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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 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.