Documents / Report
The Roswell Report: Case Closed was published by Headquarters United States Air Force and written by Captain James McAndrew, with a foreword by Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall. It follows the 1994 Air Force report, which tied the 1947 debris to Project MOGUL balloons. This volume concludes that the reported alien bodies were most likely anthropomorphic dummies dropped from high altitude balloons. It attributes the hospital body claims to a 1956 KC-97 crash and a 1959 manned balloon mishap.
“Holloman Air Force Base”16 pages
The accident occurred on June 26, 1956, 8.8 statute miles south of Walker AFB. $ ^{121} $ A KC-97G aircraft with 11 crewmen on board, while on a refueling training mission, experienced a propeller failure four and one half minutes after takeoff. $ ^{122} $ As a result of the propeller failure, a propeller blade was believed to have punctured the deck fuel tank of the fully loaded tanker causing an intense cabin fire. $ ^{123} $ The aircraft was quickly engulfed in flames, spun out of control, and was completely destroyed. All 11 Air Force members were killed instantly by the fire and impact explosion. $ ^{124} $ Due to the isolated rural impact location on property owned by the state of New Mexico, there was minimal collateral damage and no fatalities or injuries to persons on the ground. $ ^{125} $
Fig. 8. Main entrance of the 4036th USAF hospital at Walker AFB, 1956. Initial identification procedures of the 11 aircrewmen killed in the June 26, 1956 KC-97 accident were conducted here before being transferred to another facility on the base with refrigeration capability. (U.S. Air Force photo)
The remains of the crewmen were recovered from the crash site and transported by members of the 4036th USAF Hospital (numerical designation of the hospital at Walker AFB) to the hospital facility at Walker AFB for identification. $ ^{126} $
On the day following the crash, an identification specialist from Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio arrived at the hospital to assist in identifying the remains. $ ^{127} $ Part way through the identification process, conducted by both the identification specialist and Air Force members assigned to the Walker AFB hospital, the identification activities were moved to a refrigerated compartment at the Walker AFB commissary. $ ^{128} $ This was due to an overpowering odor emitted by the burned and fuel-soaked bodies and the lack of proper storage facilities at the small base hospital. $ ^{129} $ Also on the day following the crash, June 27, 1956, autopsies of three of the victims were accomplished by a local Roswell pathologist. $ ^{130} $ These examinations were performed at a local funeral home. $ ^{131} $ Upon completion of the identification procedures and the postmortem examinations, the remains were shipped to the next of kin for burial. Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 232 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.