Roswell--Why did the Army even make a press release about a recovered disc?

originally posted by: skunkape23
It could have been a ruse to divert Soviet spies.
They were developing some high tech at the time.
Throw out the red herring.

that's one hefty ruse what could be more high tech than a flying disc from another world?

a reply to: schuyler

On July 8, 1947, the FBI Dallas Field Office sent the following teletype regarding a disc suspended from a balloon found near Roswell, New Mexico...

It states that the recovered object resembled a high attitude weather balloon with a radar reflector attached by a cable. How do you explain this teletype from the FBI? This document is on the FBI website and was released due to the Freedom of Information/Privacy Act.
vault.fbi.gov...

Why send known non classified
materials like those used in Mogul to Wright
Army Airfield for inspection?

a reply to: shawmanfromny

That's an interesting document. I've never seen it or recall it being referenced before.

It's also interesting that the teletype confirms that the disc part (at least) was an unknown entity. It "resembled" a radar reflector, but apparently wasn't actually one. Plus, the FBI hadn't (and wouldn't) actually see the artifact and was basing its information on a telephone call.

This at least fits in with the press release, yet it doesn't explain the necessity of the press release.

originally posted by: schuyler
Claiming this was a balloon is like claiming this was swamp gas. To believe it was a balloon you have to believe that the US Military couldn't have identified it. The fact is, during that time, the military used balloons every single day for meteorology on airfields. The men there new what balloons were. They knew what balsa wood was. They knew what balloons were made of.

Most on the base such as Jesse Marcel had never seen the type of radar reflector used in the project mogul balloon trains which were many times larger than ordinary weather balloons and had more targets and equipment than any balloons they were familiar with. So yes they were familiar with small balloons, but not the huge balloon trains with the new style targets so they didn't recognize the new targets with the exception of Warrant Officer Newton who did recognize the target so it's inaccurate to say US Military couldn't have identified it because Newton did, but he might have been the only one on the base who was familiar with it.

The Roswell Incident and Project Mogul

While many UFO proponents claim the wreckage shown in General Ramey’s office was just a weather balloon switched for the “real debris,” Moore pointed out that the radar targets used by NYU were unlike anything flown in New Mexico before and that “they were not available in Fort Worth to be substituted for the debris in General Ramey’s office.” Warrant Officer Newton was able to recognize the debris in General Ramey’s office because he happened to have used an early version of the same targets while serving as a weatherman in Okinawa....

What is the bottom line on the Roswell Incident, NYU, and Project Mogul? In Moore’s words, “When the wind information is coupled with the similarities in the debris described by the eyewitnesses—the balsa sticks, the ‘tinfoil,’ the tape with pastel, pinkish-purple flowers, the smoky gray balloon rubber with a burnt odor, the eyelets, the tough paper, the four-inch-diameter aluminum pieces and the black box—to the materials used in our balloon flight trains, it appears to me that it would be difficult to exclude NYU Flight 4 as a likely source of the debris that W. W. Brazel found on the Foster ranch in 1947.”

Here is an excerpt from Newton's statement, attachment #30 to the USAF 1994 "The Roswell Report -
Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert"

originally posted by: MrParanoid
a reply to: shawmanfromny

That's an interesting document. I've never seen it or recall it being referenced before.

Of course websites that want you to think roswell wasn't a balloon train aren't going to publicize documents saying it was a balloon like that.

It's also interesting that the teletype confirms that the disc part (at least) was an unknown entity. It "resembled" a radar reflector, but apparently wasn't actually one. Plus, the FBI hadn't (and wouldn't) actually see the artifact and was basing its information on a telephone call.

As noted above "Warrant Officer Newton was able to recognize the debris in General Ramey’s office because he happened to have used an early version of the same targets" but maybe no other person on the base was familiar with this new type of target so that's probably why they couldn't confirm it was a radar reflector...it was a type most people on the base hadn't seen before. That's also why claims they should have been able to recognize it but didn't are bogus...Newton did recognize it but apparently nobody else on the base was familiar with it because they were never used there before.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

But what about the memo in that picture of Ramey and Marcel that the air force says we can't read any words on?

Because its utterly amazing news, why wouldn't you want to tell everyone?
Its only in this age of political deceit and lies that we would question it.

originally posted by: Wrapscalllionn
a reply to: Arbitrageur

But what about the memo in that picture of Ramey and Marcel that the air force says we can't read any words on?

