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The Roswell Incident [1947]

EnolaGaia said:
Kaufmann's sketches apparently surfaced when he was interviewed by Schmitt and Randle for their 1994 book. Randle mentions Kaufmann having a "sketchbook" with such drawings in his retrospective account of his interactions with and assessment of Kaufmann as an alleged 1947 witness:

http://www.cufos.org/FrankKaufmannExposed.pdf

It's clear that Kaufmann's sketches were used as the basis for a series of artist conceptions developed by William Louis McDonald during the 1990s. McDonald's annotated draft drawings from that period can be reviewed at:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aYegw9

McDonald's eventual conception is illustrated in this 1997 edition of his evolving work:


McDonald himself interviewed Kaufmann, and he noted his image development was based on interviews conducted by himself as well as Randle and Schmitt. (See sidebar text on the two ArtStation webpages linked above.)

McDonald was working with or for multiple clients, including multiple TV / movie production units, a UK scale modeling magazine, and model manufacturer Testor.

The modeling connection is relevant because the form and features of Kaufmann's alleged sketch and McDonald's illustrations bear a strong resemblance to scale models of the alleged F-19 stealth fighter marketed by Testor, Monogram, and Revell in the 1980s. Artists' conceptions of the alleged F-19 date back as far as the late 1970s. Certain features evident in the alleged Kaufmann sketches don't reflect any aeronautical R&D concepts preceding that timeframe.

I see no reason to believe the Kaufmann sketches were made any earlier than the period when he suddenly surfaced as an alleged 1947 witness - i.e., sometime after the F-19 imagery was well established in popular media and toys, when he was a Roswell Chamber of Commerce official actively promoting the proposed UFO museum.
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There is also a strong resemblance to some of the early pre Space Shuttle concepts for reusable spacecraft
 
The “ Oz Factor “ exists.

In my young years when the humanoids rode a white light beam into my bedroom, beside being very afraid of me because I was not asleep, I noticed the black and white TV ( remember them ) went static.

Instantly I notice I was in a bubble, no sounds from the street, and the only why to describe is like “ dead air “, very bizarre.

The smaller humanoids jumped back, but eventually their leader put me to sleep with a light beam.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Kaufmann's sketches apparently surfaced when he was interviewed by Schmitt and Randle for their 1994 book. Randle mentions Kaufmann having a "sketchbook" with such drawings in his retrospective account of his interactions with and assessment of Kaufmann as an alleged 1947 witness:

http://www.cufos.org/FrankKaufmannExposed.pdf

It's clear that Kaufmann's sketches were used as the basis for a series of artist conceptions developed by William Louis McDonald during the 1990s. McDonald's annotated draft drawings from that period can be reviewed at:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aYegw9

McDonald's eventual conception is illustrated in this 1997 edition of his evolving work:



The modeling connection is relevant because the form and features of Kaufmann's alleged sketch and McDonald's illustrations bear a strong resemblance to scale models of the alleged F-19 stealth fighter marketed by Testor, Monogram, and Revell in the 1980s. Artists' conceptions of the alleged F-19 date back as far as the late 1970s. Certain features evident in the alleged Kaufmann sketches don't reflect any aeronautical R&D concepts preceding that timeframe.
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Or indeed the computer games at the time.
I remember playing this game on my Spectrum 128K back in the early 90s.

stealthfighter.png
 
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Ronnie Jersey said:
Odd that there are actually photos of circular flying objects from the 1920's, long before Roswell.

http://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/possible-ufo-old-photo/
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Yes, there were quite a few over the early years of the century. But once it gets to the 30s and 40s, we know that Thomas Townsend Brown was working on circular aircraft driven by the Biefield-Brown effect and that the Germans had several projects dealing with field propulsion craft, which were certainly acquired by the US at the end of the war. Check out Nick Cook's Hunt for Zero Point and Henry Stevens' Hitler's Flying Saucers (which I think you can get online). The Roswell incident could have involved one of these.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
Odd that there are actually photos of circular flying objects from the 1920's, long before Roswell.
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There's next to nothing though and even Kenneth Arnold never described or sketched anything like the archetypal Adamski, then Meier, ''flying saucer', which later resulted.

