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The Roswell Incident [1947]

Doc - I agree that Marcel Sr. is probably the most credible element of the story. However, the items he describes hardly seem to be the stuff of which interstellar craft are built. It is possible that, in the excitement of the moment, he simply drew the wrong conclusions about unusual, but ultimately prosaic objects.
 
Doc - I agree that Marcel Sr. is probably the most credible element of the story. However, the items he describes hardly seem to be the stuff of which interstellar craft are built. It is possible that, in the excitement of the moment, he simply drew the wrong conclusions about unusual, but ultimately prosaic objects.
It's certainly possible he didn't understand what he was looking at. But he did describe the stuff as being very strong and unbendable or something like that...? But I tend to agree that if a ufo crashed the debris would be far different than a few lightweight pieces of material.
 
Doc - I agree that Marcel Sr. is probably the most credible element of the story. However, the items he describes hardly seem to be the stuff of which interstellar craft are built. It is possible that, in the excitement of the moment, he simply drew the wrong conclusions about unusual, but ultimately prosaic objects.

I agree about Marcel being a credible guy blind-sided by unexpected circumstances. Even under speculative interpretations involving dark cover-ups in progress, I never saw him as someone involved in any such shenanigans.

You're spot-on about novel terrestrial materials being unrecognizable on first encounter. For example ... If you accept the Project Mogul explanation, one of the mysteriously lightweight and bend-shedding materials Marcel examined was an early example of the categories of materials we know best today as (e.g.) Mylar or a metallized polyethylene. Such polymer films emerged during the WW2 era, but were mainly used for internal packing and shielding within electronic equipment.

The use of plastic, rather than rubber, for high altitude balloons was an innovation for which Project Mogul is credited.

Ordinary folks wouldn't have any, or much, opportunity to have seen such materials in 1947. For example, DuPont's commercial product Mylar didn't hit the public scene until the early 1950's.

The metallic appearance was caused by it being metallized (very thinly coated with a metal compound) - a necessary gloss to make the balloon array trackable via radar.
 
In 2018, Roswell does appear in a bad shape, but let's face it, 1) the perspective of having a saucer from outer space retrieved in New Mexico in July 1947 and stored in Area 51 never really had a high probability, and 2) even if this had been the case, the prospects of having it disclosed as a result of a campaign to petition the authorities to «reveal the truth» were even lower.

However, I agree with Randle that, if a crash of a spacecraft appears now remote*, the mystery of what happened remains complete. The problem is less why Marcel came with such a strange and seemingly nonsensical story. Personally, I believe that he was not legit, and I suspect that he was involved in a manipulation. Afeter all, as a man with a military intelligence background, he knew where his loyalties lied. But if Roswell were used as a decoy to send ufologists on a wild goose chase, why the Roswell AAF base issued the announcement remains as obscure as before.

I ended up accepting the Project Mogul (super-secret barometric sensor balloon array) explanation, based on not only the revelations surfacing at the time but also certain documentation and conversations with second-generation* informants above and beyond what was reported in the daily and UFO press of the time.

* By 'second-generation', I mean discussions with colleagues at a key site mentioned in the mythos who'd received their info from folks who'd been on-site (and positioned to need to know) in 1947.

Much of the authorities' confusing statements and behavior Randle cites is (IMHO) entirely understandable in light of:

- The security / classification level at which Project Mogul had operated;

- The fact the USAF had no substantial involvement save for providing a launch facility for the balloon arrays, because ...

- It was a CIA, rather than DOD, project - a fact to which more folks should pay attention.

IMHO the main thing getting covered up in 1947 was the left hand / right hand disconnects between the military and intelligence organizations involved, and the embarrassing situation in which the military ones had been left by virtue of having been the ones who'd publicly spoken first, without really knowing what they were showing.

If there would be only one Roswell theory that is completely discredited, it is the Mogul one. Its involvment in the Roswell controversy made that despite its minor importance, the Mogul project has been studied from every angle. Not only the theory does not account for many anomalies in the reaction of the military, but no evidence for a Mogul flight remains, while there is an impressive amount of counter-evidence against it.
Nor the material nor the balloons themselves were classified, and it seems that not even the namewas. There was no attempt to impose any secrecy on the recoveries of the wrecked flights. In fact, from early July, tags with a return adress had been attached to the material... However, balloons and the material themselves were not deemed as important enough to be systemativally looked for, even if the Mogul staff tried to track some of the flights by radar. We know that the Air Force staff, including at Roswell, was informed of the existence of the balloons, as Charles Moore had met them, and notably Jesse Marcel, to ask for their help to retrieve the wreckage – which, incidentally, makes not plausible that the Roswell staff was surprised by the remains they found near the Brazel ranch. The cavalier way with which the recovery of the wrecks was handled, with no hint of an attempt at cover-up, corroborates that there was no secrecy attached to the material. What we had was ordinary weather balloons, that Marcel would have recognized as such (and even if he may have wondered at a new model, 30 years later, he would have already understood ages ago what had been going on).
There is also a complete lack of description of any component of a Mogul flight, from military or civilian witnesses. And last but not least, the files from the project Mogul show that no Mogul flight was retrieved from the surroundings of Corona at the time of the incident. The convoluted attempts by Charles Moore to rewrite the official contemporary reports could not change anything to the observation.

