ANDERSON, KAUFMANN

“[Glenn] Dennis should be written out of the story completely, taking his place alongside Gerald Anderson and Frank Kaufmann... Twenty-five years ago, the [Roswell] case was much more robust than it is today. There are cracks in the case that we all have uncovered over the years. Tiny things that, by themselves, aren’t all that important but in the aggregate, weaken the case. It just isn’t as solid as it used to be.” - Kevin Randle, blog post, 4/13/2020

“One by one I learned that they hadn’t seen alien bodies, and their stories, while quite exciting, were not based in reality." – Kevin Randle, Roswell Revisited (2007)

HOW MANY WITNESSES?

"In the pro-UFO book The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt note the fact that Bill Moore, coauthor of The Roswell Incident (1980), interviewed 'more then seventy witnesses who had some knowledge of the [Roswell UFO crash] event.' Indeed, both Friedman and Moore, around the time of the initial publication of The Roswell Incident, boasted that they had interviewed more than 'ninety witnesses.'

     While these double-digit figures are certainly accurate, the presentation of such a seemingly impressive number of witnesses by themselves, without qualification, is misleading. The relevant issue is not how many witnesses were interviewed, but rather what type of witnesses (i.e., firsthand, secondhand), and how truthful and accurate their statements were.

     Unfortunately, a careful reading of Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz's Roswell Incident reveals that, despite the impressive claim of having 'interviewed more than seventy witnesses,' the testimonies of just twenty-five people are presented. Out of these twenty-five, only seven of them are firsthand sources who claim to have seen the alleged saucer debris, and one of these accounts is suspect. Of these seven people, however, only five claim to have actually handled the material personally, and one of them is adamant that it was not from an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

     The remainder of the professed 'witnesses' cited in The Roswell Incident are either secondhand sources (whose testimonies constitute hearsay) or people who saw no wreckage at all or were never present at the 'debris field' during the critical time. In other words, they are not actually witnesses in the true sense of the word."

- Kal Korff, Skeptical Inquirer, 1997

7. SCIENCE FICTION INFLUENCES

Behind the Flying Saucers (1950): indestructible material and dead aliens.

The Thing From Another World (1951): crash site gouge.

The Man From Planet X (1951): indestructible material.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): indestructible material.

When Worlds Collide (1951): bouncing spaceship.

Phantom From Space (1953): indestructible material.

It Came From Outer Space (1953): crashing fireball.

War of the Worlds (1953): crashing fireball.

War of the Worlds (1953): crash site gouge.

War of the Worlds (1953): suction cup fingers.

Target Earth (1954): indestructible material.

This Island Earth (1955): metallic space paper.

Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956): indestructible material.

The Brain Eaters (1958): indestructible material.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959): military cover-up.

12 to the Moon (1960): alien hieroglyphs.

The Creeping Terror (1964): indestructible material.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977): military cover-up.

Alien (1979): alien autopsy.

Alien (1979): six fingers (cf. Ray Santilli).

Hangar 18 (1980): military coverup.

Hangar 18 (1980): alien autopsy.

E.T. (1982): military cover-up; intimidation of child witnesses (cf. Frankie Rowe).

The Thing (1982): alien autopsy.

CRASHED ALIENS:

Aztec hoax (1949), Dimmick hoax (1950), The Man From Planet X (1951), The Thing From Another World (1951), It Came From Outer Space (1953), Phantom From Space (1953)

GOUGE AT THE CRASH SITE:

The Thing From Another World (1951)

War of the Worlds (1953)

BOUNCING SPACESHIP: When Worlds Collide (1951)

INDESTRUCTIBLE SPACE MATERIAL:

The Man From Planet X (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Phantom From Space (1953), Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956), The Brain Eaters (1958), The Cosmic Man (1959), The Creeping Terror (1964).

ALIEN HIEROGLYPHS:

This Island Earth (1955)

12 to the Moon (1960)

METALLIC SPACE PAPER:

This Island Earth (1955)

SUCTION CUP FINGERS:

War of the Worlds (1953)

ALIEN AUTOPSY:

The Thing (1982)

COMMERCIAL APPLICATION OF ALIEN TECHNOLOGY:

Aztec hoax (1949)

GOVERNMENT COVERUP:

Maury Island hoax (1947), Aztec hoax (1949), Barker hoax (1956), Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Carr hoax (1974), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Hangar 18 (1980), E.T. (1982)

QUOTES:

BEHIND THE FLYING SAUCERS (1950): "The saucer...did not appear to come from any part of this Earth...

