Misplaced Pages

Roswell incident

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rjjiii (talk | contribs) at 14:33, 2 January 2024 (→Roswell forgotten (1947–1978): per talk page). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 14:33, 2 January 2024 by Rjjiii (talk | contribs) (→Roswell forgotten (1947–1978): per talk page)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Misplaced Pages. See Misplaced Pages's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
An editor has expressed concern that this article may have a number of irrelevant and questionable citations. Please help improve this article by verifying these references and challenge or remove any that are not reliable or do not support the article. (December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
(Learn how and when to remove this message)
1947 unspecified object crash near Corona, New Mexico, US

Roswell incident
July 8, 1947, issue of the Roswell Daily Record, featured a story announcing the "capture" of a "flying saucer" from a ranch near Roswell
DateJune & July 1947
LocationLincoln County, New Mexico, US
Coordinates33°57′01″N 105°18′51″W / 33.95028°N 105.31417°W / 33.95028; -105.31417

The Roswell incident centers on the July 1947 recovery of metallic and rubber debris from a crashed military balloon by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, who issued a press release announcing possession of a "flying disc". Decades later, conspiracy theories claimed that debris from an alien spaceship had been covered up by the government. In response, in 1994 the United States Air Force published a report concluding the crashed object was a top secret nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul.

The Roswell incident took place during the flying disc craze of 1947, sparked by widespread media coverage of pilot Kenneth Arnold's alleged sighting. Amid hundreds of reports nationwide, on July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field's press release was broadcast via wire transmission. The Army quickly retracted the release, falsely stating the crashed object was merely a conventional weather balloon.

The incident was forgotten until 1978, when retired lieutenant colonel Jesse Marcel was interviewed by ufologist Stanton Friedman. In that interview, Marcel revealed the "weather balloon" had been a cover story to divert public attention. Based on this, Marcel speculated that the debris might have been extraterrestrial in origin.

Jesse Marcel's interview led to complex conspiracy theories about alien spacecraft recovery and military cover-ups by ufologists. In 1979, over three decades after Roswell, conspiracy theorists began to claim that extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military at Roswell. In response to claims of alien occupants, a second USAF report in 1997 reviewed testimonies about aliens and found them to be baseless, made up, or inspired by parachute dummies.

1947 flying disc craze
Events

Conspiracy theories about the event persist despite explanations linking the incident to Project Mogul, a military balloon or having been described as "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim". Its myth has become a cultural phenomenon and the Roswell incident continues to be of interest in popular media. Portrayals of the incident are a prominent and enduring trope in popular culture and mass media commonly associated with "grey aliens" and "flying saucers". The city of Roswell, New Mexico has embraced this cultural iconography; featuring a little green man on its seal and hosting numerous ufology attractions and events.

Events of 1947

Roswell incident is located in New MexicoAlamogordoAlamogordoClovisClovisKirtlandKirtlandCarlsbadCarlsbadDemingDemingFort SumnerFort SumnerHobbsHobbsRoswellRoswellCorona debrisCorona debrisclass=notpageimage| Roswell was one of many Army Airfields in New Mexico when debris was recovered from a ranch near Corona. Researchers at Alamogordo Air Field, less than 150 miles from Roswell, were launching classified balloons during the prior weeks.

A military balloon crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, during what historian Kathryn S. Olmsted describes as "the first summer of the Cold War". By 1947, the United States's top-secret Project Mogul had launched thousands of balloons carrying devices to listen for Soviet atomic tests. On June 4, 1947, researchers at Alamogordo Army Air Field launched a long train of these balloons and lost contact within 17 miles (27 km) of W.W. "Mac" Brazel's ranch. Brazel discovered tinfoil, rubber, tape, and thin wooden beams scattered across several acres of his ranch in mid-June. That June, Kenneth Arnold's account of what became known as flying saucers incited a wave of over 800 sightings. With no phone or radio, Brazel was unaware of the ongoing flying disc craze. He was exposed to the disc reports – often attributed to unknown foreign aircraft – when visiting Corona, New Mexico on July 5 and informed Sheriff George Wilcox of the debris he had found. Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF), who assigned Major Jesse Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt to return with Brazel and gather the material from the ranch.

External audio
audio icon ABC News radio broadcast on Roswell disc - July 8, 1947

On July 8, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that the military had recovered a "flying disc" near Roswell. Robert Porter, an RAAF flight engineer, was part of the crew who loaded what he was "told was a flying saucer" onto the flight bound for Fort Worth Army Air Field (FWAAF). He described the material - packaged in wrapping paper when he received it - as lightweight and not too large to fit inside the trunk of a car. After station director George Walsh broke the news over Roswell radio station KSWS and relayed it to the Associated Press, his phone lines were overwhelmed. He later recalled, "All afternoon, I tried to call Sheriff Wilcox for more information, but could never get through to him Media people called me from all over the world."

Marcel holding torn foil above packing paper
At Fort Worth Army Air Field, Major Jesse A. Marcel posing with debris on July 8, 1947.

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.
The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

— Associated Press (July 8, 1947)
Ramey and Dubose with torn foil and sticks on packing paper
Brig. General Roger Ramey, left, and Col. Thomas J. DuBose pose with debris.

Media interest in the case dissipated soon after a press conference where General Roger Ramey, his chief of staff Colonel Thomas Dubose, and weather officer Irving Newton identified the material as pieces of a weather balloon. Newton told reporters that similar radar targets were used at about 80 weather stations. The small number of subsequent news stories offered mundane and prosaic accounts of the crash. On July 9, the Roswell Daily Record highlighted that no engine or metal parts had been found in the wreckage. Brazel told the Record that the debris consisted of a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks." Brazel said he paid little attention to it but returned later with his wife and daughter to gather up some of the debris. When interviewed, Marcel described the wreckage as "parts of the weather device" and "patches of tinfoil and rubber." The 1947 official account omitted any connection to Cold War military programs. Major Wilbur D. Pritchard, then stationed at Alamogordo Army Air Field, would later describe the weather balloon story as "an attempt to deflect attention from the top secret Mogul project."