What about it?
Kevin Randle wrote a paper saying that a few words could be consistently read (balloon was one of those few words so what does that tell you?), but only a few words being legible leaves us not knowing what most of the memo says, though if it's just a wire service announcement it isn't likely to contain any secrets (see quote below from J Bond Johnson, the man who photographed the memo). This is the abstract from Kevin Randle's paper:

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu...

Abstract—Previous analyses of a photograph showing a document held by General Ramey from the Roswell UFO case reportedly revealed content that supported a crashed extraterrestrial craft scenario. Other investigators of this document suggested, however, that it was ambiguous stimuli being interpreted by pro-Roswell investigators in accordance with their expectations. To assess the possible extent of bias in these interpretations, we had three randomly assigned groups of participants attempt to decipher the document under different suggestion conditions: one condition in which we told participants (N = 59) they were looking at a document pertaining to the famous Roswell UFO case, a second condition in which we told participants (N = 58) that they were looking at a document pertaining to secret testing of the atomic bomb, and a final condition in which participants (N = 59) were told nothing about the possible content of the document. Many participants indeed claimed to be able to read the document, although their subsequent solutions appeared to follow directly from the experimental suggestions. Moreover, the number of words deciphered was related to participants’ ages, tolerance of ambiguity, and relative exposure to the UFO field and especially the Roswell case. However, a few words in the same locations in the document were consistently perceived across the three suggestion conditions and these matched the words identified in previous investigations. We conclude therefore that future research of Ramey memo might be potentially informative if certain methodological criteria are established. Such protocols are outlined.

originally posted by: IsaacKoi
Other UFO researchers have suggested it may simply be the wire service article which prompted the relevant photographer (J Bond Johnson) to be sent to the base. J Bond Johnson had said in one article written in 1998 (entitled [url=http://www.abduct.com/features/f25.php]“that:

“I was given the wire service "flash" announcement of this rapidly developing story by my city editor and I headed for the air base.
…
When the General entered the room I handed him the "flash" announcement printed from the news wires. He read it with interest.
I then took a couple of shots him, still wearing his hat in his office, examining the debris with the "flash" announcement held in his hand”.

Still other researchers think that the text is, and is likely to remain, illegible and is akin to a Rorschach test.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

That is cool and all....but you can take freeware tools and look at it yourself.

a reply to: Wrapscalllionn
Right. So when you do that, how do you deal with the bias issues identified in Randle's paper? Or did you even read Randle's paper? If not, you probably should, so you can be aware of the potential influence of your own bias.

originally posted by: MrParanoid

Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office[...]

Sources? I didn't know that, and I'm curious to know how he transported a disc.

Did he touched it?

Was it radioactive?

It's a good thread but would be better with some sources.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Yes I have read it. I do understand the issues he talks about....i also know that on that third word after the two everyone agrees on.....there is only 2 letters that slant from left to right at the start of the letter...and one of them ain't an f. I have to get a new hard drive for my computer, but when i do i will show you how i did what i did. And i can almost ( almost ) pull typed letters out of redacted stuff. Cant quite make them out , you cant read them....but illshow you how i did that , too.

a reply to: Wrapscalllionn
OK well you probably realize different people have interpreted the memo differently so that's one of the issues, but if you think you have a good interpretation this isn't the correct thread for it, but there is a good thread to post it in, this one:

Roswell - New scans of the Ramey Memo : Can it now be enhanced/deciphered?

The topic of this thread is why the army made the press release. I think it started with Kenneth Arnold and media coining the term "flying saucers" when Arnold's UFOs didn't look like flying saucers, so there's a story behind that misnomer too. After that flying saucers and disks were in the news and then Brazel wondered if what he found might be one of those that had crashed. He knew it wasn't like the other weather balloons he had found and he was right, it wasn't, there was way more debris than for an ordinary weather balloon (but maybe as much as for the Mogul balloon trains). So he called it a disk because disks were in the news, and most of the people on the base like Jesse Marcel didn't recognize what it was (except for Newton) so they got a little carried away and issued the press release.

I think these radio broadcasts shed a lot of light on the topic of this thread:

originally posted by: blend57
mirageman

Just found this ..it is supposed to be the original radio broadcasts. Thought maybe you would be interested in hearing the actual reports..

And the newspaper reports...

Thanks,
blend57

Generel Ramey described it as being of flimsy construction, almost like a box kite, with tinfoil, unable to carry a man, and he was unable to determine if it originally had a disk shape or not. Ramey had never seen one of those targets before either so he had no way of knowing what it was but his description almost like a box kite correlates very well with a rawin target.

Where did the mogul balloon launch from? There were reports of ranchers finding these balloons all the time.

