Documents / Report
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.
“The Advance”9 pages
A: A guy named Sam Kay formed a company and it was called Kaysam. In fact I have, and you're welcome to them... (Pause) A: Kaysam balloons because of the way they were made, and this jell that had to be inflated had this ring, cardboard ring put in them. That's the neck of a Kaysam balloon, and here are more modern Kaysam balloons, the sort that are still being flown. Q: These are just used for the typical meteorological type balloons. A: Carry radio (inaudible), that's correct. Dewey & Olney have gone out of the business and Kaysam bought them out. Here's a Kaysam balloon that is made by a dip mold. This is somewhat indicative, I think, of the way one of those balloons of the type we're using. As you can see on exposure just to ordinary light, they discolor. But these are balloons that were made probably in the '70s. As they change with plasticizer and anti-oxidants for ozone, they certainly change in appearance. The balloons we... I have pictures here, pictures in the hangar. There, as you can see, these are the ivory colored balloons of the sort we were flying. This is the balloon you just found the eyelets on in the hangar. These are pictures from the 1947 era where we're getting ready to fly the 15 foot H.A. Smith balloon. Q: The reinforcing tape on these balloons, these polyethylene balloons, we were told is a type of acetate. It had none of this symbology, is that correct? A: None at all. Q: So the symbology on the tape was only related to the radar reflectors. A: That's correct. Here is a later model polyethylene balloon, and it's a little thinner than the ones we were flying, but there's a polyethylene balloon. Q: It looks like polyethylene sheeting that I would use to cover up... Q: I've also heard the early balloons described as carrot bag quality. Material they would use in a carrot bag. Dry cleaner bags. Q: Dry cleaner bags. We think of them as being very fragile, but materials from this time frame have been described as durable -- something you couldn't tear with your hands.
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.