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

A: By a pressure switch.

Q: Were those tracked? Was there some sort of log that would tell you where those particular balloons were? You wouldn't want to just release TNT to float anywhere, would you?

A: They wouldn't float. The balloons would just go up until they burst. And we were on the edge of the restricted area. So the answer is yes, we did.

I'll have to get back to this. The radar tracking turned out to be abysmally poor. I don't know why, but they were abysmally poor. That's why I got off onto this part of it. And when you asked me the V-2 question...

Let me finish this, and then we'll get back to what you asked.

"Thursday morning, cluster of GM balloons sent out, V-2 not fired, no shots fired. Balloons up for some time, no recording. Pi Ball showed no West winds. Balloons picked up by radar, WS." I presume that means White Sands. You'll find this hard... and hunted by somebody's name I couldn't get. It looks like Maryalls' "C-54, located on Tulerosa Range by air. Out PM with several NYU men by weapons carrier, but we never located it. Rocket postponed until 7:30 p.m. Thursday night," which was the third. "But on last minute before balloon went up, V-2 was called off on of accident at White Sands. Sent up cluster balloons with dummy load. Balloon Flight 10 on dawn, July 5th, had gone out with C-54, again with Moses and Dufeld to hunt for Flight 8 but not sure was found then."

Then I added a note here, "Flight 8 was never recovered."

"C-54 went to El Paso July 4th and picked up single smith plastic balloon and GM cluster plastic balloons."

So the answer is yes. We did try to coordinate the balloon launchings for the V-2 firings, and Crary would also take that as a time of opportunity to go out on the desert and fire TNT. He had vast stocks of explosives available to him.

Q: Was that primarily on the White Sands range, or did he go out into other areas, say Northwest of Roswell? Did he contract with any of the ranchers to use these locales, other than the actual missile range itself?

A: I think all the explosions he made were coordinated with the White Sands Proving Ground people. Alamagordo Airfield, later Holloman, was just on the fringe of the proving ground at that time. Crary sent his men to all sorts of places -- over to Roswell, to Artesia, to Hagerman, up and down the Pecos River area. He had a place you'll read about, Fabians, Texas, which turns out to be just down the Rio Grande from El Paso, maybe 50