The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert

## Section 1. Introduction to Problem

On 1 November 1946, the Research Division of the College of Engineering of New York University entered into Contract No. W28-099-ac-241 with Watson Laboratories, Air Materiel Command. Under this contract, the University was commissioned to design, develop and fly constant-level balloons to carry instruments to altitudes from 10 to 20 km, adjustable at 2 km intervals.

The following performance was specified:

a. Altitude shall be maintained within 500 meters

b. Duration of constant-level flight to be initially 6 to 8 hours minimum; eventually 48 hours

c. The accuracy of pressure observations shall be comparable to that obtainable with the standard Army radiosonde ( 3 to 5 mb)

Monthly reports have been submitted to describe the progress of the project, however, much data and details of technical nature were given only in a qualitative way. It is intended to collect these data in this technical report and to review at the same time the total achievement of this phase of the project.

## Section 2. Method of Attack

## A. Balloons

A survey was made of previous attempts to produce a constant-level balloon; such as, the experiments by Meisinger $ ^{1} $ with manned balloons, the shrouded meteorological balloon developed by Dewey and Almy $ ^{2} $ , the Japanese balloon bombs $ ^{3} $ , and the clusters of meteorological balloons which have been used in cosmic ray investigations by Compton, Korff and others $ ^{4} $ .