Documents / Report

The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert

USAF / The Black Vault · 1995 · 882 pages · text by GLM-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. 8 …Computer Specialist, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, Pentagon; George Cully, Historian, 81st Training…
  • p. 20 …FOR THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE FROM: SAF/AAZ 1720 Air Force Pentagon Washington, DC…
  • p. 56 …SAF/FMPF, Room 4C228, Pentagon SUBJECT: Central Point of Contact, GAO Code 701034 2. You will…
  • p. 58 # DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE WASHINGTON DC 20330-1000 OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY MEMORANDUM FOR DISTRIBUTION…
  • p. 59 …SAF/AAZ 1720 Air Force Pentagon Washington DC 20330-1720 SUBJECT: GAO Review on Records Management…
  • p. 75 …HQ USAF/XOWP 1490 Air Force Pentagon Washington DC 20330-1490 SUBJECT: GAO Review on Records…
  • p. 77 10 March 1994 SAF/AAIQ 1610 Air Force Pentagon Washington, DC 20330-1610 MEMORANDUM FOR SAF…
  • p. 78 …They noted that the histories for the 509th Bomb Group and Wing for Roswell Army Air…
  • p. 145 …the Pentagon if he had a problem with that he could take it up with the…
  • p. 185 …Perhaps you have it from the Pentagon files already, from the AG files. ## Q: We have…
  • p. 246 …Following that, I spent more than three years on the Air Staff in the Pentagon. Q…
  • p. 268 …Force Pentagon Washington, DC 20330-1720 SUBJECT: Report of Findings on Balloon Research The following report…

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It's of interest, in the Holloman report there's a big talk about boiling balloons. That's certainly a heritage of the association from our early balloon boiling days. When you look at the instructions on the modern balloon, you see that it is really a physical effect that can be controlled.

Q: You went on board at New York University, and you immediately set out, as documented in the reports, acquiring the various materials, [putting out bids], things of this nature. At that point you were working at New York University under the direction...

A: Spilhaus was the nominal principal investigator and director of the project, but he just turned us loose.

Q: So you were the project engineer?

A: I was the project engineer, and Schneider was the project administrator. We employed a lot of students, a lot of people that we could, and were a mixture of trying to develop a constant level balloon and providing service flights for Peoples. Peoples was entirely our contact.

## Q: He would come to New York University?

A: He would go down to Red Bank. He'd call and say he wanted certain things, can you do it, so we made this flight out at Lehigh and then we made the Helgoland flight down at Red Bank, and he wasn't really happy. There were all sorts of constraints flying balloons in the New York City area even then.

Q: All the problems with air traffic and getting FAA, or their equivalent at that time, approval, etc.

A: So up in the stratosphere above my level, a decision was made that we go to Alamagordo, and there would be a big flight. We had balloons promised, but even ahead of that time people wanted to test microphones. He had Crary already, about from December of '46, I think Crary went to Alamagordo and ran a field station and...

Q: That field station was for ballooning in general?

A: For Mogul. It was more than that. Crary was operating sound-ranging microphones on the ground there. He was having bombs dropped off the New Jersey coast and trying to pick up the acoustic signals in New Mexico.

Q: He was having the bombs dropped in New Jersey, off the coast, and trying to detect them in New Mexico?

A: That's correct.

Q: What technique? Balloon borne?

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Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 882 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.