     Under research the materials used in the saucer had disclosed two metals unknown to us. This convinced [Dr. Gee] and his co-scientist that the saucers were not likely made by us or rival powers...

     Their outer construction was of a light metal much resembling aluminum but so hard no application of heat could break it down...

     It had not yet been determined what the two materials found on the ship were. Heat had not been able to melt one down, not even up to 10,000 degrees. It was strong, it was light. A dozen men could stand on it and not dent it; two men could raise up one end of the ship, it was that light.

     More than 150 experiments had been tried to break down the gear structure of the ship, with no success... one ship had defied all effort to get inside of it, despite the use of $35,000 worth of diamond drills."

THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951): “This metal [is] harder than steel, it has tremendous tensile strength, and it weighs only a fifth as much as steel.” “This [glass] must be tremendously resistant.” “I can't think of anything known to man equally so.” “And this you believe - from out of space?” “What else?”

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951): "This isn't any metal I know; probably some new alloy."

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951): “We've tried everything from a blow torch to a diamond drill...this is the toughest material I ever saw, General. For hardness & strength it's out of this world.” “I can tell you, officially, that's where it came from.”

PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953): “It...won't cut...” “This stuff is tougher than nylon...it doesn't burn either.” “[It's] apparently indestructible.” “I've seen a lot of interesting alloys, but never anything like this.” “Repels acid like a raincoat repels water.”

TARGET EARTH (1954): "[The robot's made of] surgical steel...but how they make it pliable in the joints is something else." ... "Practically indestructible..." ... "[The bullet] didn't even ricochet. Just flattened down like a wad of chewing gum." ... "I don't know how that [cathode ray] tube was cracked originally, but we'll never do it with a bullet, even at point blank range."

THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955): “This isn't paper – it's some kind of metal.” “These symbols, they're like a foreign language.”

EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956): “It weighs only a few grams...It resists everything we used on it, including the most extreme temperatures.”

THE BRAIN EATERS (1958): "This thing is indestructible... as you can see, not a mark. I've tried everything... diamond bit drills, metal-eating acids, all with no success."

THE COSMIC MAN (1959): “It's some kind of impervious metal, or whatever it's made of.” “Our cutting equipment...didn't make a mark on it.”

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959): "I saw a flying saucer...soon as we landed, big Army brass grabbed us and made us swear to secrecy about the whole thing... I saw a flying object that couldn't possibly be from this planet, but I can't say a word. I'm muzzled by Army brass. I can't even admit I saw the thing." ... "It was covered up by the higher echelon."

12 TO THE MOON (1960): "Looks like hieroglyphics." "It's not Egyptian, nor African." "Looks like oriental picture writing."

THE CREEPING TERROR (1964): "The super-tough alloys of the spacecraft were not even dented by Martin's hammering."

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977): "The Army is getting us out of here cause they don't want any witnesses."

8. ROSWELL RESEARCHER CREDIBILITY

SHERIDAN CAVITT ON ROSWELL RESEARCHERS: "Many of the things I have mentioned to [Friedman/Moore, Randle/Schmitt] have either been taken out of context, misrepresented, or just plain made up." - USAF interview, 1993

STANTON FRIEDMAN ON RANDLE/SCHMITT: “The tools of the propagandists seem to have been used far more than those of investigative journalism or science.” - Review of UFO Crash At Roswell (1991)

JAMIE SHANDERA ON RANDLE/SCHMITT:

"[Randle & Schmitt's] interviews are so ambiguous they must interpret what the subject said after the fact. This technique leads to hypothesizing, which in just a few short paragraphs turns into fact." - MUFON Journal, 1991

KEVIN RANDLE ON DON SCHMITT: “Don Schmitt...is a pathological liar who cares only for his own promotion... I believed him to be honest, I believed him to be honorable...I was taken in by him...he can't be trusted to tell the truth. If you listen to what he says [regarding his Roswell research], you had better check it yourself.” - Email to fellow UFOlogists, 1995

STANTON FRIEDMAN ON STANTON FRIEDMAN: “As I gave more lectures, I found that I enjoyed speaking, and that people believed me no matter what I said. After all, I was a nuclear physicist for Westinghouse.” - Top Secret/Majic (2005)

DON SCHMITT ON DON SCHMITT: “I sacrificed my better judgement by being overly trusting [of supposed experts] when I should have known better.” - public apology (2015) for stating that the Atacama mummy was an alien.

