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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…
Q: He was unsuccessful?

A: He was unsuccessful.

Q: What method did he employ?

A: Low frequency microphones on the ground. Are you familiar with the Krakatou measurements?

Q: No.

A: In 1883, Krakatou, near Java, made an enormous explosion and the pressure wave from that went around the world seven times, and was picked up and... There was a report, a big analysis by Lord Railey and others...

Q: A volcanic eruption?

A: Volcanic eruption. Here are the isocomes of the pressure waves from Krakatou as it went out. From the time it took the signal to go out and come back, he went to the antipode which is around Colombia or Venezuela, and came back as a big spherical wave. It went back and forth around the earth. The British investigators were able to show that there was a duct up around the tropopause, and the speed of sound, as I remember, was something like 310 meters per second instead of the regular 334 that we had at sea level. From that they could deduce the temperature of the medium in which the sound was propagating and it was something like minus 25.

Q: How was this detected as a pressure wave in that time frame?

A: Barograph.

Q: What year?

A: 1883. This is what prompted Ewing.

Q: I'm familiar with barometer-type measurements being used to measure that pressure wave and the fact that it traversed the earth, you said seven times.

A: Maurice Ewing had been an oceanographer at Woods Hole and had found a similar acoustic duct in the ocean. You may be familiar with what's called Sofar. In 1945 he wrote a letter to Spaatz suggesting this might be useful in detection of Soviet activity.

Q: The 1945 letter was kind of the initiative as a means of detection.

A: That's correct. That caused the Army Air Force to begin this research.

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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.