"The early Mogul balloons consisted of large clusters of rubber meteorological balloons, however, these were quickly replaced by enormous balloons made of polyethylene plastic." If it was only 20 feet big why send a crew out to a debris field I can't see how a balloon would have caused such an big impact to leave a huge debris field.

I feel like even if they couldn't tell what the sensor was they could easily identify the balloon it was attached to . Also can't see what's so unusual about tin foil and balsa wood where they couldn't have identified it as that.

a reply to: Arbitrageur"I think it started with Kenneth Arnold and media coining the term "flying saucers" when Arnold's UFOs didn't look like flying saucers, so there's a story behind that misnomer too. After that flying saucers and disks were in the news and then Brazel wondered if what he found might be one of those that had crashed. He knew it wasn't like the other weather balloons he had found and he was right, it wasn't, there was way more debris than for an ordinary weather balloon (but maybe as much as for the Mogul balloon trains). So he called it a disk because disks were in the news, and most of the people on the base like Jesse Marcel didn't recognize what it was (except for Newton) so they got a little carried away and issued the press release."

No offense but this sort of portrays the people involved as pretty ignorant especially brazel and marcel. Which means the 509th was pretty inept I suppose Newton should have been the chief intelligence officer.

Maybe it was plain old incompetence or maybe there wasn't yet a concrete protocol for dealing with UFOs. Perhaps a "wiser" superior officer got wind of the official release and made them change their story. I can also see the advantages of letting other countries believe our military obtained an alien craft and is now in possession of advanced tech. Although in that case I'm not sure why they'd recant it.

originally posted by: Battlestation
No offense but this sort of portrays the people involved as pretty ignorant especially brazel and marcel. Which means the 509th was pretty inept I suppose Newton should have been the chief intelligence officer.

Who but a complete idiot would say that he found a debris field of small fragments of "indestructible" material? Marcel was a complete idiot to say that, and anybody who can't recognize that must be as much of an idiot as he was.

Sorry but "indestructible" and "many pieces of debris" are just not logically compatible. Considering how many people don't seem to get that I think Marcel has lots of company in the idiot category.

I don't think Brazel was an idiot, his neighbor told him he might be able to collect a $3000 reward so I suspect he was just an ordinary guy with dollar signs in his eyes and $3000 was a lot more money in 1947 than it is today. A car was only $1500 so you could buy two cars with it! He knew it wasn't an ordinary weather balloon but he didn't know what it was, so why not try to collect such a large reward, who wouldn't?

www.abqjournal.com...

"I don't remember just exactly what day it was but it was just before the Fourth of July and Mac Brazel came by our house and he had a small fragment of this material he showed us. He wanted us to go down and look at what he had found. Back then, it was just after the war and you didn't have tires and you didn't have very good vehicles or gasoline and there was no roads out there. We didn't try to go.
"We told him it was possibly a UFO. Back then, people were seeing a lot of things and reporting them. There were a lot of things up in the air. We called them flying saucers back then. We heard there was possibly rewards out for a UFO if anybody found one, so he went to Roswell and reported it.

So what did he have, a "disk"? No, he had a small fragment, which is what Marcel also found, a debris field of fragments.

Brazel's 14 year old daughter who helped pick up some of the debris said she thought it looked like a balloon that had burst, but then she wasn't trying to collect a $3000 reward.

greyfalcon.us...

Brazel's daughter, Betty, said that: "The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst."

The reason her dad didn't buy that was he had found a couple of weather observation balloons and what he found this time wasn't anything like those, and he was right, it wasn't. There was way more debris for one thing, and rawin targets had never been used in the area so that was completely new to him, and he wondered can he really collect enough money to buy two cars for turning in this junk? What rancher scratching out a living wouldn't be motivated by the possibility of collecting enough money to buy two cars for turning in some junk they found? But to collect the reward he had to claim it was remnants of a flying disk, so, that's what he did. That doesn't sound dumb to me.

originally posted by: grayfox87
Maybe it was plain old incompetence or maybe there wasn't yet a concrete protocol for dealing with UFOs. Perhaps a "wiser" superior officer got wind of the official release and made them change their story. I can also see the advantages of letting other countries believe our military obtained an alien craft and is now in possession of advanced tech. Although in that case I'm not sure why they'd recant it.

Again I will re-iterate this was 1947 not 2017. So it was unlikely there would be a protocol to deal with UFOs. The term had not even been used back then. In fact the use of "Flying Saucer" was something only days old. There were few who associated that or "Flying Disc" meaning alien craft back at that time.

In all likelihood the commanding officer of the 509th, Colonel William "Butch" Blanchard, who authorized the release of the "disc crash" story by July 8th did not initially realize the implications of the event.

