Roswell finally cracked
It appears that we finally managed to crack open the mother of all UFO crashes, Roswell 1947.
It appears that we finally managed to crack open the mother of all UFO crashes, Roswell 1947.
For many years there have been speculation about the crash being a research balloon of some kind, a sensible explanation enough, though the idea that it was a Soviet contraption was absolutely ludicrous (the Soviet Union had spies pretty much everywhere at the time so no need for "secret" devices).
This explanation proved to be correct, though there are very interesting twists in the story.
Starting in 1945 NATO intelligence knew that it was only a matter of time before the USSR denotated an A-bomb: PROJECT MANHATTAN had been infiltrated by Soviet spies and the USSR had first class physicists of her own.
The Americans started a crash program to detect nuclear blasts from the propagation of sound waves through the upper atmosphere. This program was code-named MOGUL (Americans have this obsession with all capitals project names…) and was highly classified. It used high-flying balloons loaded with sound-recording equipment and apparently leveraged heavily on Japanese fusen bakudan technology (during WWII the Japanese had launched hundreds of high-flying balloons, named fusen bakudan, loaded with explosive and incendiary devices to bomb the US). The program turned out to be a fiasco and was shut down in 1950.
Incidentally Roswell was at the time home to a bomber squadron trained to use nuclear weapons and as such had very high security clearances. Not only that but local conditions were considered to be very well suited to ballon launches so it was an obvious choice.
On the 4th of June 1947 a MOGUL balloon fell due to technical problems after the launch. And the rest as they say is history. Apparently the base PR department came up with the UFO story as an half-baked attempt to cover up the loss of their secret airship (what probably happened during the Rendlesham case) but when some high brass in Washington got wind of the story they were ordered to back pedal immediately in no uncertain terms since a nuclear-armed air force believing in little green men from Mars was felt to be rather embarassing!
Curiously there’s another twist in the story: the "UFO" was said to be covered in "hierogliphics". It has since turned out that MOGUL ballons carried radar-reflective stripes and that these reflectors were built by a toy factory using large stripes of decorative tape printed with flowers, teddy bears and other amusing figures.
It has been alleged in the past that the balloon was actually launched as part of the HELIOS/SKYHOOK project and that the test monkeys carried aboard were mistaken for little aliens.
This is incorrect: the first HELIOS balloon was launched in September 1947, three months after the Roswell incident. Not only that but SKYHOOK was never a classified project and in fact ballons carried messages on the line "if you find this please contact… You will be rewarded" in a number of languages.
Again truth turned out perhaps less exciting than a flying saucer carrying a full crew of little green men but is nonetheless worth investigating!
Re: Roswell finally cracked
The problem with Roswell was not in the event, but in the sheer number of cover stories the Airforce tried to use. This led to speculation running wild, since they were feeding too many obvious lies to the public.
Further, the US Congresses General Accounting Office produced a report that said that back in 1994. Ther are some problems with it, which I’ll just quote from Wikipedia, since it summerizes them nicely and I’m lazy atm:
"Critiques of the report
Critics, like Kevin Randle[6](p. 214) and Stanton Friedman, pointed out that this “1,000-page report” was in fact a 23-page report with copious supporting documents including “more information about Project Mogul than anybody would ever want.”[7](p. 113)
Friedman described the report as being "loaded with false information and [using] the standard tactics of the propagandist: selective choice of data, name-calling, and false reasoning ad nauseum [sic]." [7] (p. 112) Randle described the report as being "speculation based on a limited review of the evidence available and limited interviews conducted with a mission in mind. It is, in fact, just another page in the book of the conspiracy of silence."[6] (p. 222)
There were several specific areas of the report seen as defective by critics:
No documentation for Mogul: For all its stated reliance on documented facts, critics pointed out, the report concluded Mogul was the likely explanation even though no documents linking Mogul to the incident were discovered, and no Mogul equipment was produced to match the contemporary descriptions. Mark Rodeghier and Mark Chesney said: “It is clear… that the Air Force couldn’t find any physical evidence that proves or documentation that clearly states that a balloon from Project Mogul was recovered… Second, the Air Force has no Mogul balloon material from 1947 to show to witnesses to provide a positive identification.”[8] Randle makes a similar point.[6](p. 222)
Mogul material not like the debris reported recovered: Whatever was recovered in 1947, it didn’t match the Report’s descriptions of Mogul material, as described by many witnesses, said some critics. "The retrieved material, unlike components of Mogul Balloons, had very special properties including very light weight and very great strength,"[9] (p. 4) said Friedman. "There is no way all this [Mogul] junk… could have been thought worth a long trip to Roswell [as farmer Mac Brazel did]"[9] said Friedman (p. 7)
