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.
“US Navy”10 pages
## Flight 41: Released from Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pennsylvania, 0956 EST, February 16, 1948 Not recovered The balloon was of .001" polyethylene and had a fixed-leak ballast control set to provide a constant flow of 650 grams per hour. The principle objective of this flight was to test aircraft reception from a balloonborne transmitter. Using RDF equipment, two B-17 planes were able to receive clear signals from the transmitter at least 150 miles away from it and were able to home in on the signal by using the radio compass. There was a questionable zone of about a 15-mile radius beneath the balloon, and it is probable that this represented a cone of silence from the vertical antenna. The balloon was near 40,000 feet with the planes at about 10,000 feet. On later flights, using a frequency of 1746 kc, reception range was extended to over 400 miles and no cone of silence was encountered. By flying along the bearing indicated by the compass until it abruptly reverses, the position of the balloon may be determined. Visual observations confirmed the presence of the balloon overhead. On service flights made from this same base during this week, two new pieces of flight gear were added to the train. The first of these was a cloth parachute, mounted upside down in the line to serve as a drag, acting against excessive rates of rise. When mounted above the cloth identification banner, this chute also acts to minimize sway and lateral oscillation of the equipment. The second unit was a new type of destruction device--a pressure-activated mechanism by which a large hole is ripped in the balloon upon descent into the lanes of air traffic. In this device (Figure 14) the equipment is permitted to fall freely for a few feet, jerking a length of line through the balloon side. After this fall, the equipment again is carried by the main load line, and the ruptured balloon acts as a parachute to lower the gear to the ground at about 1000 feet per minute.
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.