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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. 190 …Well, Boford was Navy, that was the Navy... Q: Like taking a Pi Ball reading now…
  • p. 191 …fabricate balloons for us. During that period we heard of the Navy project that was going…
  • p. 207 …But were any of those used as precursors to Mogul or... A: None whatsoever. That was…
  • p. 270 …Ewing had conducted considerable research for the Navy during World War II, studying, among other things…
  • p. 323 …f) Measurements of actual sound channel transmission using a small stratosphere balloon carrying sound receivers and…
  • p. 657 …At the present time this company cannot supply us with balloons until Navy clearance is obtained…
  • p. 693 …for six hours using a non-extensible envelope with the addition of a ballast valve to…
  • p. 704 …Met Gifford who has 90' sea rescue boat this project is planning to use. Stayed at…
  • p. 705 …Wyckoff, Hungerfield, Vaux and myself regarding Navy participation with us in Crossroads. Captain Kellogg of Weather…
  • p. 718 …Schneider up with O'Day to check use as NYU station. Alamoggrdo crew helped get helium…
during the sunset descent (caused when the superheated helium lost the sun's heating effect). A further descent of 5 mb (500 feet at this level) was required to start the flow of ballast. By this time, the balloon had lost considerable lift and in exchange had acquired a downward velocity of about 120 feet per minute. To check this descent a ballast flow was required for about 40 minutes. During the next hour the balloon was buoyant and climbing back to the seal-off pressure of the automatic ballast valve. The inefficiency of this valve system is demonstrated by the ballast which was lost after the balloon had regained its buoyancy and had begun to rise. More ballast was wasted than was required to check the descent. Indeed, the entire 3000 grams available was expended at this time, according to the evidence of the ballast meter.

On this flight there was no apparent change in the activation pressure of the automatic ballast aneroid between the times when ballast flow began and ended. This indicates that the entrapped air had not experienced any significant temperature change during the two hours of ballast operation.

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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.