Documents / Report
The Roswell Report: Case Closed is a 1997 Headquarters United States Air Force report by Captain James McAndrew that follows up the 1994 Air Force report on the Roswell Incident. It concludes that the 1947 debris came from Project MOGUL balloons. It also says the reported alien bodies were probably anthropomorphic dummies dropped from high altitude balloons. Claims of bodies at the Roswell hospital most likely combined a 1956 KC-97 crash and a 1959 manned balloon mishap.
“Socorro, New Mexico”5 pages
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The three pilots, Kittinger, Kaufman and Fulgham, flew training missions together. Kaufman and Fulgham alternately flew the balloon while Kittinger instructed. The missions were flown at night to take advantage of light winds and avoid the effects of diurnal heating on the helium (the lifting gas that filled the balloon). Used for these missions were 30-foot diameter polyethylene balloons and an aluminum gondola especially designed for low altitude training.
The first training mission scheduled for May 19, 1959 was canceled due to equipment problems. $ ^{173} $ Problems overcome, the next day at 1:30 a.m. the mission launched from White Sands Proving Ground. $ ^{174} $ The objective of this flight was to practice gas valving and ballasting techniques necessary for balloon control and to practice landings. After a five-hour flight, the balloon landed without incident just after sunrise northwest of El Paso, Texas. $ ^{175} $
The second training flight, launched at 2:41 a.m. on May 21, 1959, from behind the Balloon Branch building, Bldg. 850 at Holloman AFB. $ ^{176} $ Near the end of another successful training mission with the same objectives as the previous flight, a mishap occurred resulting in injuries to two of the pilots, Fulgham and Kittinger. $ ^{177} $
The Mishap. Just after sunrise on May 21, 1959, following a successful low level training flight east of Holloman AFB over the Sacramento Mountains, Kittinger, the instructor pilot, determined the balloon should be landed in a small field approximately 10 miles northwest of Roswell. $ ^{178} $ This was necessary because of approaching bad weather and the field was the last suitable landing site before overflying the city of Roswell. $ ^{179} $ When the balloon touched down, a higher than normal forward velocity for landing caused the gondola to
Fig.17. In May 1959, Capt. Dan D. Fulgham (left) and Capt. William C. Kaufman, pilots and Aero Medical Research officers from Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio were assigned temporary duty to Holloman AFB, N.M. to train as high altitude balloon pilots. Fulgham and Kaufman were trained by Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr. (photo collection of Dan D. Fulgham) Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 232 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.