ROSWELL RESEARCHER CREDULITY

The saucer on the cover (c. 1965) is from well-known hoaxer Daniel Fry, one of the "contactees" of the 1950s.

The saucer on this cover is from the 1947 Rhodes hoax; it's a shoe heel.

Same shoe heel.

MAJESTIC 12

"The 'MJ-12' documents are a group of sensational papers that supposedly prove a government cover-up regarding the 1947 'Roswell Incident' - a case of an alleged crashed flying saucer and recovered alien bodies. For example, among the papers was a memorandum to the secretary of defense bearing the authentic-appearing signature of President Harry S. Truman. The documents surfaced in 1987 on a roll of film, sent anonymously to obscure UFOlogist Jamie Shandera who in turn shared them with Roswell researchers William L. Moore and Stanton T. Friedman.

     That the documents were available only on film was suspicious. It effectively precluded examination of the paper and ink, and many re- searchers suspected the text and markings were simply done with old typewriters in conjunction with a cut-and-paste technique, using photocopied elements from genuine documents. Several examiners con- tributed to the case. My involvement was encouraged by Jerome Clark of the Center for UFO Studies. Examination revealed suspicious format errors in the Truman memo, erroneous pseudomilitary date features in an alleged Eisenhower briefing paper, and other glaring errors. The Truman signature proved to have been transplanted, by photocopying from a genuine Truman letter of October 1, 1947-a fact established forensically. The credulous Friedman thought the correspondence of one signature to another was proof of authenticity; instead, it was proof of spuriousness, since no two signatures are ever exactly alike (see Nickell with Fischer 1992, 81-105)."

- Joe Nickell, CSI Paranormal: Investigating Strange Mysteries (2012)

APPENDIX: ROSWELL NEWS COVERAGE

"RAAF Captures Flying Disk On Ranch in Roswell Region"

This was the top story in the Roswell Daily Record on July 8, 1947.

In recent years, whenever a headline is displayed in books and documentaries about Roswell, this is invariably the one that is shown, often cropped to appear like a larger story. Many headlines on other papers were notably smaller. A few examples:

1) Daily Alaska Empire (Juneau):

Major top story:

"NATIONWIDE COAL STRIKE AVERTED"

Other top stories:

"ARMS TALKS APPROVED BY SEC. COUNCIL"

"WILD ANIMAL CIRCUS TRAIN IS DERAILED"

"AMERICAN LEAGUE IN WIN 2 TO 1"

Also:

"'Flying Saucers' Are Spotted in North Carolina; 43 States Have Now Seen Mystery Disks."

This piece mentions Roswell, but the Roswell story, the biggest story in human history according to UFO enthusiasts, didn't even get its own headline.

2) Visalia Times-Delta (Visalia, CA):

Top stories:

"Signing of Coal Pact Averts National Strike"

"Income Tax Bill Passes House"

Also:

"Flying Saucer Found on Ranch in New Mexico"

This headline was accompanied by a large photo of Father Brasky of Grafton, Wisconsin, holding his "crashed saucer" - a saw blade. The photo took more space on the front page than the Roswell headline and text combined.

3) Chicago Daily News

Top story:

"AMERICAN ALLSTARS WIN 2-1"

Also:

"Army Finds Air Saucer on Ranch in New Mexico"

4) Sacramento Bee

Roswell shares space with the tax cut and the labor agreement.

Now skip ahead 3 decades:

5) National Enquirer, Feb. 28, 1980

"NEW NO-DIET WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT"

"WKRP: Surprising Way Smash Success Has Changed Their Lives"

"How You Can Easily Become A Millionaire"

"Rita Hayworth's Daughter and Ted Kennedy's Nephew In Love"

"Psychic Message From the Grave Clears Suspect of Murder"

Roswell - the biggest story in the annals of human history - didn't even make the front page of the National Enquirer.

