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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. 19 …MOGUL; their job was to deliver nuclear weapons, not to detect them. The unusual combination of…
  • p. 36 …happened near Roswell may have involved nuclear weapons. This was a logical area of concern since…
  • p. 41 …to determine the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research. This was the early Cold War period…
  • p. 183 …that time where we either dropped a weapon or did something stupid, which we had to…
  • p. 201 …long range balloons; although not effective as weapons, they did initiate the long-range balloon research…
  • p. 213 …Charles Ziegler was working on the history of nuclear weapons detection capability. He had some letters…
  • p. 249 …Out PM with several NYU men by weapons carrier, but we never located it. Rocket postponed…
  • p. 251 …so I took a weapons carrier and drove up there. We were aggressively trying to recover…
  • p. 253 …We drove up in a weapons carrier to the Roswell Army Air Field, and tried to…
  • p. 264 …We civilians were driving weapons carriers to carry helium around, and to go into town to…
  • p. 273 …a book on the history of nuclear weapons detection. It figured, of course, that Project MOGUL…
  • p. 274 …I had considerable background in nuclear weapons detection, using devices that I had developed in the…
  • p. 326 …in the :world capable of delivering nuclear weapons. It now appears that the debris from MOGUL…
  • p. 401 …a.~tack:; -;;it"t st.~c!"et weapons. ' The moat prom1a1ne. .eJ"PC'• oi: li6tening etatlon…
  • p. 804 …Dec 13 Fri.Woody and I left Alamogordo Air Base in weapon carrier and scouted out…
  • p. 805 …went in borrowed weapon carrier. '.:oody and Jeff 7owler took other weapon carrier ::1~d collected…
  • p. 808 …Phil and Sal went out to Dona and Launching Sites with weapon carrier. Hoffman, DeTurk and…
  • p. 812 …May 19 Mon Reynolds and I left about 0745 in weapon carrier for Silver City. Arrived…
  • p. 813 …Edmondson and I left about 0845 in weapon carrier for Roswell. Arrived at Hagerman about 12…
  • p. 815 …Out pm with several NYU by weapon carrier but we never located it. Rocket postponed until…
received satisfactory results when the number of targets was increased to belo/een
3 and 5.30 Interestingly, during July of 1948, a similar test would be made at
Alamogordo AAF by another organization.31 This test confirmed Moore's theory
that when targets were increased to at least three, satisfactory returns were
received by the radar. This procedure, according to Moore, was employe~ on
flight nos. 3 and 4, but it was only marginally successful. This prompted Mioore
and his associates to configure the two remaining flights of Alamogordo I, flights
#5 and #6, with radiosonde transmitters.
I
For these two final flights, Moore devised a method of manually determi!ning
azimuth and elevation, in the absence of a radisonde recorder, by counting dicks
as pressure-sensitive contacts closed. NYU Technical Report No. 1 shows 1
two
"interpretations" of the data which confirm that manual calculations were q.sed.
In regard to flight no. 5, it appears there was a typographical error in Techpical
Report No. 1, Table VII, for the time of launch which is erroneously listed as 1517
MST, contrary to figures 32 and 33 in Technical Report No.1 and Crary's qiary
(Atch 6). The correct time of launch for flight no. 5 appears to be 0516 MST. With
the launching of flight no. 6 at approximately 0530 on June 7, the NYU group
departed Alamogordo via a B-17 for Newark AAF, NJ. NYU flight nos. 1~ are
summarized below:
SUMMARY OF FLIGHTS 1--6
Flight no. Date Launch Site Configuration Landing: Site
1 4/3/47 Bethlehem, PA See NYU Tech. Report Sandy Hoof<, NJ
No. 1, Table VII
2 4/18/47 Bethlehem, PA See Appendix NYU Unknown
Special Report No. 1
3 5/29/47 Alamogordo, NM Same as flight no. 2* Unknown
4 6/4/47 Alamogordo, NM Same as flight no. 2* Unknown
5 6/5/47 Alamogordo, NM See NYU Tech. Report East of Roswell, NM
No. 1, Table VII
6 6/7/47 Alamogordo, NM See NYU Tech. Report South of H'ghrolls, NM
No. 1, Table VII
* Depictions of flight nos. 3 and 4 are not provided in the NYU reports. According to NYU Progress ~eport
No. 6, Section II, p. 5, the equipment to be used for the Alamogordo field trip in June was consistent with
the depiction of flight no. -2. This information also concurred with Crary's partial description of flight no. 4
in his diary. ·
Note: An attempt to launch a balloon-train assembly which would have been NYU flight no. 3 was made
on May 8, 1947, but due to strong winds, restraining lines failed before the acoustical payload was attached.
Since the launch was unsuccessful, no flight number was assigned.
30. Ibid.
31. Rprt, Holloman AFB, "Progress Summary Report on U.S.A.F. Guided Missile' Test
Activities," Vol 1, Aug 1, 1948.

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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.