roswell

1947 12
in March. S on new weather calculations 20 Feb. Found adding wind directly to velocity
from temp r-i·.'es accurate enough results. Chan#!:ed 20 Feb rocket and plotted up altitudes
against signal §trength - shows nothing significant & started on 1 A~ril rocket. Have all
4 station azimuths about finished. Phil Chantz and Wiggett in by train Friday night. They
brought in records of Flights 28, 29 and JO on east coast - 1 of May and 2 in June. Went
over records Saturday and identified signals of 28 -29. Balloon expedition personnel arr-
ived Saturday evening - Peoples, Trakowski, Mears, Irelacd, Olsen, Moulton, Alden from AMS
and :roore, Schneider, Hackman, Smith, Hazzard, 2 others and a Lt Smith from Navy NYU.
29 June (Sun) NYU personnel and some of Watson Lab men working today with equipment in
north hanger. Went to Ruidoso with Mears, Trakowski, Godbee, V & E
Week of 30 June - 5 July '47 Alamogordo. Vivian worked on Tests 9 and 10, finishing all
upward data on GR3 recordings. Eileen worked on 1 April rocket, getting signal strengths
vs altitude (corrected for weather data) and started o~ime calculations to get time of
signal for correlation purposes. Appears likely that s~rength of signal is dependent on
station factors rather than anything about rocket.
Balloon tests? 7, 8, 9, and 10 off this week. Test 7, slated for 1 July postponed until
2 July as equipment was not ready. 100 tanks Helium obtained from Amarillo Monday evening.
Also radiosonde receivers set up by NYU personnel Monday but were not operable. Test 7
at dawn on July 2 with pibal 1 hr first following with th~<>dlite. Winds were very light
and balloons up between A air base and mountains most of time. Included cluster of met
balloons. Follewed by C-54? for several hours & finally landeddn mountains near road to
Cloudcroft. Before gear could be recovered, most of it had be~~tolen. Stations operating
at north hanger, Cloudcroft and ROswell. Shots made unfortunately at Site #4 and picked up
good from north hanger and from Cloudcroft for awhile. Nothing from Roswell. On Thursday
morning 3 July, a cluster of GM plastic balloons sent up for V2 recording but V2 was not
fired. No shots fired. Balloons up for some time. No recordings from Roswell as pibal showed
no W winds. Balloons picked up by radar WL and hunted by Manjak C-45. Located on Tularosa
Range qy air. Out pm with several NYU by weapon carrier but we never located it. Rocket
postponed until 730 Thursday night but at last minute before balloon went up,,V2 was called
off on account of accident at White Sands.Sent up cluster balloons with dummy load. Balloon
flight #10 at dawn on July 5th. Had gone out in C-45 again with Moser and Dubell to hunt
for balloon from Flight 8 but not since? we found them. C-54 went to El Paso and picked up
single Smith plastic balloon and GM cluster plastic balloons. Flight 10 with single
plastic followed from Alamogordo and Cloudcroft. Shot 8 shots from Site 4. Picked up most
and lost signal at 845. Balloons ? more than 6 hrs although time clock had been put in
to bring them down after 5 hrs. ? were picked up by ? C-45 as first flight out was
delayed. Had special balloon at 7 with explosice charge which went off at 35,000 ft and at
745 but by that time the receiver had lost the signal. Followed by radiosonde series until
after 1300. Cloudcroft off at 8 and doubtful about signals received.
Peoples and Trakowski up 4 July with Dr. O'Day of CFS to Alamo Tower ---- ? Solar Obser-
vatory the SCEL station. Schneider up with 0 'Day to check use as NYU station.
Alamoggrdo crew helped~.get helium, and did ground shooting of 2 July. Out July 3 at Dona
and Launching sites at 2 pm and later at night.
Finished identification on Flights 28, 29 and 30 on east coast and made plans for Bermuda
flights.
Unable to leave for home on 3 July as was planned and wired Donnie first part of week
if he could change his schedule and go home folloeing week. Got wire back that he had
decided not to make the trip.
July 6(sw&. Worked at office on flights and rocket data. Started on plans for speech 17 July
meeting NYU - Getting.ready for Flight 11. Plans are to put up Smith balloon with GM ?
plasties + simple met balloon sonobuoy + balloon bomb.
July 7 {Mon) Alamogordo. Balloon Flight 11 A off at 0503. Big plastic with small auxiliary
plastics. WL gear - radiosonde and dribbler. Followed with theodolite and receiver until
about 11. Picked up on radiosonde receiver at Roswell and followed the~.Finally came down
(at 10,000 ' cap should have punctured plastic) near Hwy 70 between Roswell and Tularosa.
Second balloon - met balloons with radio sonde up about 630. Third balloon with 2 r"/.2 #
stick TNTand caps set by pressure element to fire at 35,000' up at 0630. Surface bombing
at Site 4 from 545 to 845 at 15 min intervals. Ireland followed main receive~nly about
J/4 hr but followed radio sonde about 3 hrs. J5,000' explosion off about 655.
Vivian got all instructions for completing work on Flights 1-JO and picked all records
and filed. Sent off TWX re Bermuda Flight and wrote up memo on it. Worked with Eileen on