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.
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tethered balloons are not so easily identified. During the 1960s, Balloon Branch personnel flew experimentally shaped tethered balloons from deep canyons of central New Mexico. To a distant observer, from a vantage point above the canyon rim, where the tether and ground anchors are not visible, an experimental tethered balloon might lead some persons to speculate as to the oddly shaped balloon's origin and purpose. One design of a low altitude tethered balloon may have inspired at least one account of an "alien" craft. In The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, the authors published a drawing of a crashed alien spaceship allegedly based on a drawing given to them by an anonymous witness. $ ^{96} $ When this drawing is compared to a photograph of an experimental tethered balloon flown at Holloman AFB in March 1965, the similarities are undeniable. $ ^{97} $ The tethered balloon and the NASA space probes are just two examples of the uncommon technologies that were flown in New Mexico by the Holloman Balloon Branch.
Today, the Air Force maintains a reduced but still highly capable high altitude balloon program at Holloman AFB. The Space and Missile Command, Test and Evaluation Unit (SMC/TE, OL-AC) represents the sole Department of Defense high altitude research balloon capability. The ability of a U.S. Air Force high altitude balloon to lift a scientific payload to more than 100,000 feet, above 99 per cent of the earth's atmosphere, for days at a time, presents a profoundly useful scientific tool at a fraction of the cost of a space research platform. Recent tests that utilized Holloman balloons included atmospheric sampling and gravity measurement experiments, high altitude astronomic studies, weapons systems evaluations, and gamma ray detection experiments. While most tests continue to be launched from the permanent
Fig. 56. (Left) A drawing from a popular UFO book, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, depicts an alien spacecraft allegedly drawn by an anonymous witness. (The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell)
Fig. 57. (Right) A tethered "Vee" balloon shown here at Holloman AFB, N.M. in March 1965. This experimental balloon, is strikingly similar to the "alien" craft. (U.S. Air Force photo) 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.