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.
“Nevers”30 pages
# Test Dummies Used by the U.S. Air Force
Since the beginning of manned flight, designers have sought a substitute for the human body to test hazardous new equipment. Early devices used by the predecessors of the U.S. Air Force were simply constructed parachute drop test dummies with little similarity to the human form. Following World War II, aircraft emergency escape systems became increasingly sophisticated and engineers required a dummy with more humanlike characteristics.
## Parachute Drop Dummies
During World War I research and development of the first U.S. military parachute was underway at McCook Field, Ohio. To test the parachute, engineers experimented with several types of dummies, settling on a model constructed of three-inch hemp rope and sandbags with the approximate proportions of a medium-sized man. $ ^{30} $ The new invention was soon known by the nickname "Dummy Joe." Dummy Joe is said to have made more than five thousand "jumps" between 1918 and 1924. $ ^{31} $
Fig. 16. "Dummy Joe,' the hero of five thousand jumps" is shown here with engineers J.J. Higgins (left) and Guy Ball at McCook Field, Ohio in 1920. (U.S. Air Force photo)
By 1924, parachutes were required on military aircraft with their serviceability tested by dummies dropped from aircraft. $ ^{32} $ For this routine testing, several types of dummies were used. The most common type is shown in figures 17 and 18. Parachutes were individually drop-tested from aircraft until the early stages of World War II, when, due both to increased reliability and large numbers of parachutes in service, this routine practice was discontinued. Nonetheless, test dummies were still used frequently by the Parachute Branch of Air Materiel Command (AMC) at Wright Field, Ohio, to test new parachute designs. 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.