Documents / FOIA release

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. 7 …Computer Specialist, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, Pentagon; George Cully, Historian, 81st Training…
  • p. 21 …FOR THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE FROM: SAF/AAZ 1720 Air Force Pentagon Washington, DC…
  • p. 64 …SAF/FMPF, Room 4C228, Pentagon SUBJECT: Central Point of Contact., GAO Code 701034 l. CPC Richard…
  • p. 67 OF"F'1C£ 0~ THE SECRETARY DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE WASHINGTON DC 20330-1000 MEMORANDUM…
  • p. 68 OFF'ICE OF" TME SECRETA~Y DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE WASHINGTON DC 20330-1000 MEMORANDUM…
  • p. 89 DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES AIR FORCE 09 Mar94 MEMORANDUMFORSAF/AAZ ATIENTION: Lt…
  • p. 174 …the Pentagon if he had a problem with that he could take it up with the…
  • p. 220 …Perhaps you have it from the Pentagon files already, from the AG files. Q: We have…
  • p. 282 …Following that, I spent more than three years on the Air Staff in the Pentagon. Q…
  • p. 317 …Force Pentagon Washington, DC 20330-1720 SUBJECT: Report of Findings on Balloon Research The following report…
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

Cases discussed

About this file

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