Only five witnesses interviewed, and non-credible witnesses: The Air Force sought interviews with only five witnesses, and three of those were involved with Mogul, which further suggested to the critics that they were seeking corroboration of a preferred theory. Rodeghier and Chesney: “We surely couldn’t expect the Air Force to interview every person named in the literature on Roswell, but to have interviewed only five persons calls into question the serious intention and true goal of the investigation.” [8]
Critics focused on the testimony of several of those witnesses interviewed and cast doubts on their credibility, in particular Sheridan Cavitt’s. Friedman describes Cavitt’s account of a small amount of debris consistent with a weather balloon, with no sign of a heavy-object impact as “[s]imple, straightforward, and certainly false”[7] (p. 114) based on previous interviews Cavitt gave to himself and other researchers. Randle said that to believe the Air Force conclusion, “[w]e must believe that Cavitt, having the answer to the Roswell riddle, sat on that answer, even though he was interviewed by various UFO researchers many times.”[6] (p. 222)
Witnesses with important information ignored: While acknowledging the fact that most witnesses, by 1994, were dead, a great many witnesses who had what critics termed important information were alive and were ignored. Rodegheir and Chesney called into question the true intent of the Air Force for this omission (see above). Randle noted that there was a body of first-hand evidence “suggesting that both military officers and civilians were sworn to secrecy and the material was not consistent with that from a Project Mogul balloon. [Report author Richard] Weaver had access to all this data, but refused to review it.” Recorded interviews, where statements could be heard within the context they were made, were available, as were several of the witnesses for in-person interviews, yet “[Weaver] rejected it out of hand because it would show the weakness of the Project Mogul explanation.”[6] (p. 221-2)
No military personnel seemingly punished for “misidentification”: If the “misidentification”, as critics put it, was merely an “over-reaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel”[3] (p. 30) as the Report describes, then why did the careers of some of these personnel not suffer as a result of this blunder? Rodegheir and Chesney: “Over-reaction indeed! Now there’s an understatement… This explanation is made even more ludicrous by the successful careers that Marcel, and especially Blanchard, had in the Air Force after this monumental blunder, which should have resulted in instant demotion for them if their actions were what the Air Force is now claiming.” [8]
Documents destroyed: Congressman Steve Schiff, who sparked the inquiry, also had problems with the report. Important documents, which would likely have shed more light on the incident, were reported destroyed, he pointed out.
"The GAO report states that the outgoing messages from Roswell Army Air Field for this period of time were destroyed without proper authority.” These messages would have shown how officers explained the incident to their superiors at the time, Schiff said.
"It is my understanding that these outgoing messages were permanent records, which should never have been destroyed. The GAO could not identify who destroyed the messages, or why." [10]
Despite these critiques, other pro-ufo researchers concluded that Project Mogul was the best explanation for the 1947 incident[11][12][13] and a further reconstruction by Charles Moore of one of the lost Mogul balloon launches confirmed for many the likelihood that the Air Force conclusion was correct."
Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima
Re: Roswell finally cracked
I had to take a bit of time to read through all those informations and think about them.
Frankly speaking I still believe the MOGUL explanation to be the most convincing offered to date. Failing that it could have been yet another top-secret flying contraption, perhaps another balloon. But surely no flying saucer crewed by little grey men.
The Friedman book cited as a source was written with the explicit intention of backing up the whole Majestic 12 idea, which by 1994 had pretty much been identified as a very clever hoax.
Most researchers also failed to take into account that trains of MOGUL, SKYHOOK and ROCKOON balloons were often mistaken for "UFO formations". They also failed to take into account that the premier "UFO accident" in Britain, Rendlesham, was most likely a cover up story for some aircraft mishaps.
They also fail to take into account what a State secret meant in that period. You could end up in really big trouble for "spilling the beans": it was at the height of the so called Red Scare and paranoia was running amok. Even something as trivial as a balloon loaded with sounding equipment could be seen as "vital to national defense". I know this may sound idiotic (and it is) but we didn’t write the rules.
Finally I would like to borrow from the great Jacques Vallee an argument even hardcore skeptics haven’t used against Roswell: "where’s the smell?".
Vallee rightly pointed out that, according to the UFO canon, the crashed UFO was found after a few days. Inside it (or near to it) were the bodies of the alien crew. Again, according to UFO lore, these bodies were exhamined and found to be "strikingly similar" to ours, to the point that it was later suggested that these same aliens could hybridize with humans (a notion so ridiculous I don’t even want to think about).
So why no witness talked about an overpowering stench when these bodies were found? After all it’s organic matter decaying for days in a desert… so where’s the smell?
Re: Roswell finally cracked
My problem with it is that all the paper work was destroyed. As a former government auditor, that stinks to high heaven. Particularly considering the volume of material that would have been involved.
