The Roswell Incident: Case Closed, The Official Air Force Report on Alleged UFO Crash Sites and Alien Bodies from 1947 - Witness Statements, High Dive and Excelsior, Secret Experiments
U.S. Military, Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force
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The Roswell Report: Case Closed
Headquarters United States Air Force
Approved for public release
Foreword
The "Roswell Incident" has assumed a central place in American folklore since the events of the 1940s in a remote area of New Mexico. Because the Air Force was a major player in those events, we have played a key role in executing the General Accounting Office's tasking to uncover all records regarding that incident.
Our objective throughout this inquiry has been simple and consistent: to find all the facts and bring them to light. If documents were classified, declassify them; where they were dispersed, bring them into a single source for public review.
In July 1994, we completed the first step in that effort and later published The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. This volume represents the necessary follow-on to that first publication and contains additional material and analysis. I think that with this publication we have reached our goal of a complete and open explanation of the events that occurred in the Southwest many years ago.
Beyond that achievement, this inquiry has shed fascinating light into the Air Force of that era and revitalized our appreciation for the dedication and accomplishments of the men and women of that time. As we celebrate the Air Force's 50th Anniversary, it is appropriate to once again reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to make ours the finest air and space force in history.
SHEILA E. WIDNALL Secretary of the Air Force
Guide For Readers
This publication contains the complete report as submitted to the Secretary of the Air Force. The exceptions are the statements found in Appendix B. Due to Privacy Act restrictions and by request, the addresses of the individuals making these statements have been deleted.
This volume is divided into two sections, eight subsections, eleven sidebar discussions, and three appendices. Section One examines alleged events at two locations in rural New Mexico. Section Two examines the alleged activities at the Roswell Army Airfield Hospital.
Appendix A is a table listing the launch and landing locations of test equipment for U.S. Air Force scientific research projects High Dive and Excelsior. Appendix B is a collection of signed sworn statements based on in-person interviews conducted for this report by U.S. Air Force researchers. The exception is the statement of Lt. Col. William C. Kaufman, which was not sworn due to equipment failures at the time of interview.
Appendix C contains transcripts of interviews of alleged witnesses presented by UFO theorists. The interviews of Gerald Anderson, Alice Knight, and Vern Maltais were excerpted in their entirety from unedited interviews used to prepare the video, Recollections of Roswell, Part II (1993), and appear courtesy of the Fund for UFO Research. The interview of Mr. W. Glenn Dennis was provided by the interviewer, Karl T. Pflock. The transcript of the interview of Mr. James Ragsdale was provided by Kevin Randle, the coauthor of the Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell (Avon Books, 1994), in which direct quotes from this transcript appear.
A selected bibliography of technical reports and how to obtain them are found on page 221. For additional information on this subject, see Headquarters United States Air Force, The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995).
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Introduction
In July 1994, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force concluded an exhaustive search for records in response to a General Accounting Office (GAO) inquiry of an event popularly known as the "Roswell Incident." The focus of the GAO probe, initiated at the request of New Mexico Congressman Steven Schiff, was to determine if the U.S. Air Force, or any other U.S. government agency, possessed information on the alleged crash and recovery of an extraterrestrial vehicle and its alien occupants near Roswell, N.M. in July 1947.
Reports of flying saucers and alien bodies allegedly sighted in the Roswell area in 1947, have been the subject of intense domestic and international media attention. This attention has resulted in countless newspaper and magazine articles, books, a television series, a full-length motion picture, and even a film purported to be a U.S. government "alien autopsy."
The July 1994 Air Force report concluded that the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Forces, did indeed recover material near Roswell in July 1947. This 1,000-page report methodically explains that what was recovered by the Army Air Forces was not the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien crew, but debris from an Army Air Forces balloon-borne research project code named Mogul.1 Records located describing research carried out under the Mogul project, most of which were never classified (and publicly available) were collected, provided to GAO, and published in one volume for ease of access for the general public*
Although Mogul components clearly accounted for the claims of "flying saucer" debris recovered in 1947, lingering questions remained concerning anecdotal accounts that included descriptions of "alien" bodies. The issue of "bodies" was not discussed extensively in the 1994 report because there were not any bodies connected with events that occurred in 1947. The extensive Secretary of the Air Force-directed search of Army Air Forces and U.S. Air Force records from 1947 did not yield information that even suggested the 1947 "Roswell" events were anything other than the retrieval of the Mogul equipment.2
'Mogul records which ultimately lead to the identification of the origin of the 1947 claims of "flying saucer" debris, described balloon research that was never classified. Other Mogul records, describing military applications of balloon-borne acoustical sensors, were declassified, along with millions of pages of other unrelated executive branch documents by Executive Order 11652, issued on March 6, 1972 by President Richard M. Nixon.