Roswell forgotten (1947–1978)

The Roswell incident remained relatively obscure for three decades. Reporting on the incident ceased soon after the government provided a mundane explanation, and broader reporting on flying saucers declined rapidly after the Twin Falls saucer hoax. Just days after the Roswell incident, a widely reported crashed disc from Twin Falls, Idaho, was found to be a hoax created by four teenagers using parts from a jukebox.

During Roswell's decades of obscurity, a UFO mythology would emerge fueled by hoaxes, legends, and stories of crashed spaceships and alien bodies in New Mexico. A few years removed from Japan's World War II (1944–45) Fu-Go balloon bomb attacks, many Americans attributed flying saucers to a foreign military in 1947. UFOs quickly became synonymous with alien spacecraft and belief in a government cover-up. Trust in the US government declined and acceptance of conspiracy theories became widespread. The 1947 incident was reinterpreted to fit the public's increasingly conspiratorial outlook.

Aztec crashed saucer hoax (1949)

The Aztec, New Mexico crashed saucer hoax introduced stories of recovered alien bodies that would later become associated with Roswell. It achieved broad exposure when the con artists behind it convinced Variety columnist Frank Scully to cover their fictitious crash. The hoax narrative included three-foot-tall humanoid bodies, metal stronger than any found on Earth, and indecipherable writing – these elements appeared in later versions of the Roswell myth. In retellings of the Roswell incident, the mundane debris reported at the actual crash site was replaced with the Aztec hoax's fantastical alloys. By the time Roswell returned to media attention, Scully's spindly grey aliens had become a part of American culture through the Barney and Betty Hill incident and the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In a 1997 Roswell report, Air Force investigator James McAndrew wrote that "even with the exposure of this obvious fraud, the Aztec story is still revered by UFO theorists. Elements of this story occasionally reemerge and are thought to be the catalyst for other crashed flying saucer stories, including the Roswell Incident."

Hangar 18 (1974)

Belief in a UFO cover-up by the US government became widespread in the decades between the crash and its reemergence. Trust in the US government plummeted, and UFO believers accused the government of a "Cosmic Watergate". Incident at Exeter (1966) introduced the claim – later incorporated into the Roswell narrative – of alien bodies from a crashed ship being stored in an Air Force morgue at Wright-Patterson Field. The science-fiction novel The Fortec Conspiracy (1968) expanded this into a cover-up by the Air Force unit charged with studying and reverse-engineering other nations' technical advancements.

In 1974, science-fiction author and conspiracy theorist Robert Spencer Carr alleged that alien bodies recovered from the Aztec crash were stored in "Hangar 18" at Wright-Patterson. Carr claimed that his sources had witnessed the alien autopsy – another idea later incorporated into the Roswell narrative. The Air Force explained that no "Hangar 18" existed at the base, noting a similarity between Carr's story and the fictional Fortec Conspiracy. Hangar 18 (1980), which dramatized Carr's claims, was described as "a modern-day dramatization" of Roswell by the film's director James L. Conway, and as "nascent Roswell mythology" by folklorist Thomas Bullard. Decades later, Carr's son recalled that his father had been a habitual liar who often "mortified my mother and me by spinning preposterous stories in front of strangers... befriending a giant alligator in the Florida swamps, and sharing complex philosophical ideas with porpoises in the Gulf of Mexico."

Roswell in UFO conspiracy theories (1978–present)

Main article: UFO conspiracy theories
External videos
video icon Interviews with Jesse Marcel Sr. and Jr. included in an Unsolved Mysteries episode
video icon Interview with Jesse Marcel Jr.

Interest in the Roswell incident was rekindled after ufologist Stanton Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel in February 1978. Marcel had accompanied the Roswell debris from the ranch to the Fort Worth press conference. In the 1978 interview, Marcel stated that the "weather balloon" explanation from the press conference was a cover story, and that he now believed the debris was extraterrestrial. On December 19, 1979, Marcel was interviewed by Bob Pratt of the National Enquirer, and the tabloid brought large-scale attention to the Marcel story the following February. On September 20, 1980, the TV series In Search of... aired an interview where Marcel described his participation in the 1947 press conference:

They wanted some comments from me, but I wasn't at liberty to do that. So, all I could do is keep my mouth shut. And General Ramey is the one who discussed – told the newspapers, I mean the newsman, what it was, and to forget about it. It is nothing more than a weather observation balloon. Of course, we both knew differently.

The Roswell Incident (1980) popularized Marcel's account and added the claimed discovery of alien bodies on the Plains of San Agustin, approximately 150 miles west of the original debris site. Marcel had consistently denied the presence of bodies. Major Marcel's son, Jesse A. Marcel Jr. M.D., maintained throughout his life that when he was 10 years old, his father had shown him alien debris recovered from the Roswell crash site, including, "a small beam with purple-hued hieroglyphics on it".

Between 1978 and the early 1990s, UFO researchers such as Stanton T. Friedman, William Moore, and the team of Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt interviewed several dozen people who claimed to have had a connection with the events at Roswell in 1947.

Diagram of Roswell myths, full description in section.
Balloon debris near Roswell, though publicly called a weather balloon, was later revealed to stem from Project Mogul. Meanwhile, hoaxes from the 1940s about crashed saucers and dead bodies were incorporated into Roswell Incident mythology.

In 1981, tabloid The Globe told stories of bodies being brought to Roswell. In 1989, mortician Glenn Dennis recounted a tale of a nurse who had assisted in an alien autopsy.

In 1991, retired Brigadier General Thomas DuBose corroborated Marcel's claims that the weather balloon was cover story, while both men consistently denied the existence of bodies. In 1994 and 1997, the US Air Force Roswell Reports identified the material as part of a top secret atomic surveillance balloon from Project Mogul launched on June 4 which had last been tracked near Corona.

