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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…
A: That's about two mil polyethylene here.

Q: Obviously, you could tear this.

A: This was four mil. These balloons that we had... That's Flight 8. These are the little balloons here that are seen from the air.

Q: From a B-17?

A: I think this was a C-45. We did, indeed, have B-17's attached to us, and C-54's. But I think this was trying to chase Flight 8 down. This was one of the candidate flights that I thought might have been, until two years ago, I thought might have been an explanation for what occurred.

Q: Why did you change your mind at that point?

A: Because of that newspaper report right there.

Q: Because of him saying that he actually found the material in mid-June?

A: No, because he said it was balsa sticks and smoky rubber and had those curious markings on that. That's a very vivid memory I have of these markings on the radar targets we flew.

Q: You said you often wondered why those markings were on there. Had you ever resolved that for yourself?

A: Only what Albert Trakowski told me, that our friend John Peterson, the procurement man, was just joking, "What else do you expect when you have your targets made by a toy factory?"

Let me go back, if I may. Colonel Duffy was assigned to extract meteorological equipment out of the Signal Corps in 1943. There was a great argument that went on between the Army Air Force and the Signal Corps. The Signal Corps didn't want to let any meteorological equipment out until he thought it was perfect. At the same time, General Arnold was expanding for a global war, and was trying to get meteorological equipment all around the earth. So Colonel Duffy got assigned to expedite the equipment. As various of us graduated from the meteorological cadet schools, he took those of us with engineering backgrounds and assigned us to bird dog various things within the Signal Corps engineering laboratories. I got assigned to... I ended up with some appendicitis and got pulled off of an overseas shipment, and while I was recovering I got assigned to prepare this manual that Colonel Duffy, he was unhappy with the rate at which Signal manuals were coming out so he wanted a loose leaf arrangement to send things out. So I got assigned to prepare this manual.

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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.