ROSWELL TIMELINE

1938: Martian invasion...turns out to be Orson Welles' radio play of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

10/31/'38: "Martian" weather balloon in a tree, shot full of holes.

1943 First use of rawin* in UK.

*Rawin: Radar-Wind detector attached to a weather balloon to determine wind speeds at high altitudes. Constructed of balsa wood and paper coated with aluminum foil (replaced by Mylar in the early 1950s), they resemble a star-shaped kite.

1944 Limited use of rawin in UK. May account for some reports of "foo fighters" during WWII.

1945 Ray Palmer, Amazing Stories editor, publishes I Remember Lemuria, the first of the ostensibly "true" Shaver Mysteries about subterranean humanoids with advanced ET technology. Richard Shaver had paranoid delusions of these creatures beaming Atlantean past-life memories into his mind through an electric welder in a Ford plant in the early 1930s. He spent a decade in a mental hospital before corresponding with Palmer in 1943. They co-authored the Shaver Mysteries, boosting Amazing's circulation and seeding the US population with tens of thousands of people who, prior to 1947, already believed we were surrounded by highly advanced aliens.

11/4/45 Japanese military launch "fugo" balloons in a top secret, and ultimately unsuccessful, attack on the continental United States.

1945 Rawin use in Okinawa

5/5/45 Japanese fugo bomb kills 6 in OR

1946

1/46 News: rawin will improve meteorology

2/46 News: rawin will be in use "by 1947"

8/46 News: rawin coming "soon"

10/46 Navy demos new rawin balloons

11/46 Weathermen "now using radar"

11/46 Mogul* launches begin

*Project Mogul: to detect Soviet nuclear tests, the US military attached sensitive microphones to fixed-altitude balloons, where they could hover within an atmospheric sound channel. Mogul was a top secret project. Some say this lead to a coverup of Roswell. However, there is no evidence that there was ever a significant coverup of any kind in association with the Roswell incident. Mogul was already declassified by the time the Roswell conspiracy theory was being investigated in 1979. There was nothing to hide.

1947

6/4 NYU balloon launch #4, Alamagordo

6/14 Mac Brazel finds debris on the Foster Ranch, west of Corona NM

6/24 Kenneth Arnold* sees 9 "flying disks" in WA. They resemble "the tail of a box kite."

*Arnold sighting: These objects were, undoubtedly, components of a weather balloon. So, when crashed "saucers" were discovered in Texas, Ohio, New Jersey and New Mexico, they found genuine crashed saucers. This is why saucermania ended with Roswell after 2 weeks. The saucers had been officially identified: they were weather balloons. 30 years later, when Maj. Jesse Marcel bragged to friends about handling an actual flying saucer, he wasn't lying; only omitting the historical context.

6/26 Arnold story makes national news

6/28 More disk stories emerge

6/29 Rawin debris, Elephant Butte, NM

7/2 Dan Wilmot* UFO (likely a plane)

*Dan Wilmot, a Roswell resident, had nothing to do with the Mac Brazel debris, 80 miles north of Roswell. He was interviewed in the famous Roswell Daily Record front page story because he saw a flying disc. His sighting was July 2nd. This is the source for the popular myth (Friedman, '79) of the Roswell crash occurring on that date, two weeks after Mac Brazel discovered the Foster Ranch debris.

7/3 Flying disk mania sweeps the nation

7/3 Barney Barnett* diary: spent day at the office; Herbert Dick alone at San Agustin

*Barney Barnett: Witnessed an air force dummy drop on the plains of San Agustin, NM, around 1953. He related to close friends an eerie description of strange humanoid bodies hanging outside a crashed UFO, and a red-haired military officer who told him to leave because this was official government business. Barnett's story unwittingly becomes part of the Roswell myth in the late '70s, a decade after his death. His 1947 diary entries reveal that he was not on the San Agustin plains on the day of the supposed saucer crash.

7/4 First flying disc photo (Lake City, WA) is of a weather balloon

7/4 Rawin debris found in Hillsboro, TX

7/4 UAL 105 crew report 9 disks over ID (probably birds/planes) - widely-publicized

7/5 Rawin debris found in Circleville, OH

7/5 (evening) Brazel, in Corona, hears about flying disks (having no phone, radio or newspapers, he was unaware of the flying saucer craze of the previous week-and-a-half).