The Roswell Incident (1980) by Berlitz and Moore

Main article: The Roswell Incident (1980 book)

In October 1980, Marcel's story was featured in the book The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. The authors had previously written popular books on fringe topics such as the Philadelphia Experiment and the Bermuda Triangle.

The book argues that an extraterrestrial craft was flying over the New Mexico desert to observe nuclear weapons activity when a lightning strike killed the alien crew and, that after discovering the crash, the US government engaged in a cover-up.

The Roswell Incident featured accounts of debris described by Marcel as "nothing made on this earth." Additional accounts by Bill Brazel, son of rancher Mac Brazel, neighbor Floyd Proctor and Walt Whitman Jr., son of newsman W. E. Whitman who had interviewed Mac Brazel, suggested the material Marcel recovered had super-strength not associated with a weather balloon. Anthropologist Charles Zeigler described the 1980 book as "version 1" of the Roswell myth. Berlitz and Moore's narrative was dominant until the late 1980s when other authors, attracted by the commercial potential of writing about Roswell, started producing rival accounts.

The book introduced the contention that debris which was recovered by Marcel at the Foster ranch, visible in photographs showing Marcel posing with the debris, was substituted for debris from a weather device as part of a cover-up. The book also claimed that the debris recovered from the ranch was not permitted a close inspection by the press. The efforts by the military were described as being intended to discredit and "counteract the growing hysteria towards flying saucers".

The authors claimed to have interviewed over 90 witnesses, though the testimony of only 25 appears in the book. Only seven of these people claimed to have seen the debris. Of these, five claimed to have handled it. Two accounts of witness intimidation were included in the book, including the incarceration of Mac Brazel.

Berlitz and Moore prioritized Marcel's description of the material over the mundane description provided by Captain Sheridan Cavitt. Later authors would selectively quote Cavitt's assertion that the debris was not a German rocket or Japanese balloon bomb. When comparing Marcel's statements, Philip J. Klass found many of Marcel's claims to be contradictory or inaccurate.

First claim of alien bodies (1980)

Roswell incident is located in New MexicoCorona debris (1947)Corona debris
(1947)Barnett Legend (1980)Barnett Legend (1980)Aztec Hoax (1949)Aztec Hoax (1949)Roswell Army Air Field (1947)Roswell Army Air Field
(1947)class=notpageimage| In 1947, officers from Roswell Army Air Field investigated a debris field near Corona. By the 1980s, popular accounts conflated the debris investigation with two separate myths of humanoid bodies over 300 miles away from Roswell.

The Roswell Incident (1980) was the first book to introduce the controversial second-hand stories of civil engineer Grady "Barney" Barnett and a group of archaeology students from an unidentified university encountering wreckage and "alien bodies" while on the Plains of San Agustin before being escorted away by the Army. The second-hand Barnett stories, set 150 miles to the west of Corona, were described by ufologists as the "one aspect of the account that seemed to conflict with the basic story about the retrieval of highly unusual debris from a sheep ranch outside Corona, New Mexico, in July 1947".

Many alleged first-hand accounts of the Roswell incident actually contain information from the Aztec, New Mexico, UFO incident, a hoaxed flying saucer crash which gained national notoriety after being promoted by journalist Frank Scully in his articles and a 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers.

Majestic Twelve hoax (1987)

Main article: Majestic Twelve

On May 29, 1987, a team consisting of Friedman, Moore, and television producer Jaime Shandera released the "Majestic Twelve documents". On December 11, 1984, Shandera had received the documents in the mail from an unknown source. The MJ-12 documents purported to be a 1952 briefing prepared for President Eisenhower. They have been called "version 2" of the Roswell story. In this variant, the bodies are ejected from the craft shortly before it exploded over the ranch. The propulsion unit is destroyed and the government concludes the ship was a "short range reconnaissance craft". The following week, the bodies are recovered some miles away, decomposing from exposure and predators.

On July 1, 1989, Bill Moore gave a speech at the MUFON annual symposium where he acknowledged spreading "disinformation", claiming he did so on behalf of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. By 1991, the documents were exposed as forgeries, with a signature and stray marks copied from a different letter.

Mortician Glenn Dennis (1989)

Screen capture
Mortician Glenn Dennis during a 1990 interview.
External videos
video icon Unsolved Mysteries segment 9/20/1989 that led to Dennis's call
video icon Glenn Dennis's story as dramatized by Unsolved Mysteries 9/18/1994

On August 5, 1989, Stanton Friedman interviewed former mortician Glenn Dennis. Dennis claimed to have received "four or five calls" from the Air Base with questions about body preservation and inquiries about small or hermetically sealed caskets; he further claimed that a local nurse told him she had witnessed an "alien autopsy". Glenn Dennis has been called the "star witness" of the Roswell incident.

On September 20, 1989, an episode of Unsolved Mysteries included second-hand stories of "Barney" Barnett seeing alien bodies captured by the Army and pilot "Pappy" Henderson transporting bodies from Roswell to Texas. The episode was watched by 28 million people.

In September 1991, Dennis co-founded a UFO museum in Roswell along with former RAAF public affairs officer Walter Haut and Max Littell, a real estate salesman. Dennis appeared in multiple books and documentaries repeating his story. In 1994, Dennis's tale was dramatized in the made-for-TV movie Roswell and by the television show Unsolved Mysteries.

Exterior photograph of building with sign reading UFO Museum and Research Center
In 1991, Glenn Dennis and Walter Haut opened a UFO museum in Roswell.

Dennis provided false names for the nurse who allegedly witnessed the autopsy. Presented with evidence that no such person existed, Dennis admitted to lying about the name. Karl Pflock observed that Dennis's story "sounds like a B-grade thriller conceived by Oliver Stone." Scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning said that Dennis cannot be regarded as a reliable witness, considering that he had seemingly waited over 40 years before he started recounting a series of unconnected events. Such events, Dunnings argues, were then arbitrarily joined to form what has become the most popular narrative of the alleged alien crash. Prominent UFO researchers, including Pflock and Kevin Randle, have become convinced that no bodies were recovered from the Roswell crash.

