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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…
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.