7/6 Hoaxes in Grafton WI (Brasky's saw blade), Denver CO (fake disk), Bozeman MT (Baird's close encounter)

7/6 Brazel gathers Foster Ranch debris

7/7 Rawin debris in Oxford OH

7/7 Phoenix AZ: 1st fake disc photo (Rhodes)

7/7 Arnold suggests disks might be ETs

7/7 Brazel drives to Roswell, talks to Sheriff George Wilcox

7/7 Wilcox calls RAAF

7/7 Jesse Marcel follows Brazel to Foster ranch; spends the night in a shack

7/8 Second rawin in Circleville, OH

7/8 Hoaxes in Texas (basket lid, "Army" disk) - - Shreveport LA hoax

- Cavitt & Rickett drive to Corona

- Marcel, Cavitt & Rickett gather debris

- Cavitt returns to RAAF

- Walter Haut issues press release

- Marcel arrives with debris, doesn't show anyone at Roswell, heads straight to the tarmac

- Marcel flies debris to Ft. Worth

- Marcel & Gen. Roger Ramey can't fit debris into disk shape

- Ramey thinks it's weather related

- Marcel argues otherwise

- Ramey summons Newton to his office

- Ramey & Marcel comment on "disk" to press

- Irving Newton I.D.s debris as rawin target

- Marcel still argues otherwise

- Ramey issues "disk" retraction to the press: it's just a weather balloon

- Lydia Sleppy claims that, while working at radio station KOAT in Albuquerque, she was admonished by an FBI Teletype not to wire a story (note: her incident might have been in relation to Roswell, but it also might have been the Aztec or Dimmick hoaxes, which circulated in 1949-50, or a hoax of her own, as there are grounds for questioning her credibility - see Pflock, 2001).

7/9 Rawin debris found in Adrian MO

7/9-10 Brazel, tired of press interviews, says he'll keep future finds to himself (later misinterpreted as his being silenced by the government).

7/10 North Hollywood CA hoax

7/11 Twin Falls, Idaho: a “crashed saucer” is investigated by police, FBI & army intel, who eventually learn it's a hoax perpetrated by four teenagers.

~7/20 Maury Island hoax

9/47 LA psychic says disks are ETs

9/21 Delano, MN. Tongue-in-cheek story in the Delano Eagle sparks panic & outrage over the extrajudicial police killing of a criminal named "Arctomys Monax." The public furor subsides when word gets around that this is merely the Latin term for a woodchuck.

1948

Two top secret memos discuss disks ("What are they? Wish we could capture one.")

11/3/48 "Dewey defeats Truman" headline.

1949 Scully articles feature dead ETs (Aztec).*

9/50 Scully book features dead ETs (Aztec).

*Aztec hoax: two con men, Silas Newton & Leo Gebaur, tell a fake crashed ET story to humorist Frank Scully, who writes an article in Vanity Fair in 1949. The article generates letters to Newton & Gebaur, who compile a "sucker list" from the correspondents who believe their tale. They use this to launch a scheme by which they buy cheap land & sell it at a steep markup with the promise of oil & mineral deposits found using "advanced technology" from the saucers they claim landed in Aztec, NM, in 1948. Scully's bestseller Behind The Flying Saucers (1950), is one of the first two saucer books. Introduces much of what would become standard saucer lore, including indestructible material.

1950 Donald Keyhoe's book The Flying Saucers Are Real alleges government coverup.

3/50 Rawin crash, Concord PA

1951 Films feature indestructible material

(Man From Planet X, Day the Earth Stood Still).

7/52 Saucer wave of 1952

9/52 Rawin crash, Mastic, NY

7/53 Rawin crash, Fulton county, GA

1953 First dummy drops from Alamogordo, NM.

1953 George Adamski book features hieroglyphs.

1953 Newton/Gebauer guilty of fraud.

1956 KC-97 crash near Roswell (possibly inspires Glenn Dennis account over 30 years later)

1956 Gray Barker: They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers book introduces the Men In Black myth

1957 Silpho Moor hoax includes alien hieroglyphs

1959 Last dummy drops from Alamogordo

1966 Sensationalized account of the 19-year-old Roswell story appears in UFOs: Serious Business by Frank Edwards. Claims Brazel saw a “flaming object” crash on his farm & that the Air Force showed photos of a “pie tin” to cover it up.