Competing accounts and schism

The early 1990s saw a proliferation of competing accounts.

UFO Crash at Roswell (1991) by Randle and Schmitt

Screen capture of grey alien prop
Still from the 1994 film Roswell: The UFO Cover Up, based on the 1991 book.

In 1991, Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt published UFO Crash at Roswell, which has been called "version 3" of the Roswell story. They added testimony from 100 new witnesses, including those who reported an elaborate military cordon and debris recovery operation at the Foster ranch. The book included the new claims of a "gouge ... that extended four or five hundred feet " at the ranch.

Randle and Schmitt reported Gen. Arthur Exon had been directly aware of debris and bodies, but Exon disputed his depiction, saying his comments had been based exclusively on second-hand rumors. The 1991 book sold 160,000 copies and served as the basis for the 1994 television film Roswell. Also in 1991, retired USAF Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who had posed with debris for press photographs in 1947, publicly acknowledged the weather balloon cover story, corroborating Marcel's previous admissions.

External videos
video icon Thomas DuBose interview in Recollections of Roswell (1992)

The Barnett "alien body" accounts were mentioned in the 1991 book, though the dates and locations were changed from the accounts found in 1980's The Roswell Incident. In this new account, Brazel was described as leading the Army to a second crash site on the ranch, at which point the Army personnel were supposedly "horrified to find civilians there already."

Mortician Glenn Dennis's claims of an alien autopsy was detailed in the book.

Though hundreds of people were interviewed by various researchers, only a few of these people claimed to have seen debris or aliens. Most witnesses were just repeating the claims of others. Pflock notes that of these 300-plus individuals reportedly interviewed for UFO Crash at Roswell (1991), only 41 can be "considered genuine first- or second-hand witnesses" and only 23 can be "reasonably thought to have seen physical evidence, debris". Of these, only seven have asserted anything suggestive of otherworldly origins for the debris.

Crash at Corona (1992) by Friedman and Berliner

In 1992, Stanton Friedman released Crash at Corona, co-authored with Don Berliner. The book, later termed "version 4" of the Roswell story, introduced new "witnesses" and added to the narrative by doubling the number of flying saucers to two, and the number of aliens to eight – two of which were said to have survived and been taken into custody by the government. Friedman interviewed Lydia Sleppy, a former teletype operator at the KOAT station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who claimed that she was typing a story about the wreckage as dictated by reporter Johnny McBoyle until interrupted by an incoming message, allegedly from the FBI, ordering her to end communications.

The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell (1994)

In 1994, Randle and Schmitt authored another book, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell which included a claim that alien bodies were taken by cargo plane to be viewed by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Zeigler refers to the 1994 book as 'version 5' of the Roswell story.

The existence of so many differing accounts led to a schism among ufologists about the events at Roswell. The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), two leading UFO societies, disagreed in their views of the various scenarios presented by Randle–Schmitt and Friedman–Berliner; several conferences were held to try to resolve the differences. One issue under discussion was where Barnett was when he saw the alien craft he was said to have encountered. A 1992 UFO conference attempted to achieve a consensus among the various scenarios portrayed in Crash at Corona and UFO Crash at Roswell; however, the publication of The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell "resolved" the Barnett problem by simply ignoring Barnett and citing a new location for the alien craft recovery, including a new group of archaeologists not connected to the ones the Barnett story cited.

Air Force response (1994–1997) and aftermath

After an October 1993 inquiry from US congressman from New Mexico Steven Schiff, the General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the United States Secretary of the Air Force to conduct an internal investigation. The result was summarized in two reports. The first, released in 1994, concluded that the material recovered in 1947 was likely debris from Project Mogul, a military surveillance program employing high-altitude balloons (a classified portion of an unclassified New York University project by atmospheric researchers). The Air Force reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible, though skeptical researchers such as Philip J. Klass and Robert Todd, who had been expressing doubts regarding accounts of aliens for several years, used the reports as the basis for skeptical responses to claims by UFO proponents. After the release of the Air Force reports, several books, such as Kal Korff's The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You To Know (1997), built on the evidence presented in the reports to conclude "no credible evidence from any witness has turned out to present a compelling case that the object was extraterrestrial in origin."

Alien Autopsy (1995)

Main article: Alien Autopsy (1995 film) The 1995 film Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction (top) purported to show an alien recovered at Roswell. The extremely influential program was "aggressively satirized" the following year by The X-Files in a sequence (bottom) that "bears an uncanny resemblance in its visual style to the infamous Alien Autopsy".

Pseudo-documentaries, most notably Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction, have taken a major role in shaping popular opinion of Roswell. In 1995, British entrepreneur Ray Santilli claimed to have footage of an alien autopsy filmed after the 1947 Roswell crash, purchased from elderly Army Air Force cameraman Jack Barnett. Alien Autopsy centers around Santilli's hoaxed footage, which it presents as a probable artifact of the government's investigation into Roswell. The purported cameraman Barnett had died in 1967 without ever serving in the military, and visual effects expert Stan Winston told newspapers that Alien Autopsy had misrepresented his conclusion that Santilli's footage was an obvious fake. Santilli would admit years later that the footage was fabricated.

Over twenty million viewers watched the purported autopsy. Fox aired the program immediately before and implicitly connected to the fictional X-Files, which later parodied the film. Alien Autopsy established a template for future pseudo-documentaries built on questioning a presumed government cover-up. Though thoroughly debunked, core UFO believers, many of whom still accepted earlier hoaxes like the Aztec crash, weighed the autopsy footage as additional evidence strengthening the connection between Roswell and extraterrestrials.

