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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. 39 …An advance ground team, led by Albert P. Cray, preceded the NYU group to Alamogordo Army…
  • p. 96 …OSI also developed an advanced Narcotics Investigations Course designed to teach the latest technics in combatting…
  • p. 174 …Dr Crary and Dr Peoples were the advance people and scientific monitors for our project. Dr…
  • p. 247 …Spilly was a consultant, and even in his advancing age he was still an enormous source…
  • p. 273 …the advance party of the balloon group arrived by B-17. $ ^{21} $ On May 29, the…
  • p. 617 …in advance of balloon release and a second notice will be filed at the time of…
  • p. 618 …Upon attaining the desired altitude, the auxiliary lifting balloons will be released from the main balloon…
  • p. 694 …in advance of balloon release and a second notice will be filed at the time of…
  • p. 695 (1) The type balloon to be used in this phase of the project will be a…
Flight 23: Released from Alamogordo, New Mexico, 0918 MST, September 12, 1947 Not recovered

A J-2000 neoprene balloon was enoased with a nylon shroud and provided with a valve to permit gas to escape after a small superpressure $ (\frac{1}{4} $ of water) was exceeded. The balloon in its shroud is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Neoprene balloon encased in a nylon shroud

If a "superpressure" balloon is used, much less ballast is required since, during minor oscillations, the reduction of buoyancy will not cause the balloon to descend as long as the remaining buoyancy is equal to or greater than the load supported.

This balloon, and three similar ones (Flights 38, 66, 87), failed to achieve any constancy of altitude. All four failed during the rising period or soon after the shroud became full. (The balloons were heated prior to release to restore elasticity.)

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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.