Just the other day, I was coincidentally looking at the photograph you posted. The anomalous object, if not an artefact from the contemporary printing process, seems to possibly have 2 companions!

Screenshot_20220120-171444.jpg
 
If I understand this correctly, circa 1980 when interviewed, Marcel doesn't seem to be claiming the roomful of charred and piecemeal debris he was photographed with was entirely different and had been magically procured from somewhere - it was part of the actual find - only that he thought some of it, at the time, exhibited 'anomalous' properties?

Ultimately, is this perhaps more telling than anything?

On 9 July, some of that day's newspapers carried a lengthy newsfeed from United Press, which included a report:

"Those who saw the object said it had a flowered paper tape around it bearing the initials "D. P"."
 
Comfortably Numb said:
If I understand this correctly, circa 1980 when interviewed, Marcel doesn't seem to be claiming the roomful of charred and piecemeal debris he was photographed with was entirely different and had been magically procured from somewhere - it was part of the actual find - only that he thought some of it, at the time, exhibited 'anomalous' properties?

Ultimately, is this perhaps more telling than anything?

On 9 July, some of that day's newspapers carried a lengthy newsfeed from United Press, which included a report:

"Those who saw the object said it had a flowered paper tape around it bearing the initials "D. P"."
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Essentially, yes - they had found sticks and foil-like material, exactly like the kind of thing that made up a Project Mogul balloon's radar reflectors in fact, but the sticks and foil-like material were somehow...a bit strange.

But yes, there was also the suggestion that the debris was switched at some point, and the technologically advanced space balsa sticks, sorry, 'beams', were replaced with mundane everyday balsa sticks.

I can't help but feel that if even the 'credible' military figure at the very centre of events indulges in this kind of speculation, you won't get much of value from all the more peripheral civilian figures who were unearthed more recently.
 
As an extension of the point, the argument still advanced by hardcore Roswell believers - surely the military would have known the difference between a load of sticks and foil and the "flying disk" they believed they might have found - is simply dealt with once it's understood that at the time there was no agreement on what a "flying disk" might be, with the biggest concern being that they might be some sort of Russian secret weapon or spying device. Any debris that couldn't immediately be identified might have been a "disk" under that definition.
 
So if that material was part of the actual find, that proves that the crash was a balloon of some sort, and not an alien craft. Unless somehow an alien craft landed on top of, or next to, a crashed balloon.

That seems to be case closed, as far as I can see.
 
The following extract is from an insightful article:

'Great Falls Tribune' (Great Falls, Montana) 29 Jun, 1997 - Pages 1 & 7

Helena man saw Roswell debris

Dr. Jesse Marcel will never forget all that strange debris, spread out on the floor of the family kitchen in New Mexico 50 years ago.

"I was 10, almost 11 years old," said Marcel, an ear, nose and throat specialist in Helena.

The young Marcel was a witness to perhaps the century's most famous UFO recovery.

Some are believers. Thousands are heading to Roswell for a week of celebrations beginning Tuesday.

At the time of the Roswell incident. Marcell's father, Maj Jesse Marcel, was an intelligence officer at the Roswell air field.

A ranch hand found strange debris on the Foster ranch, and the base's colonel wanted Marcel and another officer "to see what this rancher talking about," the younger Marcel said.

"It looked like remains of some kind of aircraft," he said. "They picked up what they could."

It was early in the morning when the major woke his wife and son, and spread parts across the floor.

"Our house happened to be on the way to the air base," Marcel said. "He was quite excited".

Among the pieces Marcel remembers seeing were plastic-like parts similar to Bakelite, a material used at the time to make countertops, jewelry and other household items.

Other pieces "looked like foil," and still others resembled metal I-beams, 12 to 18 inches long, he said.