The Day After Roswell (1997)

In his 1997 autobiography, former Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso wrote that in 1947, while Corso was held the rank of Major, a master sergeant showed him a purportedly-nonhuman body. Corso wrote that it was being transported through Fort Riley (Kansas) suspended in liquid inside a glass coffin within a wooden crate. According to Corso, he found paperwork tucked down in the crates identifying their contents as corpses from "a craft that had crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, earlier that week", and a shipping manifest that listed Wright Field and Walter Reed Army Hospital. Corso further claimed that years later, he helped oversee a project to reverse engineer recovered crash debris. Philip Klass analyzed his claims line by line and exposed many inconsistencies and factual errors. Corso's story was noted for its similarities to the film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" which had been released six years prior. In both that film and Corso's narrative, civilians secretly attempt to reverse-engineer extraordinary technology of unknown origin.

Other debunked theories

Roswell has remained the subject of divergent popular works, including those by ufologist Walter Bosley, paranoral author Nick Redfern, and American journalist Annie Jacobsen. In 2011, Jacobsen's Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base featured a claim that Nazi doctor Josef Mengele was recruited by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to produce "grotesque, child-size aviators" to cause hysteria. The book was criticized for extensive errors by scientists from the Federation of American Scientists. Historian Richard Rhodes, writing in The Washington Post, also criticized the book's sensationalistic reporting of "old news" and its "error-ridden" reporting. He wrote: "All of claims appear in one or another of the various publicly available Roswell/UFO/Area 51 books and documents churned out by believers, charlatans and scholars over the past 60 years. In attributing the stories she reports to an unnamed engineer and Manhattan Project veteran while seemingly failing to conduct even minimal research into the man's sources, Jacobsen shows herself at a minimum extraordinarily gullible or journalistically incompetent."

In September 2017, UK newspaper The Guardian reported on Kodachrome slides which some had claimed showed a dead space alien. First presented at a BeWitness event in Mexico, organised by Jaime Maussan and attended by almost 7,000 people, days afterwards it was revealed that the slides were in fact of a mummified Native American child discovered in 1896 and which had been on display at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum in Mesa Verde, Colorado, for many decades.

In February 2020, an Air Force historian revealed a recently declassified report of a circa-1951 incident in which two Roswell personnel donned poorly fitting radioactive suits, complete with oxygen masks, while retrieving a weather balloon after an atomic test. On one occasion, they encountered a lone woman in the desert, who fainted when she saw them. The personnel could have appeared, to someone unaccustomed to then-modern gear, to be alien.

Cultural impact

Tourism & commercialization

Sign reading "Welcome to Roswell"
The City of Roswell's welcome sign, featuring a flying saucer

Roswell's tourism industry is based on ufology museums and businesses, as well as alien-themed iconography and alien kitsch. A yearly UFO festival has been held since 1995. There are several alleged crash sites that can be visited for a fee, as well as alien museums, festivals and conventions, including the International UFO Museum and Research Center, founded in 1991.

Popular fiction

Main article: Roswell incident in fiction

In the 1980 independently distributed film Hangar 18, an alien ship crashes in the desert of the US Southwest. Debris and bodies are recovered, but their existence is covered up by the government. Director James L. Conway summarized the film as "a modern-day dramatization of the Roswell incident". Conway later revisited the concept in 1995 when he filmed the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men"; In that episode, characters travel to 1947, triggering the Roswell incident, with their ship being stored in Hangar 18.

Beginning in 1993, the hit television series The X-Files featured the Roswell incident as a recurring element. The show's second episode "Deep Throat", introduced a Roswell alien crash into the show's mythology. The Roswell incident was most prominently featured in "My Struggle", while the comical 1996 episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" satirized the recently-broadcast Santelli Alien Autopsy hoax film. After the success of The X-Files, Roswell alien conspiracies were featured in other sci-fi drama series, including Dark Skies (1996–97) and Taken (2002).

In the 1996 film Independence Day, an alien invasion prompts the revelation of a Roswell crash and cover-up extending even to concealing the information from the President of the United States, to facilitate plausible deniability, according to the Defense Secretary. The 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sees the protagonist on a quest for an alien body from the Roswell Incident.

In a 2001 episode of the animated comedy Futurama, titled, "Roswell That Ends Well", protagonists from the 31st century travel back in time and cause the Roswell incident. The 2006 comedy Alien Autopsy revolves around the 1990s-creation of the Santilli hoax film. The 2011 Simon Pegg comedy Paul tells the story of Roswell tourists who rescue a grey alien. Starting in 1998, Pocket Books published a series of young adult novels titled Roswell High; From 1999 to 2002, the books were adapted into the WB/UPN TV series Roswell, with a second adaption release in 2019 under the title Roswell, New Mexico.

Modern views

Contrary to the evidence, there are individuals who firmly maintain the belief that a spacecraft crashed near Roswell. B. D. Gildenberg has called the Roswell incident "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".

Pflock said, "he case for Roswell is a classic example of the triumph of quantity over quality. The advocates of the crashed-saucer tale ... simply shovel everything that seems to support their view into the box marked 'Evidence' and say, 'See? Look at all this stuff. We must be right.' Never mind the contradictions. Never mind the lack of independent supporting fact. Never mind the blatant absurdities." Korff suggests there are clear incentives for some people to promote the idea of aliens at Roswell, and that many researchers were not doing competent work: " UFO field is comprised of people who are willing to take advantage of the gullibility of others, especially the paying public. Let's not pull any punches here: The Roswell UFO myth has been very good business for UFO groups, publishers, for Hollywood, the town of Roswell, the media, and UFOlogy ... number of researchers who employ science and its disciplined methodology is appallingly small."

B. D. Gildenberg notes the existence of multiple reported alien recovery sites, which bear little resemblance to the original event reported in 1947 or the subsequent accounts provided by initial witnesses. Some of these new accounts could potentially be confused recollections of known recoveries of injured and deceased servicemen from military plane crashes in the area between 1948 and 1950. Other accounts might be based on memories of recoveries involving test dummies as suggested by the Air Force in their reports.

