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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. 193 …overhead and followed the balloons out to sea. I have no idea about the results that…
  • p. 200 …the regular 334 that we had at sea level. From that they could deduce the temperature…
  • p. 243 …actually located on the jurisdictional lines between Sea Girt and Springlake, New Jersey. It was an…
  • p. 244 …The Sea Girt Inn? A: Exactly. That's where John had his office, and I was…
  • p. 320 …alone is about 24,000 miles at sea level, and about 4500 miles at 45,000…
  • p. 325 …twenty-five (25) feet at their largest sea-level diameter. The sonic unit was a combination…
  • p. 378 …per hour when one-fifth inflated at sea level). One other type of balloon which has…
  • p. 402 …Let us, then, compare the rate of leakage at any given altitude with leakage at sea…
  • p. 404 …The leakage at any altitude may be expressed as a function of leakage at sea level…
  • p. 405 Comparing rate of leakage at 40,000 feet with leakage at sea level: $$ \frac {L _ {4…
  • p. 407 …If a 20-foot diameter balloon $ \frac{1}{1 0} $ full were tested at sea level…
  • p. 408 …At sea level this is equivalent to 5.32 gm/hr. for a 20-foot diameter…
  • p. 414 …Using the rules of subsonic aerodynamics, Picard suggests that air at sea level escaping at 1333…
  • p. 415 …air at sea level (lb./ft. $ ^{3} $ ) 14.7 = pressure of air at sea level (psi…
  • p. 432 …to about 20 millibars and increased to sea-level pressure at different temperatures. The most comprehensive…
  • p. 563 …The height above mean sea level as determined from pressure measurements used in this work with…
  • p. 644 …point at which the radiosonde reaches the sea surface. ## 2. Earlier attempts There have been numerous…
  • p. 645 …The balloons floated between the surface and 30,000 ft above sea level; those which reached…
  • p. 704 …Met Gifford who has 90' sea rescue boat this project is planning to use. Stayed at…
  • p. 719 …Worzel working on gravity at sea. Saw Geo Woollard and the Ryders. Woollard after Guggenheim fellowship…
  • p. 779 …the launching site is markedly different from sea level, a shift in this curve is needed…
  • p. 817 …balloon at all times with respect to sea level. On this curve also it is customary…
  • p. 825 …The height above mean sea level as determined from pressure measurements used in this work with…
At the same time, then Captain Fletcher was assigned... Duffy had heard that weather was giving trouble to radar, so Colonel Duffy just turned around and said, "Gee, you mean radar can pick up weather?" And ended up with Captain Fletcher being assigned to both convert this for looking at storm clouds and also to make wind measurements. There was a big problem, the Weather Bureau prior to World War II determined upper winds merely by releasing a pilot balloon, following with the (inaudible), and estimating the rate of rise, and then from the elevation and azimuth angles and the assumed height after a certain time, to calculate what the winds were.

Q: Is that the Boford Scale?

A: Well, Boford was Navy, that was the Navy...

Q: Like taking a Pi Ball reading now.

A: Exactly. It was called a Pi Ball then and it is now. Colonel Duffy pushed very heavily to get electronic means for measuring winds aloft. There were two approaches. One, use a radar target, and the SCR-584 with which you may be familiar -- the early gun-laying radar. Colonel Duffy talked to the field artillery that was procuring through the Signal Corps, gun-laying radar, the SCR-584, which is, that's this radar right here.

Q: We've seen that photo before.

A: This is Spilhaus's book. So Fletcher ended up with a whole bunch of his own 2nd lieutenants around. There was a Jud Tibbett from whom I have a photograph showing an earlier model target, the A Model target. Istvan was one. There are a bunch of them listed. This listing is for you if you'd like to have it.

Tibbetts ended up being the big installer of radar and, in fact, was assigned down to the Tulerosa Range Camp to make wind measurements for the Trinity shot, the test in 1945. As far as I know, that was the first time these targets had been used in New Mexico. Tibbetts, who until recently lived in Albuquerque, he's now moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. Tibbetts says that he did not ever fly this kind of target in New Mexico, which will be of interest with you when they talk about, that people should have known what a target looked like.

Q: Right. There were discussions concerning having radar targets, but supposedly the B Model and subsequent models were brand new, had never flown anything like that in this area.

A: According to Tibbetts, the A Model had bit aerodynamic drag. It was a flat plane of aluminum foil and had two triangles coming down that made a corner reflector. The A Model looked like... Then across here was that. This is one surface, this is another surface, and this is yet another, and they were held by

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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.