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The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert

USAF / The Black Vault · 1995 · 882 pages · text by OCR

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published by Headquarters United States Air Force in 1995. The Black Vault distributes this copy. It reproduces the report by Col. Richard L. Weaver and the synopsis by 1st Lt. James McAndrew, both written after a General Accounting Office inquiry requested by Representative Steven Schiff. The Air Force search found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concluded that the Roswell debris most likely came from NYU Flight No. 4, a Project MOGUL balloon train.

  • p. 190 …Well, Boford was Navy, that was the Navy... Q: Like taking a Pi Ball reading now…
  • p. 191 …fabricate balloons for us. During that period we heard of the Navy project that was going…
  • p. 207 …But were any of those used as precursors to Mogul or... A: None whatsoever. That was…
  • p. 270 …Ewing had conducted considerable research for the Navy during World War II, studying, among other things…
  • p. 323 …f) Measurements of actual sound channel transmission using a small stratosphere balloon carrying sound receivers and…
  • p. 657 …At the present time this company cannot supply us with balloons until Navy clearance is obtained…
  • p. 693 …for six hours using a non-extensible envelope with the addition of a ballast valve to…
  • p. 704 …Met Gifford who has 90' sea rescue boat this project is planning to use. Stayed at…
  • p. 705 …Wyckoff, Hungerfield, Vaux and myself regarding Navy participation with us in Crossroads. Captain Kellogg of Weather…
  • p. 718 …Schneider up with O'Day to check use as NYU station. Alamoggrdo crew helped get helium…
you've talked with also. Colonel Weaver talked with Sheridan Cavitt two weeks ago. So a lot of the statements that have been attributed to Sheridan Cavitt, he says they're taken out of context. He refutes a lot of the information that appears in these various books.

What I'd like to do, even though this is out of a popular UFO type of magazine, is there are some statements attributed to individuals concerning the material that was found, supposedly by Mac Brazel, somewhere northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. They talk in terms of materials that look like metallic foil, and specifically that "could not be bent or broken."

As we've gone through the various research, what we believe to be Project Mogul was probably involved in this incident. The materials that were being used in Mogul included, of course, not only the polyethylene balloons, but included the neoprene balloons at some point, the various types of radar reflectors, the instrumentation that was being used. Is there any type of material from that project that you can think of that would be pliable, would be bendable, but could not be torn? Could any of the polyethylene or the foil-like radar reflectors, could that be the case?

A: Let me get a picture for you. This is a radar reflector manufactured in 1953. It's the ML-307C.

Q: Which is a little different from the B model that was used in 1947?

A: Where this looks like a pine stick, the material on the ones we had, this was all balsa and somewhat smaller in diameter, but the configuration, with one exception... This configuration of corners, these corners were the same thing. Here's a picture of this sort of target being used in 1948, and you can see we are launching multiple targets beneath this balloon.

Q: Is this the same type of target as this, or is this the B model?

A: This is the B model we flew in 1947 and 1948. Those are pictures of the B model. If you look, faintly along here you can see a sort of a discoloration, and that's where my memory of the reinforcing tape was that they talked about. The B models, as I remember, did not have these three vanes up here. You don't see particularly any suggestion in other photographs I have, I don't remember these which would make the thing rotate in flight.

But this, in the B models was more like an aluminum foil with a heavy laminated paper. So the material they talk about, I think, was derived from some version of this.

Q: They talk in terms of the material, being able to crumple it and releasing it, and it would unfold by itself and

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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. 882 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.