Project Mogul

Book cover reads "The Roswell Report, Case closed, Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited, Headquarters United States Airforce
In 1994 and 1997, US Government reports concluded that the Roswell Incident stemmed from a Project MOGUL balloon.

A 1994 USAF report identified the crashed object from the 1947 incident as a Project Mogul device. Mogul – the classified portion of an unclassified New York University atmospheric research project – was a military surveillance program employing high-altitude balloons to monitor nuclear tests. The project launched Flight No. 4 from Alamogordo Army Air Field on June 4. Flight No. 4 was drifting toward Corona within 17 miles of Brazel's ranch when its tracking equipment failed. The military, charged with protecting the classified project, claimed that the crash was of a weather balloon. Major Jesse Marcel and USAF Brigadier General Thomas DuBose publicly described the claims of a weather balloon as a cover story in 1978 and 1991, respectively. In the USAF report, Richard Weaver states that the weather balloon story may have been intended to "deflect interest from" Mogul, or it may have been the perception of the weather officer because Mogul balloons were constructed from the same materials. Sheridan W. Cavitt, who accompanied Marcel to the debris field, provided a sworn witness statement for the 1994 report. Cavitt stated, "I thought at the time and think so now, that this debris was from a crashed balloon."

Ufologists had previously considered the possibility that the Roswell debris had come from a top-secret balloon. In March 1990, John Keel proposed that the debris had been from a Japanese balloon bomb launched in World War 2. An Air Force meteorologist rejected Keel's theory, explaining that the Fu-Go balloons "could not possibly have stayed aloft for two years". Independent researcher Robert G. Todd first connected Roswell to Project Mogul in 1990. Todd contacted ufologists and in the 1994 book Roswell in Perspective, Karl Pflock agreed that the Brazel ranch debris was from Mogul. In response to a 1993 inquiry from US congressman Steven Schiff of New Mexico, the General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the United States Secretary of the Air Force to conduct an internal investigation. Air Force declassification officer Lieutenant James McAndrew concluded:

When the civilians and personnel from Roswell AAF 'stumbled' upon the highly classified project and collected the debris, no one at Roswell had a 'need to know' about information concerning MOGUL. This fact, along with the initial mis-identification and subsequent rumors that the 'capture' of a 'flying disc' occurred, ultimately left many people with unanswered questions that have endured to this day.

'Alien bodies' as later hoaxes or test dummies

Anthropomorphic dummy in insulation bagAnthropomorphic dummies with gurneyAnthropomorphic dummies were transported on medical gurneys and sometimes inside black insulation bags visually similar to "body bags" used for cadavers

The Air Force concluded that reports of recovered alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of accidents involving military casualties with memories of the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs such as the 1950s Operation High Dive. Recollection of these test dummies could be mixed with a myriad of hoaxes or misconceptions. Project MOGUL did not involve test dummies but U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons did drop test dummies from high altitudes and they both operated in the New Mexico Desert.

Critics suggest claims of alien bodies face credibility problems with witnesses making contradictory accounts. Death-bed confessions or accounts from elderly and easily confused witnesses to one party are also considered problematic. Pflock noted that only four people with supposed firsthand knowledge of alien bodies were interviewed by Roswell authors. Additionally reports of bodies came about 40 years after the fact.

Roswell as modern myth and folklore

According to anthropologists Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart, the Roswell Story was a prime example of how a discourse moved from the fringes to the mainstream according to the prevailing zeitgeist: public preoccupation in the 1980s with "conspiracy, cover-up and repression" aligned well with the Roswell narratives as told in the "sensational books" which were being published. Additionally, skeptics and some social anthropologists saw the increasingly elaborate accounts of alien crash landings and government cover-ups as evidence of a myth being constructed.

Prominent skeptics Joe Nickell and co-author James McGaha identified a myth-making process, which they called the "Roswellian syndrome". In this syndrome, a myth is proposed to have five distinct stages of development: incident, debunking, submergence, mythologizing, and reemergence and media bandwagon effect. The authors predicted that the Roswellian syndrome would "play out again and again", in other UFO and conspiracy-theory stories.

Charles Ziegler argues that the Roswell story exhibits characteristics typical of traditional folk narratives. He identifies six distinct narratives and a process of transmission through storytellers, wherein a core story was formed from various witness accounts and then shaped and altered by those involved in the UFO community. Additional "witnesses" were sought to expand upon the core narrative, while accounts that did not align with the prevailing beliefs were discredited or excluded by the "gatekeepers".

Statements by US Presidents

In a 2012 visit to Roswell, Barack Obama joked "I come in peace."

When asked during a 2015 interview with GQ magazine about whether he had looked at top-secret classified information, Obama replied, "I gotta tell you, it's a little disappointing. People always ask me about Roswell and the aliens and UFOs, and it turns out the stuff going on that's top secret isn't nearly as exciting as you expect. In this day and age, it's not as top secret as you'd think."

In a 2014 interview, Bill Clinton reported that his administration had investigated the incident, saying "When the Roswell thing came up, I knew we'd get gazillions of letters. So I had all the Roswell papers reviewed, everything".

In June 2020, Donald Trump, when asked if he would consider releasing more information about the Roswell incident, said "I won't talk to you about what I know about it, but it's very interesting."

In December 2020, Obama joked with Stephen Colbert: "It used to be that UFOs and Roswell was the biggest conspiracy. And now that seems so tame, the idea that the government might have an alien spaceship."

