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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. 23 …Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB), AL, the Air Force Safety…
  • p. 28 …What Air Force researchers did do, however, was to search for records still under Air Force…
  • p. 47 …Much of the speculation stems from claims by William Haut, a former Air Force public affairs…
  • p. 65 …On orders from the base commander, Col. William Blanchard, the Public Information Officer, Walter G. Haut…
  • p. 135 …That actually came, I think, in September when the Air Force first stated. You were one…
  • p. 277 …Commander, Eighth Air Force. General Ramey personally inspected the "disc," became skeptical, and summoned the base
A description of the use of this barograph is given in Part II, "Operations," of this report.

## B. Temperature Measurement

To interpret some of the observed balloon behavior, a knowledge of the temperature of the gas and the outside air temperature was required. The evaluation of "superheat" effects was accomplished primarily by exposing a conventional radiosonde thermistor inside the balloon with a control thermistor measuring the free-air temperature. Similarly, a thermistor was sometimes installed inside the battery-pack housing to measure the temperature of the batteries.

While this system was in use it was general practice to use the standard government service thermistors ML 376/AM (brown) and ML 395/FMQ-1 (white). The white elements were needed when the external temperature was measured, since no adequate protection from the sun was available. Also, at floating level there is no ventilation to be had since the balloon is stationary with respect to the air.

The resistance of the thermistors was switched into the grid circuit of the blocking oscillator of the AM-1 transmitter, and by comparison with pre-flight calibrations the audio frequency transmitted could be interpreted in terms of temperature. To record the signal after it was received, a fast-speed Brush Co. Oscillograph Model BL212 is used. (Due to the frequency response of the Brush recording system, the circuit was arranged to give lower frequencies than a standard radiosonde for the same temperature range.) A sample calibration chart is shown in Figure 34.

Figure 34. Sample calibration chart for temperature measurements.

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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.