Documents / FOIA release

roswell

Office of the Secretary of Defense · 993 pages · text from the file's own layer

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published in 1995 by Headquarters United States Air Force. It was written in response to Representative Steven H. Schiff's request and a General Accounting Office audit, and it contains Col. Richard L. Weaver's report and 1st Lt. James McAndrew's synopsis, along with attachments, appendices and photographs. The report says researchers found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concludes that the 1947 debris came from a Project MOGUL balloon train.

  • p. 43 …to the sun for only a few days. The plasticizers and antioxidants in the neoprene would…
  • p. 205 …ashes after exposure to the sun for only a few days. The balloon material and radar…
  • p. 221 …to the sun. Q: Is this the neoprene type or the ••• A: That's the neoprene…
  • p. 230 …such as the balloon material degraded, and maybe fused in the hot sun? 14 A: I…
  • p. 282 …We worked in the old Sun newspaper building in downtown Baltimore. Q: They had intelligence personnel…
  • p. 465 …the values of superheat ob- tained by the gas when the balloon is in the sun…
  • p. 484 …Superheat and Its Effects The effect of the heatin~ of lifting gas by the sun's…
  • p. 489 …Since the effect of the sun in heating the lifting gas decreases the effect of different…
  • p. 524 …when the ex- ternal temperature was measured, since no adequate protection from the sun was available…
  • p. 525 …Daytime flights had the added advantage or heating from the sun. The temperature of the lifting…
  • p. 541 …in the aneroid val~e as intermittent clouds shut off' the sun, and (3) the overcompensation…
  • p. 547 …stmset, and the balloon took on superheat whioh was lost_when the sun went down. ntis…
  • p. 558 …the transmitter was not insulated, and there was no heat to be gained .from the sun…
  • p. 570 …Since the sun had set between the third and -40-
  • p. 579 during the sunset descent (caused when the superheated helium lost the sun's heating ei'i…
  • p. 591 …that seen earlier with the balloon gas being warmed by the sun to acquire a superheat…
  • p. 666 …the changing buoyancy of the balloon as cloud masses intermittently shielded it from the sun's…
  • p. 736 …the subst;q.uent descent, superheating of the balloons by the nsmg sun would cause the…
  • p. 739 …Flight termination was usually due to deteriora- tion of the balloon caused by the sun. In…
  • p. 740 …the ambient tem- perature after the sun had risen. The automatic ballast valve operates. when the…
  • p. 801 …April 14 Sun. Down to lab this am with Joe looking for G9A files. Jim Peoples…
  • p. 802 …Discussed with Crane possibilities of getting sound through the ground part of the ocean sound channel…
  • p. 803 …Over to Jim and Rowes tonight and to Euzzards Bay bowling, l'ay 5 Sun. L…
  • p. 806 …Stayed at Amarillo - at Clinton Hotel Jan 19 Sun Left Amarillo about 1130 CST IC.ent…
  • p. 808 …Correlated between the ~ower and Dona sites for se·reral sources. 'o!orked total travel times…
  • p. 810 …April 6 Sun. Checked clocks. Cleaned out hanger and emptied trash out at East White Sands…
  • p. 811 …April 20 Sun. Worked on plans for bombing runs and V2 monitoring. April 21 Mon. Alamogordo…
  • p. 812 …All equipment loaded on plane this pm. ~ay J-4 Sat, Sun. Left Alamogordo about 9…
  • p. 815 …29 June (Sun) NYU personnel and some of Watson Lab men working today with equipment in…
  • p. 816 …July 1a Sun. to cabins in Ohio just out of Springfield. July 1 Mon. To cabins…
  • p. 852 …4C.~~~ies• .tJi~J.tl~e ..• a 'telemeteririg ·device to indicate· the rate of ballast flow…
  • p. 861 …a sun- set. (3) By adding altitude control equipment, it is possible to maintain the balloon…
PROFESSOR MOORE - 6/8/94
strings from these four corners. Obviously, trying to take
something that's almost a meter in cross section, a meter on a
side, take it sideways up through, gave a lot of drag, and it
took a lot of lift to make the balloons rise very rapidly.
10
so instead, somebody came up with this smart idea of this
other arrangement of a corner reflector that had much less drag.
These, according to Tibbetts, weren't distributed until something
like November of 1945. As far as I know, as you will see in the
various correspondence, there were no SCR-584s which were
required to track them, issued to the weather services here in
New Mexico. Obviously, after the Trinity shot, there was no bit
military operation that required wind determination in New
Mexico.
Q: so essentially you'd say there were no radar reflectors
in New Mexico until 1947 until this appeared?
A: That's my opinion.
Q: Was Major Pritchard doing any kind of balloon project?
A: No. He and Dyvad and others were at Watson
Laboratories. I understand from Trakowski that Alamagordo Army
Air Field was about to be closed down as surplus. The people at
Watson Laboratories seized on it and were able to keep it on
active status for two projects -- one, the radar project from
Watson Laboratories that was set to track the V-2 being flown
from the proving ground across the Tulerosa Valley; and Project
Mogul.
I joined the NYU group in January of '47, and while I was
finishing up at Georgia Tech I had talked to my chemical
engineering professors, I'd already been recruited by Duffy and
Spilhaus, and I asked if you wanted to make a balloon of non-
extensible material, what plastic would you use. My professor
named Grubb told me you ought to consider polyethylene. It's a
new plastic just now becoming available. You can heat seal it.
It has a lot of desirable properties.
So as soon as I got to NYU, I began talking to everybody I
could find in Manhattan-- DuPont, all the sales offices ••.
Q: We saw your listing.
A: I was concerned with where we could get the plastic and
who we could get to manufacture the balloons. I was in my 20's,
just a recent graduate. I knew nothing about manufacturing. But
we did try to get a manufacturing company that would fabricate
balloons for us.
During that period we heard of the Navy project that was
going on at General Mills where Jean Get was planning to make a
flight to 100,000 feet. General Mills at that time was making

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FOIA release, from the osd collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 993 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.