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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: Oh, yeah. I visited people in Washington.

Q: Just for the record, Major Marcel later worked at [AFOAT-1]. Do you recognize him at all?

A: Not at all. The people I was involved with were civilian scientists. If we looked at a list of people at Northrop, Doyle Northrop sort of sticks in my mind, and there are other names I've seen related to that. Yeah, I knew that guy, but I never knew Marcel.

Q: So you went, moving into Mogul, you did go on the June and July field trips.

A: I ran them.

Q: How many did you go on? All of them?

A: I didn't go to the one in the Pacific. If you look at the planning on the Project Fitzwilliam, my name was listed as the person as being there. Then suddenly, I'm not. What happened, my people got taken away from me and I had to recruit brand new people to help me fly balloons into Alamagordo during the April and May 1948 operations. So I had new personnel, and we went up and down the Rio Grande Valley trying to launch balloons so they would pass over the ground stations at Alamagordo.

Q: During that early period, before you had your full complement of various types of balloons, did you ever use any of the Japanese balloons? We were given the impression there were at least a few of the Japanese balloons made available.

A: I got very interested in the Japanese balloons and communicate, and I have pieces of the Japanese balloon downstairs if you're interested in seeing a piece of it. And I've got translations. I met the chief of the Central Meteorological Office, a Dr. Wadati, and he put me in contact, so I have extensive files on the Japanese balloons.

Q: But were any of those used as precursors to Mogul or...

A: None whatsoever. That was part of a promotion that... When I went to General Mills, Winzen who had been the great entrepreneur, had gotten fired. He'd gotten caught in a prevarication about whether or not the Navy was going to provide money. He was replaced by a fellow named Frank Jewitt. Jewitt recruited me out of graduate school. We really promoted balloons. That's part of the balloon promotion.

Q: None of the Japanese balloons were actually used as far as a precursor to Mogul or anything like that.

A: That is absolutely correct.

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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.