Marcel picked up one of the small beams and examined it.

"There were some markings on it," he recalled. At first, he took the writing to be hieroglyphics, such as those from ancient Egypt

He looked more closely, and the beam had purplish "geometric forms and symbols" on it.

The writing was definitely not English he said. And his father found no parts one might have expected from un aircraft of the day, such as vacuum tubes, he added.

The Marcels had plenty of pieces to look at early that morning.

"It covered the floor of an 8-by-10 foot room," Marcel said. "It was quite unusual, and it made quite an Impression".

His father told him: "You'll probably never see anything like this again."

The family spent up to 20 minutes examining the parts before his dad left with them. Maj. Marcel later personally accompanied the debris to a base in Fort Worth, Texas.

(...)

(End)

I have uploaded a copy of the full article:

www.forteanmedia.com/1997_06_29_Great_Falls_1.pdf

www.forteanmedia.com/1997_06_29_Great_Falls_2.pdf

It would seem a reasonable conclusion that the apparent hieroglyphics were neither cyrillics from a Soviet Union secret weapon, or some intergalactic language.

Have to keep very much in mind that circa 1980, when this story broke, the perception of a "flying saucer" having crashed and that story being quickly recinded, invoked a context where a large Adamski/Meier, archetypal "flying saucer", had been found and its wreckage replaced by a 'weather balloon', in a nefarious cover-up.

Patently, the true explanation, from clearly documented evidence at the time, is somewhat more mundane and borne of the "flying saucer" hysteria which existed.

This was only some 15 days after Kenneth Arnold's reported encounter with nine, enigmatic, tail-less aircraft, which flew, apparently at the unheard of speed he later calculated, in a chain-like, undulating formation, like "a saucer would if you skipped it across water', this had been misconstrued and the newspapers were awash with stories of the 'flying discs' being seen and even found in all manner of appearances and sizes, right down to a discarded circular saw blade being mistaken for one.

Against that background, any misunderstanding was conceivable, especially if the object could fly, was silvery and something out of the ordinary.

When Haut's news press release announced the base was in possession of a 'flying disc', it was statedly the exact same one as Marcel himself confirmed to the press, was composed of foil, sticks and rubber.
 
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I note that a few people, including someone right back at the start of this thread, are arguing that Project Mogul Flight 4 doesn't match up with the debris find (indeed, Randle still seems to be arguing this while accepting that the debris is likely mundane) so there is still some sort of mystery to be uncovered. I have to say this seems like a waste of mental effort - perhaps this position is a useful 'off-ramp' for anyone who had invested a lot in the reality of a crash at Roswell, but nothing more than that.

Given that Mogul loosed off a lot of test balloons in addition to the main flights, I can't see why we need to look beyond the basic point that in photographs, contemporary statements and even in exaggerated recollections many years later, the debris looks and sounds exactly like bits of a balloon radar reflector(s).

The actions of various, not particularly high ranking military officers during a couple of days of confusion seem neither here nor there, really.
 
I don't really blame Marcel for coming forward. He was involved in something that was obviously of interest to the public, or at least some of the public.

A lot of these stories after the event, however, are extremely dubious and many are second or third hand type things. The story about what Joseph Montoya saw, for example, didn't come from Montoya himself but someone who claimed to have spoken to him. Other ones have been related by children of the alleged witnesses at many years' distance.

Tim Printy's site has a very large amount of (sceptical) material on the different accounts that have accrued over the years and convincingly dismisses the majority of them.

http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/Roswell4F.htm

There are far more interesting UFO cases than Roswell!
 
It would seem a reasonable conclusion that the apparent hieroglyphics were neither cyrillics from a Soviet Union secret weapon, or some intergalactic language
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As for the 'hieroglyphics' - identified by Charles Moore as markings on the tape used for the Mogul radar reflectors - there is a pleasingly laconic statement from Irving Newton, the USAAF weather forecaster who was on duty at the time the debris were being examined:

"While I was examining the debris, Major Marcel was picking up pieces of the target sticks and trying to convince me that some notations on the sticks were alien writings. There were figures on the sticks lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings with no rhyme or reason. He did not convince me these were alien writings."

