The Roswell Report: Case Closed

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

deploy and impacted the ground in full view of the ladies at Gen. Rawling's home. I acted quickly to retrieve the dummy and went to the impact site and recovered it by throwing it in the back of a pickup truck and quickly driving away. Later that day I received a call from Col Stapp who informed me that some of the women at the party believed that the dummy was a human and they were appalled to see the careless nature in which the obviously dead or injured "parachutist' was hauled away.

At Holloman AFB recoveries of the dummies were handled by the Balloon Branch but members of my project team, including myself, often assisted. The standard procedure was to track the dummy both from the ground and air to attempt to recover the dummies in a timely manner. On the ground we used an assortment of Air Force vehicles to track and recover not only the dummies but also other scientific balloon payloads. We used trucks, communications vans, converted field ambulances, cranes, and trailers. In the air we used helicopters, C-47s transports, and L-19 and L-20 light observation aircraft. On occasion civilians would observe our recovery operations. We often attracted a crowd due to the odd appearance of the balloon payloads and dummies and also the aircraft that circled overhead or landed on nearby roads. We also used many of the same procedures and equipment to launch from off range locations. During the recoveries weapons were not carried because there was no classified information or equipment. I do not recall any altercations of any kind. At no time did I or any of the personnel makes threats against civilians. We always attempted to maintain good relations with the local civilians and explained the purpose of the project to them if they asked. We were directed to remove as much of the material dropped by the balloon as possible. Sometimes this was difficult because the balloon and payload would break apart and cover a large area. We collected the debris in these cases by "fanning out" across a field until we had collected even very small portions of the payload and balloon. We were particularly careful to recover the large plastic balloons because cattle would ingest the material and the ranchers would file claims against the government. Additionally, there were reward notices that offered twenty five dollars for the return of the equipment attached to each of the balloons. I wrote a book, The Long, Lonely Leap (E.P. Dutton & Co., 1961), that completely describes Project Excelsior and my participation.

Also as a part of the high altitude balloon projects, I trained balloon pilots in May 1959 at the request of Col Stapp. Col Stapp was concerned that I might be injured as a result of the hazardous nature of the projects and he wanted backup pilots to be trained. The backup pilots, Capt Dan Fulgham and Capt Bill Kaufman were volunteers from the Aero Medical Laboratory and they were sent to Holloman from Wright-Patterson for training on a temporary duty basis. On our second training flight, Fulgham, Kaufman and I. flew an overnight mission that was launched at Holloman and ended with a crash northwest of Roswell, NM. We were followed on this mission by an aircraft at night, a helicopter during the day, and a ground crew in trucks at all times.

I recall that just after sunrise the weather had deteriorated and I directed Fulgham to land the balloon in a small field. This was the last suitable field before we would overfly the City of Roswell. I remember approaching the field just over the trees and I recall our forward velocity was about 10-12 knots, a little fast for landing. When we touched down Fulgham cut the balloon away and due to the forward velocity the gondola flipped over spilling all three of us on the ground. While lying on the ground I realized that Fulgham