Documents / Report

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. 16 …of alien beings and elusive vehicles which never quite seem to manifest themselves. Regardless of one…
  • p. 28 …Conversely, there has never been any previous documentary evidence produced by those who would debunk the…
  • p. 29 …This had never been officially done before, although most of the persons contacted reported that they…
  • p. 37 …Lt Col Cavitt also stated that he had never taken any oath or signed any agreement…
  • p. 67 …Because this conclusion is based on the absence of documentation, the issue can never be definitively…
  • p. 82 …If written, there is good evidence through accessioning and microfilming records that the Agency never received…
  • p. 84 …histories and supporting documents, and it has never routinely received the kind of records which might…
  • p. 131 …I have never been sworn to any form of secrecy by anyone concerning this matter and…
  • p. 136 …It never crossed my mind that it could be anything but a radio sonde. RW: How…
  • p. 139 …as far as I knew, I never heard anyone say, "Don't talk about this and…
  • p. 140 …I never met LaPaz personally, but I knew what he was. RW: Did Rickett go with…
  • p. 141 …I forget since I was there in the Washington area for awhile but I never did…
  • p. 143 …To the best of my recollection, I never met the rancher, Brazel. RW: O.K., because…
  • p. 144 …I've never seen a Geiger counter myself, but I didn't know if you knew…
  • p. 145 …said you never saw...and then you said you were going to...you never saw the…
  • p. 146 …I never had any idea that it was anything with the V-2. They told us…
  • p. 148 …You and I never saw this. You don't see any military people or military vehicles…
  • p. 149 …said in a facetious way: "Lets make out like it never existed, because we're wasting…
  • p. 150 …to him the crash and recovery had never happened. There was no investigation on the Foster…
  • p. 153 …No, I never saw this. SC: I don't know what that is from. RW: "But…
  • p. 154 …So, some of there records were TS and still are.) That is because they have never…
  • p. 156 …Cav never told me anything. He said I'll never tell you anything then you won…
  • p. 160 …I am quite sure that we never gave it a thought until that book.
  • p. 161 …Now, we have never found the flight records to substantiate that, so I don't know…
  • p. 171 …related to this inquiry and I have never been threatened by US Government persons concerning not…
  • p. 175 …related to this inquiry and I have never been threatened by US Government persons concerning refraining…
  • p. 179 …We never considered a planned cover story; we were concerned with security. I was the project…
  • p. 180 …I never observed any of the balloon "trains" but I did see some of the early…
  • p. 190 …and subsequent models were brand new, had never flown anything like that in this area. A…
  • p. 193 …I'd never heard the name Mogul -- the classification was that high. I knew what we…
  • p. 205 …I just wanted to see if there had been anything stated to you never to discuss…
  • p. 207 …Yeah, I knew that guy, but I never knew Marcel. Q: So you went, moving into…
  • p. 208 …I've never seen a Japanese balloon that I know of, I've never seen the…
  • p. 211 …No, I've never seen this. Trakowski argued that even the name Mogul was classified, and…
  • p. 214 …Out PM with several NYU men by weapons carrier, but we never located it. Rocket postponed…
  • p. 229 …As far as I know we just never interfaced with the military. Q: Where were you…
  • p. 231 …We never saw anybody in security. There was certainly nobody keeping us secure. If anything, we…
  • p. 237 …who was writing a story, and I never quite could determine whether he was on the…
  • p. 238 …I have never seen such a document nor have I ever heard of any effort to…
  • p. 241 …radar reflectors for tracking purposes—but it never comes out talking about MOGUL and the instrumentation…
  • p. 242 …I never met Richard Robert Crane. I knew him only by the path of debris he…
  • p. 246 …They never said it, but I know they did because they left me free to do…
  • p. 269 …Before now, however, a larger portion of the story was never told. Recent research indicates that…
  • p. 271 …and Project MOGUL as first conceived was never put into operational use. However, MOGUL did serve…
  • p. 272 …Moore, NYU Constant-Level Balloon Project Engineer, stated that they were never informed of the classified…
  • p. 314 …I was never the Holloman Base Weather Officer. Lt Colonel Maas was assigned as Base Weather…
  • p. 477 …automatic ballast controls, and this flight was never recovered. Presumably the marked easterly flow then observed…
  • p. 501 …of efficiency since on-off operation was never permitted. The temperature data of these flights is…
  • p. 648 …The theodolite lost the balloon in clouds earlier and the airplane observer never succeeded in seeing…
  • p. 670 …make model and submit same before quoting. Never heard anything. 1/21/47 Western Products Inc…
  • p. 710 …Recorded at Dona but Phil at Tower site never saw rocket. Waited at Dona until 6…
  • p. 718 …Out pm with several NYU by weapon carrier but we never located it. Rocket postponed until…
  • p. 726 …CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Opinion has been strengthened that clusters of meteorological balloons will never be a…
its bursting diameter, the gear strikes the ground, or corrective action is taken. Even if the extremely critical balance is initially achieved, there will be unbalance occasioned by (1) bursting of balloons due to deterioration in the sunlight, (2) diffusion of lifting gas from the balloons, (3) loss or gain of buoyancy when temperature inside the balloon changes with respect to the ambient air temperature. This will result initially from radiative differences, and after an amount of difference (superheat) has been established, changes in ventilation will cause changes in buoyancy.

Two methods of attaching the payload to the clusters of rubber balloons were tried. In the first of these (Figure 3) a long load line was used, and short lines led from it to the individual balloons. The length of such arrays was as much as 800 feet, and this size made them difficult to launch. The single load ring array, seen in Figure 4, proved to be much easier to handle and is recommended for cluster launchings. During ascent each of the balloons in such an array ride separated from each other and no rubbing or chafing has been observed.

The controls which were associated with this balloon system were crude and, in general, ineffective. They included (1) cutting off balloons as the buoyancy became excessive and a preset altitude extreme was passed, and (2) releasing part of the load in the form of solid or liquid ballast whenever descent occurred. The sensitivity of these elastic balloons makes it difficult to control their altitude with any system of controls, and as controls were developed it was found more practical to change from freely expanding balloons to non-extensible cells not made of neoprene. The tendency of neoprene to decay within a few hours when exposed to sunlight was the most cogent argument against doing more work on altitude controls to be used with such a system.

## B. Plastic Balloons

The next attempts to control the altitude of a balloon vehicle were made using non-extensible plastic cells, with an open bottom to prevent rupture when expansion of the lifting gas is excessive. With a fixed maximum volume, such a system has inherent vertical instability in only one direction. When full, there is a pressure altitude above which a given load will not be carried. The instability of such a system is found only when an unbalanced downward force exists. The development of controls and films for balloon material proceeded concurrently, but the choice of a non-extensible plastic film was made before the system of control was perfected.

The properties which were given most consideration in the selection of fabric include (1) availability and cost, (2) ease of fabrication and (3) satisfactory chemical and physical properties. Pri-

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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.