See also

References

  1. ^ Olmsted 2009, p. 184: "When one of these balloons smashed into the sands of the New Mexico ranch, the military decided to hide the project's real purpose."
  2. ^ Frazier 2017a: "Flight 4 was launched June 4, 1947, from Alamogordo Army Air Field and tracked flying northeast toward Corona. It was within 17 mi  of the Brazel ranch when contact was lost."
  3. Bloecher 1967, p. xiii
  4. Frank 2023, pp. 466–467
  5. Pflock 2001, p. 32
  6. ^ Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, p. 9
  7. Peebles 1994, pp. 10–11
  8. Rothman, Lily (July 7, 2015). "How the Roswell UFO Theory Got Started". Time. Archived from the original on July 9, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2021.
  9. Gildenberg 2003, p. 65
  10. Thomas, David E. (March 2001). "Retired Air Force Balloon Expert Expands on Origin of 'Majestic 12' UFO Hoax" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 25, no. 2. p. 5. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  11. ^ Gildenberg 2003, p. 73
  12. ^ Westhoven, William (June 8, 2022). "Do you believe? Poll says third of Americans think Roswell UFO landing 'plausible'". Morristown Daily Record. Daily Record. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  13. Goldberg 2001, pp. 214–215
  14. ^ Olmsted 2009, p. 183
  15. ^ Olmsted 2009, p. 184
  16. Young 2020, pp. 25, 27, 29
  17. ^ Goldberg 2001, pp. 192–193
  18. ^ "New Mexico Rancher's 'Flying Disk' Proves to Be Weather Balloon-Kite". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Fort Worth, TX. July 9, 1947. pp. 1, 4.
  19. Kottmeyer 2017, pp. 172–173
  20. May 2016, p. 62
  21. Frank 2023, p. 510
  22. Peebles 1994, p. 246
  23. Klass 1997b, pp. 35–36, 21
  24. Clarke 2015, pp. 36–37
  25. ^ Young 2020, p. 27
  26. Pflock 2001, p. 29
  27. Weaver & McAndrew 1995, p. 23: "I was a member of the crew which flew parts of what we were told was a flying saucer to Fort Worth. I was involved in loading the B-29 with the material, which was wrapped in packages with wrapping paper. One of the pieces was triangle-shaped, about 2 1/2 feet across the bottom. The rest were in small packages, about the size of a shoe box, The brown paper was held with tape. The material was extremely lightweight. When I picked it up, it was just like picking up an empty package. All of the packages could have fit into the trunk of a car When we came back from lunch, they told us they had transferred the material to a B-25. They told us the material was a weather balloon, but I'm certain it wasn't a weather balloon,"
  28. Pflock 2001, p. 27
  29. "Flying Disc Found; In Army Possession". The Bakersfield Californian. Bakersfield, California. Associated Press. July 8, 1947. p. 1.
  30. "AAF Whips Up a Disc Flurry". The Journal Herald. July 9, 1947. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
  31. ^ "Harassed Rancher who Located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About it". Roswell Daily Record. July 9, 1947. The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet long, felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds . There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used. Cited in McAndrew 1997, p. 8.
  32. Klass 1997b, pp. 120, 133, 138
  33. Kloor 2019, p. 21
  34. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, p. 12
  35. Frank 2023, p. 520
  36. ^ ABC News 2005, p. 1
  37. Goldberg 2001, p. 193
  38. Wright 1998, p. 39
  39. Jacobson 1948, p. 435
  40. Weeks 2015, ch. 17
  41. "Twin Falls Falling Disc Proves Ingenious Hoax of 4 Teen-age Boys". Deseret News. July 12, 1947. p. 9 – via Newspapers.com.
  42. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 13–14
  43. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 7, 44, 76, 181:"p. 7: the idea that the sightings were of a novel Soviet aircraft had its precedent in the wartime military intelligence experience with Japanese balloon bombers. Little more than two years separated the reports of unusual flying objects that alerted authorities to the Japanese balloon bomber offensive in 1944-1945, and the wave of reports in 1947 that were triggered by Arnold's sightings. In 1945, intelligence analysts had not ignored reports from people throughout the western United States who said they had sighted mysterious objects in the sky, and prompt investigation had revealed that the nation was being attacked with a hitherto unsuspected enemy weapon.' Therefore, from the military standpoint, the wave of such sightings in 1947 could not be dismissed without first eliminating the possibility that they were due to some secret domestic project and then ascertaining whether or not they were caused by a new type of Soviet aircraft. The key to unveiling the Japanese threat in 1945 had been the recovery of the remains of crashed aircraft. That previous experience ensured that any reported finding of wreckage attributed to flying disks would receive the prompt attention of military intelligence officers."
  44. May 2016, p. 64: "When Kenneth Arnold first saw his 'flying saucers', he imagined they were secret military aircraft. The general public, too, did not initially make a connection between UFO reports and the notion of extraterrestrial spacecraft."
  45. Peebles 1994, pp. 3, 12, 17, 36–41, 60, 33, 112, 251
  46. Kottmeyer 2017, pp. 173, 175
  47. Peebles 1994, p. 245
  48. Olmsted 2009, pp. 173, 184
  49. ^ Harding & Stewart 2003, p. 273
  50. ^ Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 13–14
  51. ^ Clarke 2015, ch. 13: "It appeared the Aztec story was destined to join the Aurora airship crash and the Roswell weather balloon as a flash in the ufological pan, quickly to be forgotten. In hindsight all three provided the basic template for what became the modern crashed saucer legend."
  52. Peebles 1994, pp. 48–50, 251
  53. ^ Peebles 1994, pp. 242, 251
  54. Smith 2000, p. 88
  55. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 14, 36, 42
  56. Dickey, Colin (September 11, 2023). "They Knew What They Had Seen". Slate.
