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

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

in March. E on new weather calculations 20 Feb. Found adding wind directly to velocity from temp gives accurate enough results. Changed 20 Feb rocket and plotted up altitudes against signal Strength - shows nothing significant & started on 1 April rocket. Have all 4 station azimuths about finished. Phil Chantz and Wiggett in by train Friday night. They brought in records of Flights 28, 29 and 30 on east coast - 1 of May and 2 in June. Went over records Saturday and identified signals of 28-29. Balloon expedition personnel arrived Saturday evening - Peoples, Trakowski, Mears, Ireland, Olsen, Moulton, Alden from AMS and Moore, Schneider, Hackman, Smith, Hazzard, 2 others and a Lt Smith from Navy NYU. 29 June (Sun) NYU personnel and some of Watson Lab men working today with equipment in north hanger. Went to Ruidoso with Mears, Trakowski, Godbee, V & E Week of 30 June - 5 July '47 Alamogordo. Vivian worked on Tests 9 and 10, finishing all upward data on GR3 recordings. Eileen worked on 1 April rocket, getting signal strengths vs altitude (corrected for weather data) and started on time calculations to get time of signal for correlation purposes. Appears likely that strength of signal is dependent on station factors rather than anything about rocket.

Balloon tests? 7, 8, 9, and 10 off this week. Test 7, slated for 1 July postponed until 2 July as equipment was not ready. 100 tanks Helium obtained from Amarillo Monday evening. Also radiosonde receivers set up by NYU personnel Monday but were not operable. Test 7 at dawn on July 2 with pibal 1 hr first following with theodlite. Winds were very light and balloons up between A air base and mountains most of time. Included cluster of met balloons. Followed by C-54? for several hours & finally landed in mountains near road to Cloudcroft. Before gear could be recovered, most of it had been stolen. Stations operating at north hanger, Cloudcroft and Roswell. Shots made unfortunately at Site #4 and picked up good from north hanger and from Cloudcroft for awhile. Nothing from Roswell. On Thursday morning 3 July, a cluster of GM plastic balloons sent up for V2 recording but V2 was not fired. No shots fired. Balloons up for some time. No recordings from Roswell as pibal showed no W winds. Balloons picked up by radar WL and hunted by Manjak C-45. Located on Tularosa Range by air. Out pm with several NYU by weapon carrier but we never located it. Rocket postponed until 730 Thursday night but at last minute before balloon went up, V2 was called off on account of accident at White Sands. Sent up cluster balloons with dummy load. Balloon flight #10 at dawn on July 5th. Had gone out in C-45 again with Moser and Dubell to hunt for balloon from Flight 8 but not since? we found them. C-54 went to El Paso and picked up single Smith plastic balloon and GM cluster plastic balloons. Flight 10 with single plastic followed from Alamogordo and Cloudcroft. Shot 8 shots from Site 4. Picked up most and lost signal at 845. Balloons? more than 6 hrs although time clock had been put in to bring them down after 5 hrs.? were picked up by? C-45 as first flight out was delayed. Had special balloon at 7 with explosive charge which went off at 35,000 ft and at 745 but by that time the receiver had lost the signal. Followed by radiosonde series until after 1300. Cloudcroft off at 8 and doubtful about signals received.

Peoples and Trakowski up 4 July with Dr. O'Day of CFS to Alamo Tower ---- ? Solar Observatory the SCEL station. Schneider up with O'Day to check use as NYU station.

Alamoggrdo crew helped get helium, and did ground shooting of 2 July. Out July 3 at Dona and Launching sites at 2 pm and later at night.

Finished identification on Flights 28, 29 and 30 on east coast and made plans for Bermuda flights.

Unable to leave for home on 3 July as was planned and wired Donnie first part of week if he could change his schedule and go home folloeing week. Got wire back that he had decided not to make the trip.

decided not to make the trip. July 6(Sun). Worked at office on flights and rocket data. Started on plans for speech 17 July meeting NYU - Getting ready for Flight 11. Plans are to put up Smith balloon with GM ? plastics + simple met balloon sonobuoy + balloon bomb.

plastics + simple met balloon sonobuy + balloon bomb. July 7 (Mon) Alamogordo. Balloon Flight 11 A off at 0503. Big plastic with small auxiliary plastics. WL gear - radiosonde and dribbler. Followed with theodolite and receiver until about 11. Picked up on radiosonde receiver at Roswell and followed then.Finally came down (at 10,000 ' cap should have punctured plastic) near Hwy 70 between Roswell and Tularosa. Second balloon - met balloons with radio sonde up about 630. Third balloon with 2 1/2 # stick TNTand caps set by pressure element to fire at 35,000' up at 0630. Surface bombing at Site 4 from 545 to 845 at 15 min intervals. Ireland followed main receiver only about 3/4 hr but followed radio sonde about 3 hrs. 35,000' explosion off about 655.

Vivian got all instructions for completing work on Flights 1-30 and picked all records and filed. Sent off TWX re Bermuda Flight and wrote up memo on it. Worked with Eileen on