Roswell: ET vs. Project Mogul: Part One

UFO sceptics in general and Roswell sceptics in particular have embraced with relish, or was that swallowed hook, line and sinker, the most recent explanation for the July 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO (only it wasn’t called a UFO back then) incident. The Roswell debris was just the remains of a Project Mogul balloon train. However, the Mogul balloon theory suffers equally the faults of the previous weather balloon explanation. 

Here are some further thoughts about that July 1947 Roswell “flying saucer” that crashed or crashed-landed outside of that town, with some additional emphasis on the prosaic Project Mogul explanation that explains all – not.

Firstly, I consider any bona-fide UFO that remains a UFO after investigation by those qualified to do so as bona-fide evidence that something extraordinary – and therefore of scientific interest – is going on. That’s even more the case when the numbers mount up into the hundreds, even thousands worldwide. Every bona-fide UFO case, every solid unknown, is a “WOW” event in the same way that that “WOW” event in SETI circles is cited again and again as something extraordinary.

Secondly, when it comes to UFO incidents, the earlier the better in order to minimize all of the cultural and social related stuff that now goes with the subject and taints it.

There are dozens of excellent bona-fide cases from 1947 through 1952 (especially Washington, DC – July 1952). After that, things get potentially more tainted but there are still lots of good unknowns.

Here’s a case and quote from the Condon Report that skeptics put so much stock in – that Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects - regarding the McMinnville, Oregon UFO photographs taken 11 May 1950.

“This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion  that an extraordinary flying object , silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.”

Then we have footage from the two classic UFO films from Great Falls, Montana (August 1950) and Tremonton, Utah (July 1952) both of which to this very day still carry the tag “unidentified”. One could go one and on with UFO “WOW” cases.

But if one wants THE case, let’s start with Roswell.  

So, even though the following case is ‘explained’, the very fact that it happened so early on in UFO lore and the major participants are no nonsense military officers, and there’s material on the public record that cannot be dismissed or disputed, I’d have to go with Roswell as the cream of the crop (I can see readers rolling their eyes up now).

Roswell Is Boring: Apparently Roswell is not regarded by most of the UFO experts in America as an interesting case. Roswell seems to be considered a very weak case by UFO investigators.  Some prefer this case (like Rendlesham Forest) or that case or some other case as the bees-knees of ufology but not Roswell. However if Roswell is such an uninteresting case, why are more books devoted to that case than any other UFO case? I bet if I Google “Roswell” vs. “Rendlesham Forest” I’d get way more hits on the former! In any event, Roswell is the only bona-fide UFO case I know of where the US military admitted publicly it was in possession of an actual “flying saucer” (and they have been back-pedalling furiously ever since). That alone, IMHO, makes it unique and therefore highly interesting.

Relevant Roswell Personnel: The buck obviously stops with Colonel Blanchard, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) CO, who dictated and ordered the issuing of the initial Roswell press release. According to the sceptical Roswell UFO tome authored by Kal K. Korff, The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don’t Want You To Know [Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y. 1997; p.28], “Ramey telephones Colonel Blanchard and conveys to him both General [Lt. Gen Hoyt S.] Vandenburg’s and his own ‘extreme displeasure’ over the fact that a press release was issued without proper authority.” However, Colonel Blanchard was never officially reprimanded, and eventually rose to the rank of a full four-star general in the USAF. That Colonel Blanchard was not reprimanded is puzzling since it was because of his ‘mistake’ that he created a major headache for officialdom, one which persists down to this very day. The obvious question was whether this rise in rank and lack of a reprimand was payment for Blanchard to keep his mouth shut over the reality of the Roswell event. It has been reported (Korff – p.49) that Mrs. Blanchard has allegedly stated that following the death of her husband that he had believed the Roswell debris had an out of this world origin, for what that’s worth.

Former Lt. Walter Haut, the RAAF PIO Officer in July 1947 who wrote up (under the direction and orders of Colonel Blanchard) that press release, stated in a signed affidavit dated 14 May 1993 that “there is no chance that he [Colonel Blanchard] would have mistaken it [“a flying saucer or parts thereof”] for a weather balloon. Neither is there any chance that Major Marcel would have been mistaken.” Haut also stated that “In 1980, Jesse Marcel told me that the material photographed in Gen. Ramey’s office was not the material he recovered.” [See also The General Ramey Photo-op section below.] Haut continued that “I am convinced that the material recovered was some type of craft from outer space.”

W.W. ‘Mac’ Brazel, who discovered the wreckage is on record (Roswell Daily Record, 9 July 1947) as stating that he had previously discovered two downed balloons (presumably weather) on the property and that this new debris did not correspond to that type of artefact.

The 1995 USAF Report: As a result of public and congressional pressure, the USAF reopened the Roswell case in about 1994, publishing their findings in their 1995 document The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. There’s a whole potful of points to be made with respect to this document and findings, which in brief that Roswell is explainable by a downed Project Mogul balloon.