10/74 Robert Carr hoax, resurrecting Aztec; inspiration for Hangar 18 film.

1974 Bermuda Triangle book by Charles Berlitz, who will later co-author The Roswell Incident. Book includes theories about UFOs and government cover-ups.

1975 Larry Kusche writes a refutation of Berlitz, noting his omission of important facts, his geographical rearrangement of others, and his willingness to embellish stories. While Berlitz' book sold a quarter of a million copies, Kusche sold a mere 6,000.

1976 Ray Stanford book: Socorro Saucer in Pentagon Pantry

6/77 Roswell incident mentioned in Chicago Tribune. No arrests or disappeared journalists.

11/77 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (theme: government coverup of ETs).

1?/78 Hynek LP features 3 crashed disk stories w/bodies, coverup & indestructible material (Del Rio '48, a '51 crash w/a dead ET & a story which sounds like Aztec).

1?/78 Marcel brags about handling "disk"

2/19/78 Project UFO Ep 1

2/20/78 Ufologist Stanton Friedman is told about Jesse Marcel

2/21/78 Friedman calls Marcel, who can't recall year of his saucer incident

4/7/78 Marcel interviewed. Says "To get [the press] off my back I told them we were recovering a downed weather balloon." No mention of hieroglyphs, but he does recall material you couldn't bend "with your bare hands."

7/78 Ufologist Leonard Stringfield lectures about Marcel. Knows approximate date of Roswell (July '47), but doesn't share this info with Friedman.

10/78 Barnett story is told,* 2nd or 3rd hand, to Friedman; date of incident is "late 40s or early 50s."

11/78 Sleppy can't recall year of her incident

*Barnett story: Two friends of the late Barney Barnett attended a Stanton Friedman "UFOs Are Real" lecture in October of 1978 and tell Friedman the Barnett crashed saucer story. Friedman instantly combines three unrelated accounts - Sleppy, Marcel and Barnett - into one New Mexico crashed saucer story without knowing the dates these incidents occurred. Barnett's somewhere-around-1953 story was given an exact date: July 3, 1947. The supposed San Agustin saucer crash, on this date, is solely the invention of Stanton Friedman in 1979.

1/79 William Moore has a lead on the possible year

2/79 Moore finds Roswell news article

4/79 Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. tells Moore of "hieroglyphs" (says he had previously withheld this info so as not to sound like the wild imagination of an 11-year-old [his age in 1947])

1979 Philadelphia Experiment book by Charles Berlitz & William Moore

11/79 Friedman's UFOs Are Real doc introduces Roswell case

12?/79 Bill Brazel describes strange Mylar foil found "over the years" (source of later descriptions by Frankie Rowe and others)

12/79? Charles Moore tells William Moore he thinks the Roswell debris was from one of his launches. This doesn't make it into the book.

2/80 Marcel interview in National Enquirer

7/80 – Hangar 18 released. Theme: captured saucer, dead aliens, government coverup.

9/80 Roswell Incident book by Charles Berlitz & William Moore. The book is mostly the work of Moore & Stanton Friedman, but the latter insisted on Berlitz being named as author in order to sell more books based on name recognition.

9/80 Marcel interviewed on In Search Of...

2/17/81 The Globe runs Roswell story. After perusing the tabloid in line at a supermarket, Pappy Henderson supposedly tells family he flew the Roswell ETs to Wright-Patterson air base (related 8 years later by his widow).

1984 MJ-12 forgeries (probably composed by Richard Doty) appear on the doorstep of ufologist Jamie Shandera.

1988 UFO Cover-up Live. TV special w/William Moore, Jamie Shandera and a disguised Richard Doty.

9/89 Unsolved Mysteries segment w/Pappy Henderson's widow.

1989 Glen Dennis (Roswell "caskets" hoaxer) calls Unsolved Mysteries.

11/89 Bob Lazar (Area 51 hoaxer) calls George Knapp (ET propagandist from 8 Now News in Las Vegas, NV).

