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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: There's a gray area here. I was certainly aware that what we were doing in Alamagordo was highly classified and was well aware, and I guess had been perhaps encouraged to have a suitable cover story to explain what we were doing.

Q: So you were encouraged by whom to have a cover story?

A: Probably by James Peoples, who was our scientific monitoring... As you may be aware, there is a former colonel, later General DuBose, who makes a statement that something was a cover story. When I read this, I was not at all surprised. I interpreted that as saying someone was covering up on Mogul. That was my interpretation when I read what was attributable to General DuBose. So from his point of view, there were certainly no threats, but we were aware we weren't supposed to be talking.

Q: So was it Dr. Peoples then who actually actively said use meteorology as a cover story, or...

A: I don't remember the details, to be truthful...

Q: But it was kind of a natural thing to think of in terms of meteorology?

A: We were careful around NYU with the various technicians we hired. We kept our knowledge of what we were doing to ourselves. It's certainly my memory that we were aware that this was classified, but we weren't threatened. We were just instructed that this sort of information was not to be passed out, even though the technical aspects we understood. So the answer is yes, we very well understood this was classified; and second, there was no physical threat or anything like that. We were instructed not to talk about it, and until Todd told me that Mogul had been declassified I was very reluctant to say anything about it.

Q: Anywhere in the early days were you ever aware of involvement by General LeMay?

A: Not at all.

Q: Not at your level. How about the [AFOAT-1] study group?

A: I became involved with them later on Project Grab Bag and others, and I knew a bunch of people in [AFOAT-1] -- Doyle Northrop... I knew that, but later ballooning got even more heavily involved in various classified things.

Q: Where were your duty locations involved with [AFOAT-1]?

A: Probably at General Mills.

Q: Not ever in Washington?

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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.