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roswell

Office of the Secretary of Defense · 993 pages · text from the file's own layer

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published in 1995 by Headquarters United States Air Force. It was written in response to Representative Steven H. Schiff's request and a General Accounting Office audit, and it contains Col. Richard L. Weaver's report and 1st Lt. James McAndrew's synopsis, along with attachments, appendices and photographs. The report says researchers found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concludes that the 1947 debris came from a Project MOGUL balloon train.

  • p. 129 …6099 2 HQ AMC WRIGHT PAT 342-seA-6191 CAMBRIDGE LABS 342-A~ AMC HQ WRIGHT…
  • p. 228 …overhead and followed the balloons out to sea. I have no idea about the results that…
  • p. 235 …the regular 334 that we had at sea level. From that they could deduce the temperature…
  • p. 279 …actually located on the jurisdictional lines between Sea Girt and Springlake, New Jersey. It was an…
  • p. 280 …The Sea Girt Inn? A: Exactly. That's where John had his office, and I was…
  • p. 400 …alone 1a about 24,000.m1lea at sea level, aDd about '500 allea at 45,000…
  • p. 407 …five (25) feet at their ls.rgest sea-level diameter. The sonic unit was a combination…
  • p. 466 …hour when one-fifth inf~ated at sea level). One other type of balloon which has…
  • p. 490 …Let us, then, compare the rate of leakage at any given altitude with leakage at sea…
  • p. 492 …The leakage at any altitude may be expressed as a function of leakage at sea level…
  • p. 493 Comparing rete of leakage at 40,000 feet with leakage at sea level: ~ 188 .u§. - 0…
  • p. 495 …It a 20-foot diameter balloon~ full were tested at 10 sea level and found to…
  • p. 496 …At sea level this is equivalent to 5.32 ~r. for a 20-foot diameter balloon…
  • p. 502 …Using the rules of subsonic aerodynamics, Picard suggests that air at sea level escaping at 1333…
  • p. 503 …sea level (psi) escape velocity of air to produce back pressure of 1 atmosphere at sea…
  • p. 520 …to about 20 millibars and increased to sea-level pressure at different temperatures. The most comprehensive…
  • p. 654 …The height above mean sea level as determined fram pressure measurements used in this work with…
  • p. 686 …to a thtmble a.nd attached to re1n forced pCltches at alterna.te .sea.m.s…
  • p. 688 …lQr9e Ba.lloo n ~hould trQin de .sea nd to 101000'. 6 each.-Gene ral M1lls…
  • p. 736 …point at which the radiosonde reaches the sea surface. 2. Earlier attempts There have been numerous…
  • p. 737 …The balloons floated between the surface and 30,000 ft above sea level; those which reached…
  • p. 801 …Vet Gifford ;.;ho has 0 0' sea rescue boat this project is planning to use. Stayed…
  • p. 816 …Worzel working on gravity at sea. Saw Geo Woollard and the Ryders. Woollard after Guggenheim fellowship…
  • p. 887 …the launching site is markedly different from sea level, a shift in this curve is needed…
  • p. 925 …balloon at all times with respect to sea level. On this curve also it is customary…
  • p. 933 …The height above ~ean sea level as determined from pressure measurements used in this work with…
PROFESSOR MOORE - 6/8/94
strings from these four corners. Obviously, trying to take
something that's almost a meter in cross section, a meter on a
side, take it sideways up through, gave a lot of drag, and it
took a lot of lift to make the balloons rise very rapidly.
10
so instead, somebody came up with this smart idea of this
other arrangement of a corner reflector that had much less drag.
These, according to Tibbetts, weren't distributed until something
like November of 1945. As far as I know, as you will see in the
various correspondence, there were no SCR-584s which were
required to track them, issued to the weather services here in
New Mexico. Obviously, after the Trinity shot, there was no bit
military operation that required wind determination in New
Mexico.
Q: so essentially you'd say there were no radar reflectors
in New Mexico until 1947 until this appeared?
A: That's my opinion.
Q: Was Major Pritchard doing any kind of balloon project?
A: No. He and Dyvad and others were at Watson
Laboratories. I understand from Trakowski that Alamagordo Army
Air Field was about to be closed down as surplus. The people at
Watson Laboratories seized on it and were able to keep it on
active status for two projects -- one, the radar project from
Watson Laboratories that was set to track the V-2 being flown
from the proving ground across the Tulerosa Valley; and Project
Mogul.
I joined the NYU group in January of '47, and while I was
finishing up at Georgia Tech I had talked to my chemical
engineering professors, I'd already been recruited by Duffy and
Spilhaus, and I asked if you wanted to make a balloon of non-
extensible material, what plastic would you use. My professor
named Grubb told me you ought to consider polyethylene. It's a
new plastic just now becoming available. You can heat seal it.
It has a lot of desirable properties.
So as soon as I got to NYU, I began talking to everybody I
could find in Manhattan-- DuPont, all the sales offices ••.
Q: We saw your listing.
A: I was concerned with where we could get the plastic and
who we could get to manufacture the balloons. I was in my 20's,
just a recent graduate. I knew nothing about manufacturing. But
we did try to get a manufacturing company that would fabricate
balloons for us.
During that period we heard of the Navy project that was
going on at General Mills where Jean Get was planning to make a
flight to 100,000 feet. General Mills at that time was making

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About this file

FOIA release, from the osd collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 993 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.