The crash of a top secret aircraft or balloon, or a failed expermiment, may account for all or some of the incident. But we must look elsewhere.



* Nonetheless, I would not include the McCoy letter as a definitive evidence. McCoy may have been involved in the study of foo fighters, but despite that we know that there were studies of anomalous aerial phenomenas in the immediate after-war, we still don't know precisely which kind of projects were involved, with which level of security. He may have been left out of the loop.
 
We may still not know exactly what happened at Roswell in July of 1947 but, if the consensus is that nothing truly anomalous occurred, I'm more than happy to move on. The ongoing Roswell sideshow has consumed a lot of time and effort that might have been applied to other cases. The unfortunate thing is that the truly compelling cases are now all decades old.
 
Linking back to the specific context of Roswell ...

One should bear in mind that as of 1947 it was still an open question whether there might be life - up to and including intelligent life / civilizations - within our own solar system.

Hypothesizing anomalous incidents were evidence for 'extraterrestrial' involvement didn't necessarily entail addressing the daunting issues associated with interstellar (as contrasted with interplanetary) travel.
 
Austin Popper mentioned this as being a good book on Roswell...written by Jesse Marcel, Jr...
'The Roswell Legacy'.
My local library carries it so I'm going to give it a go. Has anyone else read this one other than Popper?
 
PS. If it helps, I can keep hitting Roswell with a hammer unit it is dead.
 
^well....if the only tool you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail.

;)
 
Some brief thoughts regarding Jesse Marcel Jr and his book....his credibility stands on his handling of the 'debris' (and believing his father of course...), but would a young boy have recognized strange 'alien debris' from some weather balloon program debris...? The only reason he probably thought it weird was because his father did. So did Marcel Sr know what he actually had in his hands? Is it possible he simply mis-identified debris from a project he wasn't that familiar with?
 
Some brief thoughts regarding Jesse Marcel Jr and his book....his credibility stands on his handling of the 'debris' (and believing his father of course...), but would a young boy have recognized strange 'alien debris' from some weather balloon program debris...? The only reason he probably thought it weird was because his father did. So did Marcel Sr know what he actually had in his hands? Is it possible he simply mis-identified debris from a project he wasn't that familiar with?

Based on my personal conclusions about the case, the answers to your 3 questions are: No, No, and Yes (respectively).

IMHO Marcel Sr. had no reason to know what the debris might represent and was blind-sided by the whole affair.

He and one other guy were 'first on the scene' to check on the debris at the Foster ranch, having gone there in response to being notified by the sheriff Brazel had found it. The pair from Roswell AAF met with Brazel, and the 3 of them examined the debris and attempted unsuccessfully to piece together what it had been. Marcel and the other guy took the bundle of debris Brazel had collected and returned to the air base.

It was this association with the original discovery and debris collection that most probably motivated Marcel's being assigned to accompany the debris to Fort Worth. The transfer of the debris to Texas was ordered from above (General Ramey, 8th Air Force).

My take on Marcel's situation is analogous to the old joke about Columbus ... He didn't know where things were going when he first got involved (to check Brazel's debris); he didn't know at any time during his direct involvement what was going on; and for some years thereafter he would have no reason to know what it had all been about.
 
It's possible that Marcel Jr was presented balloon material because his father thought that it was quite unusual and remarkable, although not strange. But it cannot explain the follow-ups, as Marcel Jr has been adamant that his father kept speaking of a 'flying saucer' until many years after. The presence of polyethylene does not do the job, because if the product was new, it was not revolutionnary, and in any case, Marcel Sr would have learnt in the following months what was going on. It's possible that his son's memories grew stranger with time, but it seems that there was something more, and possibly unrelated to the material he showed to his son, the latter's memory becoming confused later.

As for what Marcel is holding on the photos in Fort Worth, it was not of the kind to put the Roswell base into turmoil. While there was much controversy over the debris shown on the photos, the conclusion to draw from them is that they are just ordinary weather balloons and radar target (and, it seems, without any flower tape). As we know that the military conducted 'demonstrations' the following days involving many weather balloons to debunk flying saucers, some of them performed by the Mogul staff, we know that they had ample knowledge and easy access to them. Which means that whatever sensitive there was at the Roswell base, it had been replaced. Marcel, as a loyal intelligence officer, did his job and played his part in the manipulation.
 
Okay like most of you here I’m no big proponent of Roswell but I just have to relate an incident that happened to me last weekend.

The wife and I were at dinner last Saturday night with three other couples, all of them retired faculty of Texas Tech University here in Lubbock, Texas. Great food and smart company and the wine and conversation were flowing very freely and gregariously over a wide range of subjects. At some point my interest in astronomy and involvement in the local astronomy league came up, and the fact that I often haul my home-built telescope out to the dark skies in the boonies of west Texas. Somehow this morphed into a tangent on UFOs and my wife piped up that I’m interested in UFOs too – a bit to my chagrin because I tend to avoid discussing that subject in polite company unless there are clearly others with similar interests.

