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

incident. Additionally, in 1949, General Yates received a full briefing of the projects, including constant-level balloons, that made up Project MOGUL. $ ^{40} $ While crashed disc proponents claim that General Ramey ordered a "colonel courier" to transport portions of the debris in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist for the inspection of his superior, Maj Gen Clement McMullen, Deputy Commander of Strategic Air Command, it is more likely that any forwarding of such debris was another attempt to identify the research agency to which it belonged. If it did go to General McMullen, it would not have been difficult for him to have obtained the opinion of the Weather Service, since SAC and the Weather Service were located in the same building (no.1535) at Andrews AAF.

## "HIEROGLYPHICS"

One of the most puzzling aspects of the reports that a "UFO" crashed near Corona in 1947 were the later descriptions of "hieroglyphic-like" characters by seemingly reliable, firsthand witnesses. Research has revealed that the debris found on the ranch and displayed in General Ramey's office probably did have strange characters. These, however, were not hieroglyphics, but figures printed on the pinkish-purple tape used to construct the radar targets used by the NYU group.

The witnesses have recalled small pink/purple "flowers" that appeared to be some sort of writing that couldn't be deciphered. These figures were printed on tape that sealed the seams of the of the radar target. The radar targets, sometimes called corner reflectors, had been manufactured during or shortly after World War II, and due to shortages, the manufacturer, a toy company, used whatever resources were available. This toy company used plastic tape with pink/purple flowers and geometric designs in the construction of its toys and, in a time of shortage, used it on the government contract for the corner reflectors. A depiction of these figures, as described by C.B. Moore, is shown in Attachment 10.

Allegations have also been made that the debris displayed to the press on July 8 and subsequently photographed was not the original wreckage; i.e., a switch had occurred sometime after the debris left Roswell AAF. However, statements made by Moore and Trakowski attested that the corner reflectors they launched during that period had the same flowers and figures that were later reported by Marcel, Cavitt, and Brazel as being on the debris found on the Foster ranch in Corona. In fact, Trakowski distinctly remembered the figures on the tape because, when the targets first were produced, much fanfare was made over the use of a toy manufacturer for production. He related that a fellow USAAF officer, John E. Peterson, monitored the procurement of the targets and "thought it was the biggest joke in the world that they had to go to a toy manufacturer" to make the radar targets and an "even a bigger joke when . . . the reflecting material on the balsa frames was some kind of a pinkish purple tape with hearts and flowers