There is a helpful summary published in 'The Roswell Incident', by Berlitz and Moore:
"Based on the information we have obtained thus far, we can postulate a tentative picture of the sequence of events and discovery. At between 9:45 and 9:50 P.M. on the evening of July 2, 1947, what appeared to be a flying saucer passed over Roswell heading northwest at a high rate of speed, as witnessed by the Wilmots. Somewhere north of Roswell, the saucer ran into the lightning storm witnessed by Brazel, made a course correction to the south-southwest, was struck by a lightning bolt, and suffered severe on-board damage. A great quantity of wreckage was blown out over the ground, but the saucer itself, although stricken, managed to remain in the air for at least long enough to get over the mountains before crashing violently to the ground in the area west of Socorro known as the Plains of San Agustin.
The wreckage that had fallen on the Brazel ranch was discovered the next morning by Brazel as he was riding over his pasture, and only after that was Major Marcel of Roswell Army Air Base alerted. In the case of the saucer itself and its ill-fated crew, it had by chance come down near the spot where Barnett was scheduled to do a survey jon the next morning and the archaeology students were scheduled to begin their dig.
At the second site on the Plains of San Agustin in Catron County, the military took over more quickly than at the first because of the delay involved between the time Brazel discovered the wreckage and the time he finally reported it to the authorities. Although the sequence of events at the San Agustin site had taken place several days before those at the Brazel ranch and in Roswell, news leaks from the San Agustin site were more effectively plugged and information coming in to media sources was slow to arrive and sketchy at best.
As a result, even though this first military intervention did not come from the Roswell base, the early reports on the radio and in the press, in their confusion, assumed there was only one site and quite understandably referred only to the first site of the wreckage, which had received considerably more publicity because of Haul's premature news release. (One actually begins to wonder at this point whether Haut might have been ordered to leak the Roswell story to the press and write his news release specifically for the purpose of diverting attention away from the San Agustin incident.) In any event, indications are that the military group at the San Agustin site came from the air base at Alamogordo on the White Sands Proving Grounds, and that the secrecy involved here was far greater than at Roswell.
Even so, military communications were apparently working well at a high level, for a hastily assembled scientific-military expedition was, according to an alleged participant, sent to Muroc Air Base in California to meet the train which was to bring them the recovered wreckage and bodies (and possibly the two survivors as well). This hastily assembled military-scientific group may have furnished the first approximate physical description of the occupants of the saucer and answered the question as to whether "they" were unlucky human test pilots or travelers from another world who had found their final destination on ours.
(End)
For more background, there is a copy of the book available here:
www.forteanmedia.com/The_Roswell_Incident.pdf
This would seem to confirm my personal conclusion, as expressed:
"Essentially, the photographed debris needs to have been extraterrestrial, or the only, central, tangible evidence is testimony to a popularised mythology".
Fair to say it's one or the other and there is no middle ground?