2/90 Unsolved Mysteries rerun; Gerald Anderson (Roswell bodies hoaxer) calls show

1991 Kevin Randle/Don Schmitt book 1 (Dennis story)

1992 Friedman book Crash at Corona (Anderson story)

1993 X Files tv show

1993 Congressman Steven Schiff FOIA request re Roswell

1994 Randle/Schmitt book 2 (Kaufmann)

1994 CBS 48 Hrs segment

1994 USAF Roswell Report

1994 Roswell TV movie

4/95 Ragsdale moves crash site 55 miles west of Roswell

1995 Santilli hoax / Fox show

4/96 Anon Roswell letter/metal sent to Art Bell

1996 Independence Day plot includes Roswell & Area 51

1997 Philip Corso ET tech hoax

1997 USAF Roswell Report: Case Closed

1997 Haut says Roswell debris was a balloon [KTVU 4/23/97] and refers to UFOs as “just a bunch of hooey” [CNI]

1998? Clifford Stone book, UFOs Are Real

2001 Karl Pflock book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts & the Will to Believe

2009 Carey/Schmitt book Witness to Roswell

2013 Atacama mummy controversy

2017 Kevin Randle says he is “no longer sure what actually happened” at Roswell and that “the case for ET involvement is no longer robust”

July 8 Timeline

AP Wires Burn With 'Captured Disk' Story

It all started a little before 4:26 p.m. yesterday when an Associated Press bulletin came over the wire.

The bulletin said, "Roswell, N.M. - The army air forces here today announced a flying disk had been found on a ranch near Roswell and is in army possession."

Then things began moving fast. Four minutes later, the first add came on the bulletin. It said that Lt. Warren Haught [sic], public information officer of Roswell field, announced the object had been found "sometime last week." And the story also said the object had been sent on "to higher headquarters."

First Add Arrives

At 4:55, the second add came telling where the "disk" had been found. (The 4:55-story was "95," an AP designation of priority of messages, showing it is next in importance to a bulletin or bulletin matter.) Then the second add was repeated for all papers needing it. The repeated story was timed at 5:08. This repeat was followed immediately with another which explained that the story had been broken by a radio reporter. This came at 5:09.

Another "95" was sent at 5:10 addressed to editors. This announced, for the information of newspaper editors, that the Associated Press had begun to go to work on the story.

Then the movement really rolled into high gear.

Washington Says Nothing

One minute later, at 5:11, the third add to the bulletin announced, "The war department in Washington had nothing to say immediately about the reported find." That meant the AP was on the job of investigating.

Following that, there was a breather. AP sent other news, but there was no doubt that reporters, both in New Mexico and in Washington, were at work.

At 5:53, the AP story began to be moved. Another bulletin was sent with a Washington dateline. It was a story about a statement by Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, saying the "disk" had been sent to Wright field, Ohio.

Typographical Error

At 5:56 and 5:59, adds to the bulletin were sent. And at 6, there was a correction to a typographical error, followed with a continuation of the 5:59 add.

Finally, at two minutes after 6; AP had put together a complete story and started transmission of the "First Lead Disk."

It started like this: "Albuquerque, N.M. The army air forces has gained possession of a flying disk, Lt. Warren Haught, public information officer at Roswell army airfield, announced today."

That lead was to be integrated with the 5:56 and 5:59 stories and to be used with subsequent stories to be sent.

After another add at 6:04, a story from Oelwein, Iowa, was sent through of an Iowa farmer who claimed he had found a disk.

But that story, at 6:31, was pretty well ignored. There evidently was no official backing.

At 6:59, there was more from New Mexico, and at 7:03, another First Lead story, dated Washington.

The Washington story gave the first real hint that all wasn't solved. There were possibilities, it stated, that the object was only a meteorological device.

General To Speak

A new bulletin came through at 7:15, saying that General Ramey would speak over the National Broadcasting company network.

Another "95," listed "Precede Washington. Lead all disk," came over the wire at 7:29. This meant that it was a lead to go at the start of a story to contain all material sent to that time.

The "95" was broken at 7:29 for another bulletin.

It said, "Fort Worth-Roswell's celebrated 'flying disk' was rudely stripped of its glamor by a Fort Worth army airfield weather officer who late today identified the object as a weather balloon." The bulletin was sent at 7:30, just three hours and four minutes after the story had first broken and two hours and 20 minutes after the Associated Press reporters had be- gun investigations.