Point One: The USAF searched internally for relevant documents or records regarding Roswell. They found nothing unusual had occurred involving extraterrestrial materials or alien bodies that was officially documented. Of course that search only could have extended to unclassified or declassified records. And that’s the whole crux of the matter. If Roswell had something to do with or involved extraterrestrial materials and/or alien bodies, and that had been documented, that material and documents would still be classified and hence not be available to those doing this reinvestigation for official historical records. Thus, their findings via a document search that the Roswell case as far as ET was concerned was lacking documentation hence validity and thus incorrect resulted in their ‘final word’ on the matter, a ‘case closed’ conclusion, is bogus. Even if the compilers of this 1995 report knew about classified Roswell documentation involving ET, they couldn’t say so in an unclassified public report.

Point Two: Their search for documentation was confined to what records the USAF had under their control. Omitted from the search were documents that other agencies might have held, including the US Army. That’s a major flaw in that in July 1947 there was no USAF, only the US Army Air Force.    

Point Three: A big deal was made over the fact that there appeared to be no nationwide heightened military alert or operation or security activity during that immediate post recovery interval. There was no higher tempo of operational activity or messages going to and fro, etc. which the report says is highly suggestive that nothing unusual was going on. Well, why would there be, heightened activity that is. We’re not talking “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” or “Independence Day” here. We’re talking wreckage from just one location here, not nationwide invasion by Bug-Eyed Monsters with heat rays and ray guns a-blazing. Was the military going to declare war on ET based on some alien debris?

Point Four: The only thing they found were records about a then ultra Top Secret Priority 1A project called Mogul, instrumentation lofted high into the atmosphere by balloons to detect above ground Soviet nuclear testing. These flights were launched from New Mexico in June and July of 1947. Ah! What goes up must come down; two plus two equals four; Roswell case solved. Roswell wasn’t a weather balloon; that WAS a cover-up story. Roswell was a Mogul balloon! At least the USAF admitted that something out of the ordinary happened.

                                                                                                         

Point Five: The 1995 USAF report did state or conclude was Roswell was not. Roswell was not an airplane crash. Roswell was not a missile crash. Roswell was not a nuclear accident. Roswell was not an extraterrestrial craft. Of course they would say that, even truthfully if no unclassified or declassified documents said otherwise – it’s all that classified stuff that might let that Roswell cat out of the Roswell bag.

Point Six: We finally get around to the official conclusions which in a quickie version amounts to a whopping big MAYBE when it comes to Mogul. Let’s quote the quotes and see where the chips fall. “The Air Force research did not locate or develop any information that the ‘Roswell Incident’ was a UFO event” [Obviously for reasons already gone into]. “All available official materials, although they do not directly address Roswell per se [their italics], indicate that the most likely source of the wreckage recovered from the Brazel Ranch [sic – actually the Foster Ranch; Brazel was just the foreman, not the owner] was from one of the Project Mogul balloon trains.” [Reference: page 30 of the 1995 USAF report.] Of course there was no identification of exactly which one of those Mogul balloon trains.

So in other words, no established causality was found between Mogul and Roswell, its all conjecture. So, no cause and effect was established and Mogul is concluded to be only a “most likely source”. That’s hardly proof beyond reasonable doubt. However, if one turns back to page 22 of the 1995 USAF report, you’re led to believe under the section “WHAT THE ‘ROSWELL INCIDENT’ WAS” was that Mogul was the be-all-and-end-all of the matter. It wasn’t they; it isn’t now.  

Point Seven: I can’t really accuse the USAF of an initial cover-up as most pro-Roswell buffs do since their cover-up orders would have come from even higher authority. I can’t say this 1995 report is a cover-up since for reasons noted above the report, to drive the point home, could not reveal the existence of anything that was still classified.

 Lost and Found: Isn’t it absolutely amazing that the team responsible for operating (launching and recovering) those top secret Project Mogul balloon flights lost one somewhere outside of Roswell, N.M. That’s rather gross, in fact absolute negligence IMHO. And apparently they made no effort to recover their lost top secret property from the RAAF immediately the Roswell incident broke out in the press. In fairness, some of the Mogul flights were “service flights or test flights and thus the powers-that-be might have been more nonchalant about them and losing one. Now Mogul balloons were tagged with whom to contact (University of New York) if found, along with a reward offered and reimbursement for time and trouble taken. No doubt the powers-that-be thought that there was no real chance Joe & Mary Citizen would have figured out the real top secret purpose of the stuff. To Joe & Mary Citizen it would have just been a weather balloon. That misidentification was reinforced on the “to be contacted” tag which clearly noted (that misinformation) that this was “weather equipment”. So, with all that Roswell debris recovered, the RAAF personnel never did find that “please contact if found” Mogul tag, logical if the debris wasn’t from a Mogul balloon flight.

If the Roswell debris collected by the RAAF [Roswell Army Air Field] personnel proved not to be the property of the RAAF they seemed not to have gone through any official channels to find out the proper owners (and maybe get financial compensation for cleaning up their mess). Why’s that? Of course if the materials were from ‘out of this world’ that might explain that.

Here’s a contradiction. Even the 1995 USAF report on Roswell stated it was only probable that a Project Mogul balloon was the cause of the Roswell incident, yet the Roswell debris was in the hands of the AAF (now USAF) and should have been easily identified as the debris from the missing (lost) Mogul flight and therefore there should have been no probability involved in the Roswell explanation, rather instead a certainty.

To be continued.