at high speeds and immediately burn up, leaving a trail of light that is often blue, green, or orange. Each year, many of these objects are seen and reported as UFOs, but later assigned an “explained” or “possibly explained” status by investigators and researchers.
If the Roswell case rested solely on these relatively unexciting reports, it would have faded into obscurity. However, on July 4, rancher Mac Brazel had been watching the skies during a severe lightning storm and heard a large boom that didn’t sound like thunder.
The next day, July 5, 1947, he was riding his horse through a pasture when he came upon a large mass of debris unlike anything he had seen before. Scattered throughout an area 400 metres long by hundreds of metres wide were numerous metallic strips that looked like dark tinfoil. Examining it in some detail, he said that as he crumpled it in his hand then released it, a strip would assume its original shape and could not be bent or wrinkled. As well, he found sticks of lightweight material like balsa wood, upon which were inscribed odd writings like hieroglyphics.
Brazel collected some of the pieces and took them home. He showed them to his family and to some neighbours, who all marvelled at the unusual quality of the material. Brazel notified the local Sheriff, George Wilcox, who in turn contacted the nearby Roswell Army Air Field, since the two thought the debris had come from a military operation of some kind.
Major Jesse Marcel, Intelligence Officer of the 509th Bomb Group, drove from the base to Wilcox’s office, where he interviewed Brazel and examined some of the debris he had brought into town. Upon hearing the details of Brazel’s find, Marcel believed the crash to be that of an aircraft and decided to travel to the site along with Captain Sheridan Cavitt, a counterintelligence officer from the Roswell base. Driving in separate vehicles, they arrived at the location too late to be able to do an extensive search, so Marcel and Cavitt decided to sleep overnight there in the desert.
In the morning, they explored the area in detail and found material scattered throughout a large crash site over a kilometre long and almost 300 metres wide. They also found pieces of debris that resembled tinfoil and several lengths of light rods like balsa wood. However, unlike balsa wood, the rods could not seem to be bent or broken.
Cavitt left in the middle of the afternoon, while Marcel stayed and loaded much of the remaining material into the trunk of his car. He finally headed towards home late in the evening, stopping there in the early hours of the morning before going to the base. He woke up his wife and his 11-year-old son Jesse to show them what he found in the desert. He told his family that he had found the remnants of a crashed flying saucer. Later, his son Jesse told investigators about the strange metallic “I-beams” that had lettering like hieroglyphics on them, and that his father had been very excited about what he had seen.
Marcel returned to the airfield and informed his superiors of the discovery. The 509th’s press officer, Walter Haut, was ordered by his commander, Colonel William Blanchard, to send out a press release to the effect that a flying saucer had been captured.
On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record ran the headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region,” announcing the recovery of something by the Roswell Army Air Field. Soon, media were calling the base and Sheriff Wilcox’s office for the real story of what had been found.
The debris was shipped to Brigadier General Roger Ramey of the 8th Air Force at Fort Worth, Texas. There, Ramey called the local media and told them the debris was not of a flying saucer but a weather balloon. The sticks and metallic pieces were actually part of a radar reflector.
On July 9, the newspaper ran a story under the headline “General Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer,” essentially retracting the earlier story. It also ran a story about Brazel, indicating he was mistaken and that he was sorry ever to have caused such a commotion. That seemed to end the affair, and the incident was brushed aside.
After the fact, researchers found evidence that military personnel had visited radio and newspaper offices in the Roswell area, requesting the original copies of the first, erroneous release about the flying saucer. Complicating the story and adding further intrigue, some military personnel later claimed that they witnessed or they themselves loaded very unusual wreckage onto flatbed trucks or transport aircraft destined for Los Alamos or Fort Worth or other classified locations.
It was many years later before anything more was learned about Roswell.
In February 1978, Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and outspoken advocate for the reality of flying saucers from outer space, was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a TV interview. While he was waiting to go on, he was told that a man living not far away was a former Air Force officer who had seen and touched some debris from a crashed flying saucer. Friedman was curious and looked him up: Jesse Marcel, who was then in Houma, Louisiana. Friedman interviewed him at length and learned that there was much more to the story than most people knew.
Friedman reopened the case and found additional witnesses and others who seemed to be able to corroborate the amazing story that an unknown craft of some kind had indeed crashed in the New Mexico desert. His investigations became the basis for a book authored by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, The Roswell Incident (1980).
In October 1978, Friedman was at Bemiji State University lecturing about UFOs and met a couple who told him that a friend of theirs named Barney Barnett, who had since passed away, had described seeing a crashed flying saucer in New Mexico sometime in the 1940s. Barnett was an engineer working for the government, and was deemed very reliable. His story seemed to match that of Marcel, with one added feature: he had seen several small bodies near the crash debris.
While in Minnesota, Friedman talked about this story with William Moore, a high school teacher with a strong interest in UFOs. He suggested to Moore that he research the Barnett story and see if it had any merit. A few months later, Moore discovered newspaper clippings that told the Roswell story. The investigation of the Roswell crash began in earnest.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Weyauwega, Wisconsin February 2003
My son and I were visiting a friend of mine in Weyauwega. My boy was sledding in the snow and I was taking pictures.
It was in the evening and was starting to get dark pretty quickly. My son pointed up to the sky and we noticed some lights coming in from what I believe is the south west. At that point I just pointed the camera up and took the shots. The object really gave me the impression of a balloon — except for the lights. They seemed to cycle all different patterns.
The object passed almost directly overhead and then headed south towards the train tracks. As the object passed I could make out more of a disk shape than a balloon shape. I just remember my son asking me over and over what it was and I didn’t have a clue.
Reported by Anonymous
Source: UFOCasebook.com
Speculation about the incident flourished during the next decade. Friedman found additional witnesses, and in 1988 the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) sponsored a team to locate the crash site. In 1991, author Kevin Randle and CUFOS investigator Don Schmitt published their book UFO Crash at Roswell, claiming that the government had retrieved the debris, cleaned up the site and was covering up its possession of several alien bodies.
One of the new witnesses located was mortician Glenn Dennis. He said he was working in a funeral home in 1947, when he got a call from the base about whether small, child-size coffins were available. As well, he said that when he had been at the base hospital one day in July, he had been ordered to leave
