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
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
HEADQUARTERS FITZWILLIAM FORWARD c/o Commander, Task Group 7.2 APO 187, c/o Postmaster San Francisco, Calif. 17 May 1948 SONIC BALLOON TEST. KWAJALEIN Inclosure G to FITZWILLIAM FORWARD Report The Watson Laboratories of Air Materiel Command arranged for one (1) of its sonic balloon teams to participate in the FITZWILLIAM project as a mobile team to operate in the Central Pacific, at KWAJALEIN, GUAM and HICKAM FIELD, HAWAII, in that order, changing location for each of the three (3) explosions. The purpose of this exploratory test was as follows: first, to determine if an atomic explosion's compressional waves are generated in the sound channel existing between 50,000 and 70,000 feet (such waves would conceivably travel unimpeded for long distances in this channel without touching the earth's surface); second, to determine whether a sound pick-up unit suspended from a floating balloon could detect compressional waves (possibly undetected by similar sound units at the earth's surface) by virtue of the decreased background noise in the high-level sound channel. Balloons were made of high grade plastic, were of tear-drop shape, and were twenty-five (25) feet at their largest sea-level diameter. The sonic unit was a combination microphone-transmitter which was suspended from the balloon and picked up sound waves, transmitting them to a ground directional antenna connected to a radiosonde receiver (standard SCR 658 air weather radio receiver). The transmitted sound impulses were recorded on two (2) Esterline-Angus recorders. A dribble constructed of a five (5) gallon tin incorporating a metered jet to allow a predetermined spillage rate of high grade kerosene-ethylene-glycol mixture was attached to the balloon. This was designed to counteract the helium gas seepage thru the surface cores of the plastic balloon. This metered loss of ballast and controlled the rising rate of the balloon at 500 to 600 feet a minute. Ground sonic equipment consisted of World War II sound ranging devices utilized to pick up sound waves from an explosion traveling along the earth's surface. A radio receiver was used to obtain explosion time notification code signals from the ENIWETOK radio station. The balloon launching site had to have a down-wind clearance of about 1000 feet to lay out the 100 feet risers and cables to which were attached the microphone-transmitter and dribbler units. Also the site had to be sheltered from the wind to prevent damage to the balloon while it was being
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.