That was the word that many editors had been hoping for. The people who had been debunking the flying disk story weren't quite certain whether they wanted a so- lution to be found. Of course, a big story on flying disks would be fine, most of them thought, but it's a good story as it is. A solution might be more than embarrassing. It might be calamitous. What if there really were "men from Mars!"

After the bulletin, the rest of the "95," which was already on the tape, limped through. But the story already was killed. And AP reporters could relax for a while until someone else "found" a flying saucer.

- Daily Illini, July 9, 1947

###

SOURCES:

Adamski - Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953)

Arnold/Palmer - Coming of the Saucers (1953)

Barker - They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956)

Baring-Gould - Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents & Strange Events (1890)

Berliner/Friedman - Crash At Corona (1992)

Berlitz/Moore - The Roswell Incident (1980)

Bloecher - Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 (1967)

Carey/Schmitt - Witness to Roswell (2009)

Doss - Roswell Incident Exposed (2018)

Friedman - Top Secret/Majic (2005)

Hyneck - The Hyneck Report (1977)

Keyhoe - The Flying Saucers Are Real (1950)

McAndrews - Roswell Report (1994)

McAndrews - Roswell: Case Closed (1997)

Nickell - CSI Paranormal (2012)

Oudemans - The Great Sea Serpent (1892)

Pflock - Roswell: Inconvenient Facts & the Will to Believe (2001)

Randle - Operation Roswell (2002)

Randle - Roswell in the 21st Century (2016)

Randle - Roswell Revisited (2007)

Randle/Schmitt - UFO Crash At Roswell (1991)

Randle/Schmitt - The Truth About The UFO Crash At Roswell (1994)

Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World (1996)

Scully - Behind the Flying Saucers (1950)

Wennergren - The Flying Saucers Episode (1948)

PERIODICALS:

Amazing Stories, 1945-47

Arizona Daily Star July 13, 1947

Atlanta constitution Jul 11, 1947

Chicago Daily News, July 8, 1947

Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1947

Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1977

Congressional Record, 1946

Coolidge Examiner, Feb. 8, 1946

Daily Alaska Empire, July 8, 1947

Daily Illini, July 9, 1947

El Paso Herald-Post, July 9, 1947

Engineer's Digest (Coast Guard), May 1947

Evening Star (Washington DC), Oct. 27, 1946

Fate magazine, 1948

Ft. Covington Sun, Aug 8, 1946

Ft. Worth Star July 9, 1947

Fulton Patriot, Nov 7 1946

Globe-Independent (Hagerstown MD), Aug 22, 1946

L.A. Daily News, March 4, 1947

Lincoln Times, Jan. 31, 1946

London Daily Telegraph, July 8, 1947

MUFON Journal, 1991

National Enquirer, Feb 12, 1980

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 9, 1947

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug 15, 1996

Press Democrat (Santa Rosa CA), Feb. 15, 1946

Prevailing Winds, 1995

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947

Roswell Daily Record, Jan 2, 1981

Sacramento Bee, July 8, 1947

Skeptical Inquirer, 1997

Skeptics UFO Newsletter (1989-2003)

True magazine, 1952

Union County Journal July 10, 1947

Visalia Times-Delta, July 8, 1947

Wyoming Eagle, July 9, 1947

FILM, TELEVISION & RADIO:

ABC radio news bulletin, July 8, 1947

Alien (1979)

Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? (1995)

CBS 48 Hours (1994)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

The Cosmic Monsters (1958)

The Creeping Terror (1964)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Eyewitnesses News, 1978

Hangar 18 (1980)

Independence Day (1996)

In Search of... (1980)

Larry King Live (1994)

The Man From Planet X (1951)

Phantom From Space (1953)

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Roswell (1994)

Superman (1978)

Target Earth (1954)

The Thing (1982)

The Thing From Another World (1951)

This Island Earth (1955)

12 to the Moon (1960)

UFO Coverup Live (1988)

UFOs: A Need To Know (1992)

UFOs Are Real (1979)

UFOs: What's Going On? (1985)

Unsolved Mysteries (1989)

When Worlds Collide (1951)

(C) 2021, 2024 R. A. Henning

Center For IFO Studies