Subsequent to the 1994 report, Air Force researchers discovered information that provided a rational explanation for the alleged observations of alien bodies associated with the "Roswell Incident." Pursuant to the discovery, research efforts compared documented Air Force activities to the incredible claims of "flying saucers," "aliens" and seemingly unusual Air Force involvement. This in-depth examination revealed that these accounts, in most instances, were of actual Air Force activities but were seriously flawed in several major areas, most notably: the Air Force operations that inspired reports of "bodies" (in addition to being earthly in origin) did not occur in 1947. It appears that UFO proponents have failed to establish the accurate dates for these "alien" observations (in some instances by more than a decade) and then erroneously linked them to the actual Project Mogul debris recovery.
This report discusses the results of this further research and identifies the likely sources of the claims of "alien" bodies. Contrary to allegations that the Air Force has engaged in a cover-up and possesses dark secrets involving the Roswell claims, some of the accounts appear to be descriptions of unclassified and widely publicized Air Force scientific achievements. Other descriptions of bodies appear to be descriptions of actual incidents in which Air Force members were killed or injured in the line of duty.
The conclusions of the additional research are:
• Air Force activities which occurred over a period of many years have been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or three days in July 1947.
• "Aliens" observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research.
• The "unusual" military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. The reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and "crew," were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.
• Claims of bodies at the Roswell Army Air Field hospital were most likely a combination of two separate incidents:
1) a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and,
2) a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.
This report is based on thoroughly documented research supported by official records, technical reports, film footage, photographs, and interviews with individuals who were involved in these events.
SECTION ONE
Flying Saucer Crashes and Alien Bodies
The most puzzling and intriguing element of the complex series of events now known as the Roswell Incident, are the alleged sightings of alien bodies. The bodies turned what, for many years, was just another flying saucer story, into what many UFO proponents claim is the best case for extraterrestrial visitation of Earth. The importance of bodies and the assumptions made as to their origin is illustrated in a passage from a popular Roswell book:
Crashed saucers are one thing, and could well turn out to be futuristic American or even foreign aircraft or missiles. But alien bodies are another matter entirely, and hardly subject to misinterpretation?
The 1994 Air Force report determined that project Mogul was responsible for the 1947 events. Mogul was an experimental attempt to acoustically detect suspected Soviet nuclear weapon explosions and ballistic missile launches.4 Mogul utilized acoustical sensors, radar reflecting targets and other devices attached to a train of weather balloons over 600 feet long. Claims that the U.S. Army Air Forces recovered a "flying disc" in 1947, were based primarily on the lack of identification of the radar targets, an element of weather equipment used on the long Mogul balloon train. The oddly constructed radar targets were found by a New Mexico rancher during the height of the first U.S. flying saucer wave in 1947.5 The rancher brought the remnants of the balloons and radar targets to the local sheriff after he allegedly learned of the broadcasted reports of flying discs. However, following some initial confusion at Roswell Army Air Field, the "flying disc" was soon identified by Army Air Forces officials as a standard radar target.6
From 1947 until the late 1970s, the Roswell Incident was essentially a non-story. The reports that existed contain only descriptions of mundane materials that originated from the Project Mogul balloon train— "tinfoil, paper, tape, rubber, and sticks."7 The first claim of "bodies" appeared in the late 1970s, with additional claims made during the 1980s and 1990s. These claims were usually based on anecdotal accounts of second-and third-hand witnesses collected by UFO proponents as much as 40 years after the alleged incident. The same anecdotal accounts that referred to bodies also described massive field operations conducted by the U.S. military to recover crash debris from a supposed extraterrestrial spaceship.
