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
balloon launch facility at Holloman AFB, U.S. Air Force balloon crews have recently launched balloons from numerous field locations in the U.S. (including two sites in Roswell), as well as Alaska, Panama, and Antarctica.
Fig. 58. Present members of the Holloman Balloon Branch in front of the Balloon Operations Center, Building 850, at Holloman AFB, N.M., (from left) TSgt. Roger J. Welch, Mr. Joseph Fumerola, Mr. Alvin W. Hodges, Mr. Joseph Longshore, MSgt. Ray A. Pitts, Sr. Amn. John Witkop, and Mr. Harvey L. Harris. (U.S. Air Force photo)
## Balloon and Payload Recoveries
UFO theorists support their claims of an extraordinary occurrence in the New Mexico desert by describing mysterious U.S. military personnel, operating a variety of vehicles and aircraft that always seem to arrive shortly after the crash of a "flying saucer." When carefully scrutinized, the descriptions of the mystery crews, their equipment, methods, and the areas where the recoveries allegedly occurred—in targeted high altitude balloon recovery areas-indicates that Holloman Balloon Branch activities were most likely responsible for the claims.
To successfully recover high altitude balloons, balloon recovery technicians regularly ventured far from Holloman AFB. In most instances the balloons and their scientific payloads were recovered from predetermined recovery areas. These regularly targeted areas, located in Arizona, West Texas, and New Mexico, included the area surrounding Roswell. $ ^{98} $ From 1947 to the present, the Roswell area has been the site of hundreds of balloon and payload recoveries (including those that carried anthropomorphic dummies). $ ^{99} $
The regularly targeted areas were the result of the evolution of high altitude balloon control techniques developed at Holloman AFB. These techniques were based on meteorological, geographical, and operational conditions that exist in New Mexico. These factors, combined with ample amounts of skill and experience of balloon controllers at Holloman AFB, determined the impact points of Holloman high altitude balloons. 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.