I said something to the effect of, “Well, there’s so much BS flying around in that arena, but if you dig a bit there are some interesting well-documented cases with pretty reliable-seeming witnesses”.

The guy to my left said, “Well, and there’s Roswell…”.

I groaned a little to myself, and then said that I thought the BS around Roswell was so deep and thick that we’d probably never be able to sort out what if anything happened there. But that it was at least interesting that the Army Air Corps itself had released that first press release, and that Jesse Marcel Sr. went on record late in his life saying that the material he handled didn’t resemble any earthly materials he’d ever seen.

Then one of the women across the table related that a now retired Texas Tech archaeology professor of their acquaintance claimed to have been on a dig nearby and to have seen the crash site and the alien bodies. Several of the others at the table nodded, indicating that they had also been present when he said this. She said he had revealed this on one or two occasions when he was a bit over-inebriated at a party and that he later apparently regretted having let it slip. I was stunned by this, and of course am familiar with the tale of the archaeology students who supposedly came across the second crash site and the bodies before being herded away by the military.

The conversation quickly moved on and in the moment I couldn’t think of a graceful way to return to or dwell on the subject.

I woke up Sunday morning and lay there amazed that I’d somehow come within one degree of separation from a purported Roswell witness. Knowing the couples around that table as I do I am completely convinced that the archaeologist actually said what they say he did. I’ve never met him and am not likely to as he has since moved away, and of course I have no way of judging his veracity. Even if he still lived here in town it seems to me that it would be a delicate thing to approach him on this subject since he is apparently reluctant to discuss it. I’m not going to share his name online.

So....another intriguing but unverifiable nugget.
 
I doubt you would have cleared up anything about the case anyway, but great anecdote all the same!
 
Back to the thread's stated theme ...

No - I suppose the whole Roswell UFO circus can't be dead as long as the municipal authorities allude to it in their community promotions and advertising ...

The City of Roswell has recently obtained a trademark for their new UFO-themed logo:

https://www.roswell-nm.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=676

... The new bright green logo includes the silhouette of a flying saucer within the letter “R.”

The trademark will be in effect for 10 years and can be renewed when it nears expiration.

Officials say the logo is protected from unauthorized use by other entities or individuals. That will ensure it remains unique to Roswell, providing an identifiable graphic that people will associate with the city. ...

SOURCE: https://www.apnews.com/b4075dd7d76342679c8797e17762a997
 
The waters have been so muddied around the event, best to toss it out. I suspect some metallic debris was recovered and taken to Wright Patterson; that's why McCasland was helping Tom Delonge assemble his UFO research team, otherwise, why? Craigie was in his position before; Project Sign ended with "Estimate of the Situation"
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/104776/major-general-william-n-mccasland/
Perhaps Bigelow has seen some debris; he is working on inflatable, flexible space modules.
 
New Roswell post from Bragalia! Looks interesting, am going to read in minute:
https://www.ufoexplorations.com/
I've long had a theory that the "metal cloth" some describe is actually what the Cocoyoc object is made out of, and that there was an accident and the device exploded --thus the flexible metallic stuff all over the place. saucer portion could have impacted at a second location.
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...nsocket-rhode-island-1967.65798/#post-1856145
I've lost track of the Roswell thing over the years.
Some context I have for Roswell. I wish she would contact Bragalia. I almost just emailed him about her, but I don't think she wants to talk about it anymore and she s very old, so I didn't....
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/general-craigie-an-anonymous-source.66488/post-1903966
 
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I've long had a theory that the "metal cloth" some describe is actually what the Cocoyoc object is made out of, and that there was an accident and the device exploded --thus the flexible metallic stuff all over the place. saucer portion could have impacted at a second location.
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...nsocket-rhode-island-1967.65798/#post-1856145
I've lost track of the Roswell thing over the years.
Some context I have for Roswell. I wish she would contact Bragalia. I almost just emailed him about her, but I don't think she wants to talk about it anymore and she s very old, so I didn't....
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/general-craigie-an-anonymous-source.66488/post-1903966
It's impressive that the photographer had the presence of mind to change his camera lens half way through the sighting.
 
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Bragalia is the idiot who supported the Roswell mummy hoax a few years back. Far too gullible to be a serious investigator.
 
Bragalia is the idiot who supported the Roswell mummy hoax a few years back. Far too gullible to be a serious investigator.
I don't care as much about Bragalia's failings --if he occasionally flushes some good pheasants out if the woods! That is sad about the mummy thing, though. It seems like folks in many areas of study (Especially with UFOs) can make some good contributions while also making some stupid mistakes or believing untruths too. I'd be more concerned if McLaughlin's son is lying and I doubt it. And I know my friend wasn't lying about Craigie, either.
 
Roswell finally dead ?

Pleas, Please let it be so.
 
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