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| Roswell |
| [ What is it? ] | [ The Aftermath ] | [ The Conclusion ] |
 [ What is it? ] |
On the night of 2nd July 1947, Mac Brazel a rancher from near Corona, New
Mexico heard a loud crash. The next day he went out Horseback riding with
a neighbour and came upon a field with debris scattered about. The debris
field was 3/4 of a mile long and 300 feet wide. It was oriented in a
northwest to southeast direction. There was a gouge in the northwest side
of the debris field that was 500 feet long and 10 feet wide. The debris on
the field mostly consisted of I-beams and parchment like, paper thin pieces
of metal material. The material was very light in weight, a dull gray in
color, and most pieces were 6 to 7 inches in length. Some pieces that were
even thinner than paper could not be broken in half, cut or burnt.
Mac Brazel collected several pieces of the debris and went back to his
ranch. On July 6, Brazel went into Roswell to report what he had seen
and to show a piece of the debris to sheriff Wilcox. The sheriff decided
to report the incident to the authorities at Roswell Army Air Field. Roswell AAF was, in 1947, home to the 509th Bomb Group. The 509th flew B-29s that carried Atomic Bombs. In the same general area and comprising a triangle were Los Alamos, New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was tested, and White Sands Missile Test Center. Authorities at Roswell were curious enough to send a detail out to Mac's place to have a look at the object, fearing, perhaps, that one of the B-29s had lost a part in flight. (Nothing was ever reported missing in subsequent press releases).
During this time Frank Joyce called in from
the local radio station to see if anything newsworthy was happening
around town. Brazel gave him the information about what he had found.
Major Jesse A. Marcel and a few other military personal arrived from
the base only a few minutes after the sheriff had finished talking to
the people at the base. Brazel and the military personal left and went
back to the Ranch. The next morning (July 7) they went to the crash
sight. After they arrived at the meadow, they went ballistic, cordoned off the area, gathered up every scrap of the object and carried it back to Roswell AAF. A few hours later, someone issued a press release stating emphatically that Roswell had in its possession an alien spacecraft - a flying saucer! The next press release downgraded the metallic-like flying saucer to a rubber and wood weather balloon.
On July 8, the military came back and sealed off the area, They took
Brazel into custody. That same day they found a second crash site two
and 1/2 miles southeast of the first. Barney Barnett and 4
archaeologists had stumbled onto the new site a few minutes before the
military had arrived there. At the site they found a "pretty good sized
metallic dull gray object" and 4 small alien bodies. They were 4 to 5
feet tall, with large pear shaped heads, small bodies and skinny arms
and legs. They had two large eyes, no ears and no hair. Their skin was
pinkish grey and leathery. They were wearing a one piece grey suits. The
civilians were escorted out of the area when the military arrived.
On July 9th the military escorted Brazel to the radio station , there
he told Frank Joyce that he saw a weather balloon. He left again with the
military and didn't get back to his ranch until around July 15. Later
when asked about what had happened Brazel said he had given a oath and
could not talk about it.
The Incident remained closed and the public and UFO research
organizations at large accepted the weather balloon story until 1970 when
Jesse A. Marcel broke the silence and told his part in the story.
The case has been extensively researched by Stanton Friedman and independantly
by the team of Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt. Between them they have discovered
around 200 witnesses who claim to have been involved in the recovery or
subsequent handling of the Roswell material. Researcher John Keel has suggested
that the Roswell material might be the remains of a Japanesse Feugo balloon, a
balloon with a bomb attached launched towards the USA during World War 2. These
were still being discovered in remote parts of the USA in the late 1940s.
In 1994 at the request of US Senator Steven Schiff the General Audit Office
started an enquiry into the incident and subsequent cover-up. The GAO
required the US Air Force to reopen the enquiry. After a nine month study
the Air Force announced that the Roswell object had not been a weather balloon
but a balloon involved in a top secret project to study Soviet missile
launches. Many UFO investigators remain unconvinced by this explanation.
This encounter has been dubbed the "Roswell Incident" and, even after 45 years, has refused to go away, despite the government's attempts to deny that anything unusual happened. Later reports, real or imagined, indicate that the "weather balloon" was placed aboard a railway flat car and transported to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for examination.
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| [ What is it? ] | [ The Aftermath ] | [ The Conclusion ] |
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