Documents / Report
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.
“Headquarters”32 pages
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On the morning of June 28, 1947, personnel from NYU and Watson Laboratories arrived at Alamogordo AAF to resume balloon flights. Present during this field trip were Dr. Peoples, A.P. Crary, Captain Trakowski, C.B. Moore, and Charles Schneider. The objective during this trip was to experiment with the newly developed polyethylene balloons which replaced the neoprene meteorological balloons used on the previous field trip. Also tested was an improved aluminum ballast reservoir that had been developed to replace the plastic tubes used during the June field trip. $ ^{32} $ Another improvement that resulted from the experiences in June was the presence of a radiosonde receiver/recorder for improved balloon tracking and plotting. This eliminated the need for radar "corner reflectors" on the balloon train since radar was not to be used as a primary method of tracking the flights. This is confirmed by Technical Report No. 1, Table VII, "Radiosonde Reception %," which indicates the use of the radiosonde recorder on all flights except for no. 7. Flight no. 7 was not recorded by radiosonde because the equipment was not operable. $ ^{33} $ Also Figures 36, 39, 42, and 44 in Technical Report No. 1, corresponding to the July flights, do not depict corner reflectors. All numbered flights (except for no. 9) flown during the July field trip were summarized in NYU Technical Report No 1, Table VII. Flight no. 9 appeared to have been launched on July 3. $ ^{34} $ On July 8, their work completed, 23 members of the combined NYU and Watson Laboratory group boarded a C-54 aircraft at 1030 AM and returned to the east coast. $ ^{35} $
Based on the above, it appeared likely that the debris found by the rancher and was subsequently identified as a "flying disc" by personnel from Roswell AAF was, with a great degree of certainty, MOGUL flight no. 4, launched on June 4, 1947. This conclusion was based on the following:
1. Descriptions of the debris provided by Brazel, Cavitt, Crary's diary, and the photos of the material displayed in General Ramey's office. These materials were consistent with the components of a MOGUL service flight, with neoprene balloons, parchment parachutes, plastic ballast tubes, corner reflectors, a sonabuoy, and a black electronics box that housed the pressure cutoff switch (Atch 3).
2. According to Brazel's July 8 statement, the debris was recovered on June 14, obviously eliminating any balloons launched in July.
3. Only two flights launched in June were unaccounted for, i.e., flight nos. 3 and 4. Flight no. 3, most likely would not have had the "unorthodox" configuration of corner reflectors devised by Moore, who did not arrive until June 1, three days after flight no. 3 was launched. 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.