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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…
A: What the wind did.

The description that Brazel gives here that everything would weigh about five pounds when it was all together, is more than you would have gotten from a single balloon.

Q: Those were measured in terms of 300 to 500 grams or something like that?

A: Three hundred and fifty only. At that time we didn't have any bigger balloons than 350 grams, so the balloons would have been 350 grams.

Q: About one pound.

A: Correct. And the targets are nominally maybe a quarter of a pound.

Q: Those targets are only four to five ounces?

A: Here was the specification spelled out for it. Approximate weight, 100 grams. These, as I say, are somewhat heavier than the ones we had.

Q: You indicated that the balsa wood was coated with some sort of glue such as Elmer's glue.

A: That's my memory. It wasn't completely coated. Some of it was and some of it wasn't.

Q: Some of the balsa wood is fairly dense, as far as being durable, and one of the descriptions concerning this "wood-like" material was that you couldn't dent it with your fingernail. So if you have a fairly dense balsa wood coated with a glue, it may be quite possible that a person would not be able to put their fingernail in it.

A: That's correct. It's my memory that the reflective material was more aluminum foil than here. These are second or third iteration targets, as evidenced by this picture, wherever that picture is down in here of the 1948 flight. It certainly looks more aluminum-foil like.

Q: What year were you discharged from active duty?

A: '46.

Q: Before you left active duty, while you were still working with Duffy and Spilhaus, did they invite you to join the staff at New York University, or to continue your studies there?

A: I came back from overseas and was assigned to Colonel Duffy's, he had a little flight detachment assigned to him with a B-29 and a B-25 and some other aircraft. I ended up being the

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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.