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The Roswell Incident [1947]

Obviously, the Roswell aliens were not the standard alien.
Quoting Major Jesse Marcel, he is on record as confirming the debris consisted of "foil", "parchment", "rubber" and from a transcript of taped interview by Bob Pratt on the morning of December 8, 1979:

Marcel: Oh. Yes - little members, small members, solid members that could not bend or break, but it didn't look like metal. It looked more like wood.

Pratt: How big?

Marcel: They varied in size. They were, as I can recall, perhaps three-eighths of an inch by one-quarter of an inch thick and just about all sizes. None of them were very long.

Pratt: How large was the biggest?

Marcel: I would say about three feet (long).

Pratt: How heavy?

Marcel: Weightless. You couldn't even tell you had it in your hands - just like you handle balsa wood.
(End of extract)

So, how did this all end up becoming a 'flying saucer', from outer space?

Perhaps because on the spot, Marcel himself decided, only a couple of weeks after 'flying saucers' first became snowballing media hysteria:

Pratt: What do you think this thing was?

Marcel: Well, as far as I know, or can surmise, it - I was pretty well acquainted with most of the things that were in the air at the time, not only from my own military aircraft but also in a lot of foreign countries, and I still believe it was nothing that came from earth. It came to earth but not from earth.
(End of extract)

What was Marcel's specifically related technical expertise, at that time:

Marcel: That’s Counter Intelligence (Corps) agents - See, my main job there was to clear the personnel through the Atomic Energy Commission to be stationed at that base, military personnel. I had five officers and about twenty enlisted typists working for me, with an office going like mint all the time. With (plus) those three CIC agents. They would do the investigating. Whenever we had to investigate somebody, I gave that job to them and they’d turn in their reports in to my office and we'd write the reports...
(End of extract)

Marcel self-determines has just made one of the greatest discoveries in history, so what happens next:

Pratt: Any jagged or broken ends or the like?

Marcel: No. As far as I can recall, they were clean. See, I had so little time to spend on this - I had other duties to perform. I brought the stuff over here, my CO saw it, my staff saw it and then the following day my CO told me to take it to Wright-Patterson.

Pratt: Why there?

Marcel: For analysis. They wanted to see what it was.
(End of extract)

Then our foil, sticks, parchment and rubber fragments are announced in a press release, as a recovered "flying disc'" which "landed" on a ranch and it was "stored" there by the rancher.

"Stored", subsequently being revealed as Brazel gathering up a bundle of 'flying disc' material and securing it under some desert 'brush" growth.

All only to be subsequently identified as meteorological fragments.

Marcel also, of course, stops off at home first, before advising his commanding officer that he has discovered not only proof of life elsewhere in the universe, it is tangible evidence of a potentially hostile, military threat to the entire United States.

Etc.

This is the foundation of 'Roswell', and a context of whether, years later, tales of aliens recovered from a spacecraft, caskets et al, is realistically tenable.
 
This is the foundation of 'Roswell', and a context of whether, years later, tales of aliens recovered from a spacecraft, caskets et al, is realistically tenable

The recovery part is almost a separate set of tales that got added on later.

As mentioned in my post above, these stories about the recovery of alien corpses largely go back to Dennis, whose tale was itself fabricated (or misremembered / unconsciously elaborated) based on the crash of a KC-97 tanker shortly after takeoff from Walker AFB in June 1956.

At least some of the 11 fatalities from this latter incident were taken to the Ballard Funeral Home at which Dennis worked. The condition of these fatalities closely mirrors Dennis' description of the dead 'aliens'. Moreover the apparent real-world models for the people that Dennis includes in his story are more likely to have been present in 1956, not at the time of Roswell.

Other aspects of his story seem to be roughly based on aspects the balloon exploits of Captain Joseph Kittinger and Lt. Dan Fulgham - again, events from the 1950s.
 
The recovery part is almost a separate set of tales that got added on later.

As mentioned in my post above, these stories about the recovery of alien corpses largely go back to Dennis..
Other aspects of his story seem to be roughly based on aspects the balloon exploits of Captain Joseph Kittinger and Lt. Dan Fulgham - again, events from the 1950s.
This is a fascinating reply, thank you.

I had never thought about who was first to mention the recovery of bodies.

So, when did this happen and how...

I know Dennis featured in the seminal Roswell VHS video, by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt, because I watched it, at that time!

It would be interesting to know the genesis of same - did, for example, Dennis come forward with the story, or was he contacted and asked for any related recollection.

Yes, Kittinger and Fulgham seem to fit.

A timeline of the various recovered and deceased crew, would also be interesting.

Has anyone... well, literally.... ever counted up all the bodies?
 
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I had never thought about who was first to mention the recovery of bodies.

The first real mention of dead occupants crops up in the Barney Barnett story, however this relates to a 'crash' on the Plains of San Agustin rather than at Roswell itself, plus we've no real way of knowing if he did tell this story to people as early as 1950 as is claimed. The Barnett story, and other similar ones talking about a crashed craft with small creatures lying dead outside it, first appears in Berlitz and Moore's Roswell Incident (1980).

I think Dennis was the first to mention the idea of a recovery and autopsy.
 
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A family walked into the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico only to find out they were the 5 millionth visitor since opening 1992.

The family received pretty balloons and a free year pass to the museum.

I think they could have gotten more like a space alien doll or alien dress up for Halloween.
 
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