You can see why such a thing might have seemed a little mysterious to Marcel, and certainly to Marcel Jr., but it's pretty clear that anyone looking at the debris without the additional emotional investment of having possibly solved the 'flying disk' mystery, as Marcel briefly thought he had, was unimpressed.
 
So what is the explanation of Mack Brazel's actions, from his discovery of a huge mass of debris that upset him, and certainly upset his sheep who refused to cross that field of debris, the actions of animals should always be taken into consideration, and Brazel was familiar with weather balloons.
Brazel was held for one week, then threatened and released, refusing to speak much about it for the rest of his life. If it was a silly weather balloon or some other innocent explanation, one would think Brazel would have simply stated this, particularly to his friends and neighbors, and let it go at that.
But that's not what he did.
JMO that the whole incident was mishandled from the beginning, and since the military themselves stated it was a 'flying saucer', then changed their story several times, one can only wonder why. And military and government cover-ups are certainly nothing new.
Doesn't it seem odd that they would even bother taking all those photos of trash? LOL
 
It wasn't necessarily the kind of balloon material that was familiar to Brazel, or to Marcel. The majority of it was probably comprised of the remains of radar reflectors unique to the Mogul project - foil like material, sticks, etc. Several people who saw it spread out in the office at Ft Worth characterised it this way.

When back in town, Brazel spent a couple of days being manoeuvred about by a local newspaperman who was convinced he might have an exclusive, followed by perhaps three days in the base guest house. There's no evidence he was locked up for a week!

Doesn't it seem odd that they would even bother taking all those photos of trash?
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For a while Marcel thought he had solved the mystery of what the "flying disks" were and allowed himself to get a bit carried away, as did Walter Haut, the base publicity officer. This meant press photographers were already there at Ft Worth when the debris was unpacked in General Ramey's office.

the military themselves stated it was a 'flying saucer', then changed their story several times
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As I mentioned, I think a lot of this results from Haut's press releases going out very early on before many people had the chance to actually look at the debris properly.
 
Just as a campaign to discredit Bob Lazar, so too a discredit campaign against mortician Glenn Dennis, probably the only true witness to the UFO crash.

This is all because he did not know the name of the base nurse, and Dennis spent years looking for her.

The base nurse told Glenn everyone was sick from the nauseating smell from the alien bodies and one shower did not remove the stench.

The nurse gave Glenn sketches of the bodies to Glenn.

Glenn Dennis built the UFO Museum in Roswell and never changed his story until he died in 2015 at age 90 years.
 
charliebrown said:
Just as a campaign to discredit Bob Lazar, so too a discredit campaign against mortician Glenn Dennis, probably the only true witness to the UFO crash.

This is all because he did not know the name of the base nurse, and Dennis spent years looking for her.

The base nurse told Glenn everyone was sick from the nauseating smell from the alien bodies and one shower did not remove the stench.

The nurse gave Glenn sketches of the bodies to Glenn.

Glenn Dennis built the UFO Museum in Roswell and never changed his story until he died in 2015 at age 90 years.
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So easy to discredit people, but there are many who came forward to tell their stories.
It is striking that Jesse Marcel was brave enough, his military position was impressive, and he was backed up by others.
 
Yes, Marcel was brave enough to tell the truth, and that the debris in the photos was the real stuff. The fact that this debris in the photos was from a balloon train is undeniable. Note that a collapsed balloon forms a disc, which is what the press release from the Roswell Army Airfield described it as. The primary witnesses were all being honest and truthful, but there was no flying saucer, no aliens or alien tech.
 
And the most unlikely aspect of Dennis' story is that the authorities would let an embalmer anywhere near alien bodies. These would be the most valuable biological specimens ever found on our planet; introducing embalming fluid to their tissues would damage them irretrievably.

