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. 12 …Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Photographs of Balloon Debris, July 9, 1947 17. Statement, Lt. Col. Sheridan…
  • p. 13 …Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Photographs of Balloon Debris, July 9, 1947 2. Organizational Chart, Watson Laboratories…
  • p. 27 …These locations include Fort Worth, Texas, the home of the Eighth Air Force Headquarters; possibly Sandia…
  • p. 31 …DC; Federal Records Center, Ft Worth, TX; the INSCOM Archives, Fort Meade, MD; National Air and…
  • p. 35 …in the famous photos (Atch 16) in Fort Worth was that of a radar target normally…
  • p. 36 …were told was a flying saucer to Fort Worth. The people on board included...and Maj…
  • p. 37 …Newton was a weather officer assigned to Fort Worth, who was on duty when the Roswell…
  • p. 42 …photographs taken at the time by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, that depicted Ramey and Marcel…
  • p. 43 …the wreckage prior to its getting to Fort Worth. This organization reported on July 20, 1994…
  • p. 47 …After the autopsies, conspiracy theorists said the bodies were flown to Fort Worth and then to…
  • p. 65 …to Fort Worth. "Flying disc." Some of the debris was flown to Fort Worth. as where…
  • p. 84 …Center (WNRC) or the Southwest Regional Depository (Fort Worth, Texas). ## Recommendations Because the records management policy…
  • p. 131 …taken to Eighth Air Force Headquarters in Fort Worth where it was subsequently identified as a…
  • p. 138 …And I obviously...Marcel took it to Fort Worth. Yeah that's the... RW: Yeah. That…
  • p. 139 …into Wright-Pat and Kirtland, or to Fort Worth. Back and forth, loaded up, with very…
  • p. 145 …Then it said: "After Marcel had gone to Fort Worth and came back Marcel challenged the…
  • p. 147 …O.K."Marcel would take some of the sample to Fort Worth to show Ramey. In…
  • p. 150 normal course of his duty was sent to Washington not 8th Air Force in Fort Worth…
  • p. 219 …But the Roswell morning paper clearly showed that there was a knowledgeable person in Fort Worth…
  • p. 231 …Headquarters by a news photographer of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It's four pictures that…
  • p. 263 …I was the only weather forecaster on duty in the Fort Worth base weather and flight…
  • p. 269 …flown to Eighth Air Force Headquarters at Fort Worth AAF, TX, for his personal inspection. Upon…
  • p. 277 …Before the announcement was made, the "disc" was flown to Fort Worth AAF, at the direction…
  • p. 278 …giant thermos jug" was allegedly transported from Fort Worth AAF to Wright Field. $ ^{38} $ This description…
  • p. 280 designs on it." $ ^{41} $ Furthermore, the Fort Worth Army Airfield Weather Officer, Irving Newton, who was…
  • p. 283 1 Fort Worth Star-Telegram Photographs of Balloon Debris July 9, 1947
  • p. 549 …Similarly, the Fort Worth Sub-Committee established a procedure for flights made within the Fort Worth…
  • p. 616 …Air Coordinating Committee, Fort Worth Regional Airspace Subcommittee. Subject: Obstructions to air navigation...43 5. Memorandum…
  • p. 655 …5/15/47 Office of the Secretary Fort Worth Sub-Committee on Air Space Civil Aeronautics…
  • p. 715 …Arrived in Fort Worth about 9 EDST. Off again to Big Springs, Texas, where forced to…
point of view) that were reputed to be visible to some of the persons who observed the wreckage prior to its getting to Fort Worth. This organization reported on July 20, 1994, that even after digitizing, the photos were of insufficient quality to visualize either of the details sought for analysis. This organization was able to obtain measurements from the "sticks" visible in the debris after it was ascertained by an interview of the original photographer what kind of camera he used. The results of this process are provided in Atch 33, along with a reference diagram and the photo from which the measurements were made. All these measurements are compatible with the wooden materials used in the radar target previously described.

## CONCLUSION

The Air Force research did not locate or develop any information that the "Roswell Incident" was a UFO event. All available official materials, although they do not directly address Roswell per se, indicate that the most likely source of the wreckage recovered from the Brazel Ranch was from one of the Project MOGUL balloon trains. Although that project was Top Secret at the time, there was also no specific indication found to indicate an official preplanned cover story was in place to explain an event such as that which ultimately happened. It appears that the identification of the wreckage as being part of a weather balloon device, as reported in the newspapers at the time, was based on the fact that there was no physical difference in the radar targets and the neoprene balloons (other than the numbers and configuration) between MOGUL balloons and normal weather balloons. Additionally, it seems that there was overreaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel in originally reporting that a "flying disc" had been recovered when, at that time, nobody knew for sure what that term even meant, since it had only been in use for a couple of weeks.

Likewise, there was no indication in official records from the period that there was heightened military operational or security activity which should have been generated if this was, in fact, the first recovery of materials and/or persons from another world. The postwar US military (or today's for that matter) did not have the capability to rapidly identify, recover, coordinate, cover up, and quickly minimize public scrutiny of such an event. The claim that they did so without leaving even a little bit of a suspicious paper trail for 47 years is incredible.

It should also be noted here that there was little mentioned in this report about the recovery of the so-called "alien bodies." This is for several reasons: First, the recovered wreckage was from a Project MOGUL balloon. There were no "alien" passengers therein. Secondly, the pro-UFO groups who espouse the alien bodies theories cannot even agree among themselves as to what, how many, and where such bodies were supposedly recovered. Additionally, some of these claims have been shown to be hoaxes, even by other UFO researchers. Thirdly, when such claims are made, they are often attributed to people using pseudonyms or who otherwise do not want to be publicly identified, presumably so that some sort of retribution cannot be taken against them (notwithstanding that nobody has been

Cited by

Cases discussed

About this file

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.