Documents / FOIA release
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.
“Washington”44 pages
130 JOURNAL OF METEOROLOGY VoLu:am 5 CONTROLLED-ALTITUDE FREE BALLOONS By Athelstan F. Spilhaus, C. S. Schneider, and C. B. Moore College of Engineering, New York University (Manuscript received 4 December 1947) ABSTRACT The results of an experi.mental program to develop balloons with associated control devices, which will float at constant pressure m the atmosphere, are given. Newly dev~loped ~lastic balloons and automatic ballast equipment are described. Examples of successful controlled-altitude fl1ghts are shown, together with a preliminary analysis of their trajectories. The cons~?~-~evel balloon rna~ provide data not obtainable from an ordinary pilot-balloon network. Future possibilities and plans for 1ts use are indicated. 1. Purpose Drift bottles have been used for many years in the study of ocean currents and have provided interesting data. In meteorology, no corresponding device has been available. It is evident, however, that a balloon "which is free to move with the air currents, and yet whose altitude can be controlled, has many important applications in meteorology, as well as in other fields where it may be desired to keep instruments at alti~ tude for considerable lengths of time. An example is in the investigation of cosmic rays; here, clusters of ordinary extensible meteorological balloons have been used, but the constancy of altitude obtained is not sufficient for many meteorological applications. The purpoSe of the present investigation' was to develop a balloon with a control system which would fly at a predetermined constant level for periods of many hours. Such a balloon has wider application than the ocean drift bottle, because, whereas the latter is limited to surface (or near surface) currents, controlled free balloons may be set to drift at any pressure elevation desired, or along other thermodynamically defined surfaces, as long as the element defining the surface changes in a monotone fashion in the vertical. In addition to the uses for maintaining ·instruments at high elevations, there are numerous potential appli- cations of these balloons. Direct measurements of air trajectories and of lateral diffusion become possible. The balloons may also be used as vehicles to convey and drop radiosondes over ocean areas. One problem in this application is to obtain an absolute altitude tie-in point, as it will be difficult to identify the point at which the radiosonde reaches the sea surface. 2. Earlier attempts There have been numerous attempts for various purposes to get a balloon or group of balloons to stay at a fairly constant altitude. Meisinger was interested 1 Sponsored by, and in cooperation with the Watson Labora~ tories of the Air Materiel Command. in the meteorological aspects of this, using a manned balloon. In the investigation of cosmic rays, as for example, by Clarke and Korff (1941), clusters of ordinary meteorological balloons, 350-gram or 700- gram size, numbering anywhere from twenty to nearly seventy, were utilized. No altitude-control devices were used; the balloons were merely given different amounts of inflation. Thus the whole train ascended to an altitude where certain of the more highly inflated balloons burst until the remainder just balanced the load; thereafter, the assembly descended slowly due to loss of lift by the diffusion of gas. The only provision for having the system regain altitude if it descended too low was by arranging the launching before dawn, so that after the bursting of the first balloon and the subst;q.uent descent, superheating of the balloons by the nsmg sun would cause the whole assembly to rise again, thereby increasing the duration of the flight. The system does not have sufficient control for many purposes. . The much-publicized use of balloons by the Japanese 10 the last war represents an attempt which must be considered highly suecessful from the point of view of the length of time which the balloons stayed in the air. He.re the objective was not to obtain any critical altitude control, but rather to insure that the balloons remained floating. The Japanese nonextensible bal- loons were of two types. One type was of heavy paper, coated to minimize diffusion, of spherical shape, about 25 ~o 30ft in diameter, and containing about 19,000 cubic feet of gas. A solid-ballast control system was utilized and gas was valved at a low internal pressure (about two inches of water) to prevent the balloons from rupturing due to the increase of the internal pressure by altitude fluctuations or radiation changes. Such a valve tends to conserve the lifting gas but acts as a safety device to prevent damage of the envelope due to too great an internal pressure. The solid-ballast system was complex; approxi- mately 900 pounds of sand was used on each balloon distributed in thirty-six bags. The dropping of ballas~
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.