When his intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel told him they had found the scattered debris of a flying disc, Blanchard probably first thought of a balloon crash or some such explainable event. The Arnold story was only eight days old and still being talked about.

On the evening of July 2nd, local retailer Dan Wilmot even had a saucer sighting. In 1947, however, flying discs or saucers had not yet assumed the image of extraterrestrial visitors that they have taken on today. Almost everyone then took it for granted that flying saucers were research balloons or military experiments of some sort. Colonel Blanchard probably innocently thought their recovered disc would be just one more story added to the many already being reported in the news media.

If the debris did come from something terrestrial, but secret, it would make sense that General Roger M. Ramey, commander of the 8th, would have then retracted Blanchard's disc story with a weather balloon explanation. It would make all the more sense if it was not just a low-level research experiment as Blanchard probably assumed, but a highly classified project, or a nuclear accident, or perhaps even something of Soviet origin.

This would conceal the indication of any such event and thus prevent public embarrassment at a time of mounting Cold War tensions. It would also conveniently and completely defuse the situation—which it immediately did.


Source : Link

That seems like a pretty good explanation for what really happened and how the press release got out.

However others will vehemently defend their own beliefs and point to other things. So much as it is fun to look over the evidence I think the Roswell story becomes whatever you want to make of it in the end.

I'm curious as to how many have looked deeply into this incident. At this point, there shouldn't be a need to explain.

- Mogul was not publicly named at the time.
- Mogul launches moved from Bethlehem PA to Alamogordo NM at the end of May 1947.
- Alamogordo was only 80+/- miles to the southeast of the crash site.
- Moguls operations director Albert Crary kept a journal of balloon launches during this period.
- According to his journal, the first launch of a full Mogul array was on May 29, 1947:

- Charles Moore was Moguls balloon project engineer and came to Alamogordo with his crew in the beginning of June:

- Moores duties included supervising the balloon arrays and radar targets.
- Mogul flights used radiosonde transmitters for tracking, which had not arrived with the NYU balloon crew because of the weight and size.
- Because of no transmitter, Moore experimented with the existing V-2 rocket radar in NM by attaching radar targets to balloon arrays to track them.
- Moore found it resulted in poor reception and added targets which increased the reception.
- Scheduled to launch on June 4th, a Mogul flight was cancelled due to cloud cover.
- A "regular sono bouy" was launched instead:
- This would have most likely meant a balloon cluster would have been inflated awaiting for the go-ahead to attach Mogul equipment.
- Moore, continuing his experimenting with target reception, would have attached 3 or more radar targets to this awaiting cluster.
- When Mogul #4 was cancelled, instead of wasting an inflated balloon cluster, it was launched with only a sono bouy attached as recorded in Crary's journal above.
- THIS cluster is what I believe crashed on the Foster ranch.
- It would have consisted of balloons and multiple foil-like and small sticks radar targets as described by Brazel and Marcel.

Mogul flight #4 doesn't need to be launched to account for what was found on the Foster ranch. In fact, this explanation fits better because Mogul equipment would have been followed to it's end. A flight consisting of balloons, radar targets and a sono bouy would not have been a priority and deemed expendable.

And I'll repeat again as I have many times. The astronomical coincidence of radar target construction compred to an alien spacecraft:

Radar Targets
- Foil with backed paper
- Small Sticks
- Tape
- Eyelets
- String
- Rubber Carrying Balloons

Alien Spacecraft (Brazel)
- Foil backed paper
- Small Sticks
- Tape
- Eyelets
- Rubber Strips

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: Drunkenparrot

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: midicon
a reply to: schuyler

According to Wiki the project ran from 47-49.

The Wiki article assumes Roswell was a balloon. The article states: "This article needs additional citations for verification." and uses only sources that agree with it. In other words, it is hardly definitive. If you look in the "talk" portion of the article you will find a great deal of controversy as various authors keep changing the article to their own point of view. Just one exchange out of many:

I'm afraid it was YOU who took a short NPOV article, decided to make it very pro-Mogul POV for the Roswell Incident by cherrypicking a few quotes and leaving everything contradictory out. All I did was put it back into context, e.g., pointing out that a few carefully picked quotes in isolation don't tell the full story.

Source

In other words, use Wiki with the utmost care.

I have seen the project mogul logs, they were definitely launching the radiosonde balloon trains in the months prior to Mack Brazeal's discovery.

Great! Why not post them

Better yet, how about googling project mogul flight 4 and then you can post them and save me the hassle?