I might also point out that, if I recall correctly, only one MOGUL balloon was ever lost in that area, and according to the airforce, Flight 4 was never recovered. Flight 5 moved to a radio transponder and they did not lose any further flights in that region.
It’s a case of two mutually exclusive events:
Flight 4 has never been recovered.
Roswell was a missing MOGUL balloon.
If Roswell was the missing MOGUL balloon, then Flight 4 would ahve been listed as recovered by MOGUL ops.
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Re: Roswell finally cracked
Who would take bureaucracy at face value? Do these people expect us to believe that they, themselves, destroyed the paperwork? It figures that anything that could be construed as a threat to US home security would, wherever possible, be controlled. In other words, they would consider it their patriotic duty to prevent public disquiet and disorder, even if that meant out-and-out deceitfulness.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
Destroying seemingly "important" documents is not a hint of conspirancy.
Jenny Randles related how most (if not all) MoD files regarding UFO sightings prior to 1962 were destroyed in the late ’60s, including a very interesting case involving a nightime scramble of RAF night fighters which even PROJECT BLUE BOOK couldn’t crack.
No conspirancy involved again, only byzantine bureaucracy according to Jenny.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if even the Americans had similar issues.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
Whatever. At the end of the day, it makes no actual difference what these people do. The only thing that officialdom can do is to control the reports. In other words, UFO related phenomena will go on regardless of whether-or-not these Byzantine bureaucrats officially recognise the fact.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
Yes, bureaucracy can be a major pain… for example it was assumed that all French cases were investigated by GEPAN/GEPAIN, a department of the French Space Agency until in the early ’80s the French Defense Ministry confirmed that they were investigating a number of "selected cases" themselves (source: Jean-Claude Bourret).
Frankly I don’t even want to know how these things are handled… last time I had to make a shipment to the US I had to fill six copies of the same form and three of another. I can only imagine what happens when a UFO case is reported!
Re: Roswell finally cracked
UFO sighting reports appear to be based upon the idea that UFOs appear extemporaneously (IE. coincidentally; randomly; on the spur of the moment). But one of the factors that I became exceedingly well aware of was that the UFO sightings weren’t actually spontaneous events at all. Having experienced this phenomenon personally on various occasions, I noted its somewhat deliberate nature.
If anything, this phenomenon has a melodramatic characteristic that shouts “look at me”. Another way of stating this would be to say “staged UFO events”. Why leave the lights on? If this were a genuinely covert op, then I am in no doubt that they would simply cloak the vehicles. They would appear to be here already, and the UFO events are merely a tool to bring their presence to our attention.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
Stephan, the problem with that view is that we don’t have any hard evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin, or even intelligent.
Fortunetly, (for me) UFOs are well outside my usual area of interest except that they’re commonly brought up in Bermuda Triangle discussions. Personally, I like to stick to dead people and the high seas as my areas of interest.
But since the Roswell incident is two degrees from things that interest me and my great uncle was a Manhattan Project scientist, I have a passing familiarity with it.
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Re: Roswell finally cracked
Quote: “Stephen, the problem with that view is that we don’t have any hard evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin, or even intelligent.”
Sir, if I tell you what I’d found, what had happened to my wife, the effects on other people that I know, and even what had happened to my mother, you’ll probably reject that information.
Do you really think that ghosts are separate from UFOs? I have found absolutely no evidence to support the concept that ghosts are dead humans. Indeed, this phenomenon started getting disruptive in our house in the guise of poltergeist activity, 25-years ago. The UFO phenomenon then phased in, during the following few years. It then emerged that my wife had been experiencing UFO phenomena, combined with other forms of weirdness, for years prior to our meeting.
It turned out that my wife was an abductee, and that there were no weather balloons involved.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
I may add another detail about Cold War ballooning.
After the Korean War NATO launched literally hundreds of spy balloons over the USSR under two distinctive programs. These were declassified in the late ’70s but details are very, very sketchy and even aviation historians have failed to sketch a detailed history. Again most of documents appear to have been either destroyed or somehow lost.
The Soviets were comprehensively infuriated by these operations, if no other reason that a few balloons malfunctioned and became air traffic hazards.
Curiously PVO (the Soviet military organization charged with homeland air defence) reported at least another wave of high flying balloons during the ’70s. By this time effective high flying interceptors were available (Sukhoi SU-9 and later SU-15) and a number of these balloons were shot down. Again details are murky to say the least. By the ’70s NATO had both spy satellites and Lockheed SR-71 spyplanes available in quantity, both of which were immune to interception and extremely effective so this operation makes little sense as a classic "spy" operation. It has been suggested these ballons were launched to be shot down and hence give indications about the effectiveness of Soviet high-altitude air defences (both the US and Britain had high-speed, high-flying bombers in development at the time) but, again, lack of details and the usual murkiness makes this just another hypothesis.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
THe problem there is Roswell was much earlier then that.