Considering that not one single cell of alien tissue has ever been found anywhere else on Earth, this would be a criminal act.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
One has to wonder why Jesse Marcel himself would come forward to tell what he knew about the Roswell case?
Trouble is, he wasn't the only one:
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The situation would appear to be that so many years afterwards, some tall tales emerrge, often second-hand, or third-party, etc.

Although these may be perfectly earnest, they can be far removed from fact.

If you take, for example, one account cited in the intriguing material you helpfully highlighted:

"The Roswell incident left an impact on all those involved, especially then-Roswell sheriff, George Wilcox. Just before Wilcox's widow Inez passed away, she related a story to her granddaughter Barbara, who since passed on the story: "The event shocked [George]. He never wanted to be sheriff again after that. My grandmother said, 'Don't tell anybody. When the incident happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told George and I that if we ever told anything about the incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family would be killed!" Barbara adds, "They called my grandfather, and someone came and told him about the crash.

He went out there to the site; there was a big burned area, and he saw debris. There were four space beings. Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk. One of the 'little men' was alive." Inez Wilcox reiterated to Barbara that her and George took the threats very seriously and kept the information from the family".

We have to consider this in context against the first-hand, documented evidence at the time. On 9 July, 1947 it was reported:

"Sheriff George Wilcox of Roswell indicated that the object, if reconstructed, would have a diameter of 25 feet, would be too flimsy in construction to carry any person, and apparently had no source of power or capacity for speed, especially supersonic speeds attributed to the "flying saucers".

Also:

"Sheriff Wilcox said W. W. Brazell, about 50, made the find on the Foster ranch near Corona, 85 miles northwest of Roswell. Brazell, who has his own small ranch nearby, notified the sheriff's office yesterday and related he made the discovery some days before, Wilcox said.

The sheriff said he called Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th bomb group intelligence office at once, and the officer accompanied Brazell back to the ranch to recover the object.

"Wilcox said he did not see the object but was told by Brazell it was "about three feet across"."
(End)

And so on...

There's no indication Wilcox ever went to the site and even if he had, did Brazell, Marcel and Cavitt all somehow miss the alien bodies strewn around and the one still alive, etc.

It's, as with many ufological matters, a matter for an individual judgement on available evidence.

I am well aware there are a considerable number of puzzling claims from actual witnesses themselves.

We can but note and discuss the juxtapositions.

Personally, one increasing finds comfort in my recently established motto, "potest esse certus non eram ibi", which roughly translated equates to, "Can't be sure, I wasn't there". :)
 
This is where things get bizarre for me.

Ufologist, Stanton Friedman, writes a book called UFO Crash at Corona, NM. which is 100 miles north of Roswell, NM.

Stanton claims the UFO was wounded at Roswell by lightning, but the main crash occurred at Corona, NM.

According to the internet the Corona crash site is so rugged, that it takes tough 4 wheel drive vehicles with survival supplies to get to the crash site.

Anyone have any information at this crash site ?
 
Comfortably Numb said:
Shall duly have a read
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The gist of it seems to be that the Foster ranch debris was too 'unwordly' for a 'weather ballon'.

That plus some unsubstantiated stories of other crashes, plus the patently bogus MJ-12 'documents' and the since discredited Glenn Dennis evidence.

Essentially, the photographed debris needs to have been extraterrestrial, or the only, central, tangible evidence is testimony to a popularised mythology.
 
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A sober assessment of Haut's role in both the initial and later confusion:

http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/Haut.htm

I think part of the problem with Roswell is that it became such an integral part of the ETH 'brand' that it's very hard for people, particularly ufologists, to let go of it. Similarly those witnesses who early on intimated there was something unusual - Marcel and Haut, for example - couldn't accept they had simply got it wrong, embarrassingly wrong. It's too big to fail, as they say...
 
You all are ignoring the Ramey memo, a very strange document - I'll save you all some time, you don't have to bother putting it down -
one day that document will be clearer with newer technology, and then we will know definitely what happened at Roswell.
 
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