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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…
HEADQUARTERS FITZWILLIAM FORWARD
c/o Commander, Task Group 7.2
APO 187, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, Calif.
SONIC BALLOON TEST I KVlAJALEIN
Inclosure G to FITZWILLIAM FORWARD RepOrt
17 ll.ay 1948
The Watson laboratories of Air Materiel Command arranged for ~ne ( 1)
of its sonic balloon teams to participate in the FITZ1iilLIAM proje¢t as a
mobile team to operate in the Central Pacific, at ~AJA~IN, GUAM Qnd HICKMI.
FIElD, HAWAII, in that order, changing location for each of the thlree (.3)
explosions.
The purpose of this exploratory test was as follows: first, to deter-
mine if an atomic explosion's compressional waves are generated in the sound
channel existing between 50,000 and 701000 feet (such waves would qonce~vably
travel unirrpeded for long distances in this channel without touching the
earth's surface); second, to determine whether a sound pick-up uni~ suspended
from a floating balloon could detect compressional waves (possibly undetected
by similar sound units at the earth's surface) by virt~e of the de¢reased
background noise in the high-level sound channel.
Balloons we~e m3de of high·grade plastic, were of tear-drop a~pe, and
were twenty-five (25) feet at their ls.rgest sea-level diameter. The sonic
unit was a combination microphone-transmitter which was suspended ~rom the
balloon and picked up sound waves, transmitting them to a ground directional
antenna connected to a radiosonde receiver (standard SCR 658 air weather
radio recelver). The transmitted sound impulses were recorded on pro (2)
Esterline-Angus recorders.
;. dribble constructed of a five (5) gallon tin incorporating e 11etered
jet to allow a predetermined spillage rate of high grade kerosenerethylene-
glycol mixture was attached to the balloon. This was designed to pounteract
the helium gas seepage thru the surface -ores of the plastic ballopn. This
metered loss of ballast and controlled the rising rate of the balloon at 500
to 600 feet a minute.
Grcu.OO sonic equiJ:nent consisted ot World v:ar II sound ranging devices
utilized to pick up sound waves from an explosion traveling along the earth's
curface.
A radio receiver was used to obtain e:~tplosion time notificati1on code
signals from the ENIWETOK radio station.
The balloon launching site had to have a down-~ind clearance of about
1000 feet to lay out tho JOO feet risers and cables to which 19ere 1
attachod
the microphone-transmitter and dribbler units. Also the site had to be
sheltered from the wind to prevent da~~ge to the balloon while it was being
-1-

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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.