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Re: Roswell finally cracked
Yes, Roswell’s association to weather balloons is rather suspect. The other thing is that the alleged crash site, or sites, was/were quoted as being at least 60-miles out of Roswell. It is actually further than that, between where I live (and also where I lived in 1980) and Rendlesham Forest. In neither of these two examples would it have been possible for an inhabitant to have known what had happened so far away.
But if there was nothing politically inconvenient going on, then why would they bother to cover things up? For instance, consider how the authorities responded to the crop circle phenomenon. From my own observations at Cheesefoot Head in 1992, I was shocked to discover how far the cover-up would go. It later transpired that the BBC had sent a camera crew to Cheesefoot Head, Hampshire, in 1991. They used night-sight equipment, and recorded the very same things that I would see with my own eyes in 1992.
The BBC camera crew had obviously been assigned to the investigation in all good faith, but somebody else wanted it stopped. The rumour was that a representative of the British government had politely suggested that the BBC should keep this information under wraps. Indeed, the BBC was amongst those in the media who subsequently launched attacks on those who investigated crop circles. They sneakily waited until the end of the 1991 crop circle season before launching the attack. This meant that there was no come-back.
Of course, the average person wouldn’t investigate such issues. No, they’d wait until someone in authority worked things out for them. Let me put it another way… Back in 1870, the British government had only introduced a minimal form of universal education because of the pressures of the industrial revolution. Before the industrial revolution, in pastoral Britain, 90% illiteracy levels had worked just fine.
This means that state education is, and always has been, primarily targeted at maintaining the status quo. Example: When I attended school during the 60s and 70s, it was more-or-less compulsory to attend religious education classes. It didn’t matter that my parents had no interest in any religion whatsoever; I had to attend these R.E. classes by government order. The truth is that religious education had nothing to do with what anyone’s parents might, or might not, want.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
Expect officialdom to tell the truth about Roswell? Was it a balloon, or was it swamp gas? There has long been a percentage of the public that have questioned whether official truths have matched with real truths. The reality of the situation is that government versions of the truth are seldom a match to reality, as the truth is commonly inconvenient. However, you don’t need to restrict the investigation to anything even vaguely paranormal.
To demonstrate how this ever-widening chasm goes beyond the abnormal, my assertion is that even the mundane subject of education in the industrialised world tends to be a clandestine, closed-loop argument. I am personally convinced that this system employs statistical analysis to derive the resultant public reasoning trends. Populations are subliminally persuaded that education directly equates to truth. But, in general terms, education is only geared to impose a version of the truth that the general public are supposed to learn in the first place.
You need education, in order to get a better paid job. But that better paid job is merely part of the same system. Education is merely a way into, rather than a way out of, the system. This turns the educational quest into sheer parochialism. I have no children, but it would appear that even very young school children in Britain are being increasingly squeezed to produce high marks. Governments of any complexion tell us that this extra educational push is quintessential for our future prospects. Yet, at the very same time, people who are still only in their twenties are being thrown on the scrap heap.
Likewise, a financial squeeze on university students has been applied. In other words, there is a directive to use youngsters, on low wages, to do the work. Even back in the eighties, I was regularly being rejected by prospective employers because I scored too highly on their tests. I recently became redundant, and discovered that the British government have found yet another way of keeping me off the unemployment register. After all, what government is going to admit that the real situation is beyond their control? Thus more cover-ups; because my wife has passed retiring age, she is paid pension credits on my behalf. In other words, because unemployment has become an increasing and incurable problem, I have ceased to exist.
Re: Roswell finally cracked
It just proves that "secret" documents, which are supposed to be the most jealously kept of them all, aren’t immune from the usual bureaucratic fails.
"Hey Larry what we should do with this box of old papers laying on the floor?"
"Geez, why you keep asking? If isn’t on a shelf orders are to throw it away so throw it away! And don’t you make me repeat that!"
Re: Roswell finally cracked
I’m new to your forums and find your discussions very interesting. I am from the New Mexico area and have just finished a book called Roswell One the final contact. (Amazon) I tell of an indian family I knew and what they told me to be true. It doesn’t dispute any of your ideas but gives us answers of why there is a mystery in the first place. For six decades the public has been misinformed about the alleged flying saucer crash outside of Roswell NM,. Partly because of security and embarrassment of what the government had secretly built deep in the desert at the same time the atom bomb was being tested. Read a never before narrative of what happened to a native American Indian family in 1945 and then reappeared again fifty years later, never to be reported. One government covert agent finally explains the how and why of the Roswell incident that has been whispered among the Indians of New Mexico for years. https://www.createspace.com/3528272