Don Berliner and Stanton T. Friedman the authors of the book Crash at Corona. This request solicited persons to provide information about the supposed crashes of alien spacecraft in the Socorro area.8*
In response to the newspaper announcement, two scientists central to the actual explanation of the "Roswell" events, Professor Charles B. Moore, a former U.S. Army Air Forces contract engineer, and Bernard D. Gildenberg, retired Holloman AFB Balloon Branch Physical Science Administrator and Meteorologist, came forward with pertinent information.9 According to Moore and Gildenberg, when they met with the authors their explanations that some of the Air Force projects they participated in were most likely responsible for the incident, they were summarily dismissed. The authors even went so far as to suggest that these distinguished scientists were participants in a multifaceted government cover-up to conceal the truth about the Roswell Incident.
'Socorro, N.M. is situated at the northwest boundary of White Sands Missile Range, the largest military test range in the United States. Since the 1940s, White Sands and the surrounding areas of New Mexico have been the site of a high volume of military test and evaluation activity, including the launch and recovery of anthropomorphic dummies carried aloft by high altitude balloons.
Announcement from the November 4, 1992 Socorro (N.M.) Defensor Chieftan soliciting witnesses of flying saucer crashes in New Mexico. When former Air Force scientists responded to advise the authors that Air Force projects were most probably responsible for the UFO accounts, they were summarily dismissed by the authors who placed the announcement, and then were accused of participating in a cover-up.
B.D. "Duke" Gildenberg served as the civilian meteorologist, engineer, and physical science administrator for the Holloman AFB Balloon Branch from 1951-1981. Gildenberg actively participated in thousands of high altitude balloon operations, including the flights that dropped anthropomorphic dummies at off-range locations throughout New Mexico. Gildenberg, the "father" of Air Force scientific ballooning, was instrumental in identifying the many actual Air Force activities now known as the "Roswell Incident."
Charles B. Moore, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Physics at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, was the project engineer for New York University under contract to the U.S. Army Air Forces to develop high altitude balloon technology for Project Mogul. Moore launched the balloon train on June 4, 1947, that when combined with other events, are now known as the "Roswell Incident."
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Authors seek UFO witnesses
Co-authors of a major book on the 1947 crash of at least one alien spacecraft in the New Mexico desert will be at the Golden Manor Motel in Socorro on Monday, Nov. 16 to seek out additional witnesses to these events.
Nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman and aviation/science writer Don Berliner, whose "Crash at Corona" is now in its second printing, want to meet with people having knowledge of the 1947 crashes.
Their book, being published in August by Paragon House of New York, is being prepared for a made-for-TV movie. It is the story of the discovery, retrieval, shipping and cover-up of what the authors call the most important scientific discovery of the past thousand years.
It is based on dozens of interviews with first- and second-hand civilian and ex-military witnesses to various parts of what is referred to as a very complex series of events.
In order to strengthen their case for government knowledge of what they call "the truth behind almost 50 years of UFO sightings," the authors are seeking out additional, reliable witnesses. It remains their policy to honor requests to keep the names of witnesses private.
For more information, contact Don Berliner, 1202 S. Washington St., Alexandria, VA., 22314 (703548-0405); or Stanton T. Friedman, 79 Pembroke Crescent, Frederic-ton, New Brunswick E3B 2V1, Canada (506 457-0232).
Witnesses are invited to call either author collect or to make arrangements to meet them at any of their stops in New Mexico, which include the cities of Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Alamogordo and Roswell.
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Since many of the Roswell accounts and allegations were collected by irregular methods and are not specifically documented, the series of events as alleged by UFO theorists has become very complex and requires clarification. Therefore, the following section will briefly examine some of the more confusing elements of the Roswell stories, specifically, the multiple crash sites and complex scenarios, in order to facilitate an objective analysis of actual events.
The "Crash Sites," Scenarios, and Research Methods
The "Crash Sites"
From 1947 until the late 1970s, the Roswell Incident was confined to one alleged crash site. This site, located on the Foster Ranch approximately 75 miles northwest of the city of Roswell, was the actual landing site of a Project Mogul balloon train in June 1947.10 The Mogul landing site is referred to in popular Roswell literature as the "debris field."