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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.

Open the PDF at page 482 Original source ↗

“Gray”8 pages

  • p. 9 …Appendices to the McAndrew Synopsis are identified by gray tabs which appear at the top right…
  • p. 25 …The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in…
  • p. 35 …a thick, foil like metallic gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plasticlike material, like Bakelite; and…
  • p. 40 …the ruptured and shredded neoprene would "almost look like dark gray or black flakes or ashes…
  • p. 173 …Some of the material would almost look like dark gray or black flakes or ashes after…
  • p. 187 …He talks about the smoky gray rubber... Q: Which these samples here, as you say, if…
  • p. 206 …There's a gray area here. I was certainly aware that what we were doing in…
  • p. 308 …The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in…
Flight 81: Released from Alamogordo, New Mexico, O548 MST, August 6, 1948 Not recovered

The balloon flown on this flight was made of .004" polyethylene, and it was eggplant shape about 20 feet in diameter and 25 feet long. The first of its kind, this balloon was made by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Inc.

Only a short period of radio reception was obtained, but during this time the balloon rose with predicted speed (500 feet per minute) nearly to its predicted altitude (40,000 feet) and floated within 1500 feet of the 37,000-foot level. Figure 34 is the height-time curve for this flight.

Figure 34

Since the balloon did not descend far enough below its maximum altitude to activate the minimum-pressure switch and the automatic ballast valve, no ballast flow data was telemetered while the balloon was within the radio range. This indicates a very low rate of gas loss through the walls of this balloon.

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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.