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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. 539 …Too muoh weight was lost in this action, and the train rose until aome of the…
  • p. 540 …Train, Flight 10 The balloon rose to about 16,000 teet MSL and dropped back to…
  • p. 554 …It will be seen that the balloon rose~ a ' .. --------- r- ....., ..:. Pon"'m j"'.,.._" k '~I I…
  • p. 572 …obtained, but during this time the balloon rose with predicted speed (500 feet per minute) nearly…
  • p. 585 …On the other hand, the balloon rose extremely slowly and may have taken in air to…
  • p. 665 …In flight 7, however, the cluster rose till the lifters were cut off, descended until sufficient…
  • p. 739 …As a result, the cluster rose to ceiling and stayed at this altitude for a short…
  • p. 786 s4cond cluster flight, provision was also made to release balloons if the train rose above 40…
AuGusT 1948 ATHELSTAI'.' F. SPILHAUS, C. S. SCHNEIDER, .-\ND C. B. MOORE 137
part of the trajectory of the constant-level balloon.
The interesting fact about the White Sands observa-
tion is that at all but one of the other reported altitudes
between the ground and 20,000 ft, the wind directions
were from either the NE or SE quadrants.
The trajectory of the balloon curved slightly anti-
cyclonically over the eastern slopes of the Sacramento
Mountains. This characteristic is suggestive of the
well-known deforming effect of a mountain range on
an air current directed toward the axis of the range.
In this case, however, the validity of invoking the
aforementioned effect to explain the anticyclonic cur-
~-vature, when the wind at levels below the mountain
summits appears to have been blowing approximately
parallel to the range, depends on assuming that the air
currents parallel to the range themselves constitute a
barrier deforming a higher current blowing in a differ-
ent direction across the mountains. The sharp cyclonic
bend that occurred after the balloon had come over
relatively flat country occurred at the time that the
balloon began its final descent and is due to the fact
that the course of the balloon turned toward the north
as a result of descent to levels where the wind had
maintained a southerly direction throughout the day.
It is of interest to compare this flight with Flight 17
(fig. 10). It may be observed on fig. 10 that no deform-
N Scale.·0
25
ing effect of the mountain barrier is apparent. This,
however, is to be expected, as the altitude of the bal-
loon above the mountain top is three times that of
Flight 11, where this anticyclonic deformation of the
trajectory was observed. The balloon was ultimately
recovered from Croft, Kansas, a distance of 530 miles
from the release point; on the basis of the observed
wind speeds a 12-hour flight duration is estimated.
9. Conclusion
\Vithin the coming year it is hoped that a number
of meteorological investigations may be attempted,
utilizing constant-level balloons. Release of three or
more from a single point to float at the same level,
release at a number of points to obtain a synoptic
presentation of the trajectories in a chosen level, and
the dropping of radiosondes from balloons are some of
the operations to be attempted. Efforts will be made
to simplify the arrangement so that a constant-level
flight may be made in a routine fashion and at no
greater cost than the ordinary radiosonde flight.
REFEREI'.'CE
Clarke, E. T., and S ..\. Korff, 19-H: The radiosonde: the strato-
s~here laboratory. J. Franklin lnst., 232, 217-355.
1~5
DISTANCE (Mil•8 From Alcam~ AAF)
FIG. 10. Height-distance curve and planned trajectory of balloon Flight 17. Released at Alamogordo, New 1\lcxico, 9 September
1947, at 1647 MST. First 125 minutes only are shown. (Numerals on curves indicate minutes after release.)

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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.