  57. Smith 2000, p. 110
  58. McAndrew 1997, pp. 84–85
  59. Peebles 1994, pp. 33, 111, 251
  60. Goldberg 2001, pp. 208, 253–255
  61. Olmsted 2009, pp. 183–185
  62. Gulyas 2016, p. 88
  63. Fuller 1966, pp. 87–88: "There have been, I learned after I started this research, frequent and continual rumors (and they are only rumors) that in a morgue at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio, lie the bodies of a half-dozen or so small humanoid corpses, measuring not more than four-and-a-half feet in height, evidence of one of the few times an extraterrestrial spaceship has allowed itself either to fail or otherwise fall into the clutches of the semicivilized Earth People."
  64. ^ Smith 2000, p. 82
  65. Disch 2000, pp. 53–34: "Even the Roswell case has its component of science-fictional fraud. Robert Spencer Carr became famous, briefly, in the '70s when, in a radio interview, he concocted the still-current story of aliens' autopsied and kept in cold storage at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio. Carr."
  66. Peebles 1994, pp. 242–243
  67. Zodiac (November 1, 1974). "Air Force Freezes Ufo Story". Ann Arbor Sun – via Ann Arbor District Library.
  68. Peebles 1994, p. 244: " Stringfield described the evidence Carr had collected on the Aztec 'crash.' Carr said he had found five eyewitnesses to the recovery. One (now dead) was a surgical nurse at the alien's autopsy. Another was a high-ranking Air Force officer."
  69. Jones, Jack (October 12, 1974). "No Green Men Here, Base Officials Say". Dayton Daily News. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
  70. Bullard 2016, p. 331
  71. ^ Erdmann & Block 2000, p. 287
  72. Carr, Timothy (July 1997). "Son of Originator of 'Alien Autopsy' Story Casts Doubt on Father's Credibility" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 21, no. 4. p. 31.
  73. Smith 2000, p. 92
  74. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 16–17
  75. Frank 2023, pp. 520–529
  76. Klass 1997b, p. 67
  77. Pflock 2001, p. 225
  78. Pratt, Bob (February 26, 1980). "Former Intelligence Officer Reveals...I Picked Up Wreckage of UFO That Exploded Over US". National Enquirer. p. 8.
  79. "UFO Coverup". In Search Of... Season 5. Episode 1. September 20, 1980.
  80. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 16–17, 21, 22, 23, 24–25, 39–40, 46, 62
  81. Klass 1997b, pp. 9–10
  82. Klass 1997b, pp. 186, 198
  83. "Roswell author who said he handled UFO crash debris dies at 76". The Guardian. Associated Press. August 8, 2013. Archived from the original on January 16, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2023.
  84. Korff 1997, p. 26
  85. ^ Korff, Kal (August 1997). "What Really Happened at Roswell". Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 21, no. 4. Archived from the original on April 18, 2014. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
  86. Items from the diagram as cited in text:
  87. Smith 2000, p. 7
  88. Smith 2000, pp. 73, 127
  89. ^ Pflock 2001, pp. 33
  90. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 4, 12, 26–27, 28, 177
  91. ABC News 2005, p. 3
  92. ^ ABC News 2005, p. 2
  93. Frank 2023, p. 529
  94. Berlitz & Moore 1980, p. 28
  95. Berlitz & Moore 1980, p. 79
  96. Berlitz & Moore 1980, p. 83
  97. Berlitz & Moore 1980, pp. 88–89
  98. ^ Goldberg 2001, p. 197
  99. Berlitz & Moore 1980, p. 33
  100. Berlitz & Moore 1980, pp. 67–69
  101. Berlitz & Moore 1980, p. 42
  102. Korff 1997, p. 29
  103. Berlitz & Moore 1980, pp. 75, 88
  104. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 44–45
  105. Randle & Schmitt 1994, pp. 115, 121, cited in: Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, p. 44
  106. Klass 1997b, pp. 25, 35, 84, 66
  107. Pflock 2001, pp. 82
  108. Goldberg 2001, p. 196
  109. Rodeghier & Whiting 1992, p. 2
  110. Klass, Philip J. (1990). "New Evidence of MJ-12 Hoax" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 14. pp. 135–140.
  111. Friedman 2005
  112. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 18–19
  113. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 19–20
  114. Donovan 2011, pp. 104–105
  115. Korff 1997, pp. 197–207
  116. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, p. 21
  117. McAndrew 1997, p. 75
  118. Smith 2000, p. 7
  119. Pflock 2001, pp. 51
  120. "Legend: Roswell Crash and Area 51". Unsolved Mysteries. Season 6. Episode 33. September 18, 1994. NBC – via FilmRise True Crime.
  121. Rich, Alan (July 29, 1994). "Roswell". Variety. Penske Media.
  122. Pflock 2001, p. 134
  123. Klass 1997b, p. 192
  124. Pflock 2001, pp. 127
  125. Dunning, Brian (December 18, 2007). "Aliens in Roswell". Skeptoid. Retrieved October 9, 2016.
  126. Klass 1997a, p. 5
  127. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 20
  128. Randle & Schmitt 1991, p. 200
  129. Pflock 2001, pp. 36
  130. ^ Goldberg 2001, p. 199
  131. Pflock 2001, p. 91
  132. Randle & Schmitt 1991, p. 206
  133. "Albuquerque Journal". October 27, 1991. p. 84 – via Newspapers.com.
  134. Pflock 2001, p. 34
  135. Pflock 2001, pp. 176–177
  136. Friedman & Berliner 1997
  137. ^ Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 21–22
  138. Goldberg 2001, p. 192
  139. Korff 1997, pp. 33–35
  140. ^ Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 24–25
  141. Gildenberg 2003, p. 69
  142. ^ Frazier 2017b
  143. "Beyond Science?" (PDF). Scientific American Frontiers. Season 8. Episode 2. November 19, 1997. PBS.
  144. ^ Levy & Mendlesohn 2019, p. 32
  145. ^ Lavery, Hague & Cartwright 1996, p. 17
  146. ^ Goldberg 2001, p. 219
  147. Korff 1997, p. 204
  148. Pflock 2001, p. 201
  149. Frank 2023, p. 1101
  150. Korff 1997, pp. 212–213
  151. Korff 1997, p. 213
  152. Frank 2023, p. 1109
  153. Knight 2013, p. 50
  154. Frank 2023, p. 1117
  155. Ricketts 2011, p. 250
  156. Corso & Birnes 1997, pp. 27, 32–34
  157. Corso & Birnes 1997, p. 33
  158. Klass 1998, pp. 1–5
  159. Bara 2016: "It is very similar to the Terminator 2 scenario."
  160. Gulyas 2014, ch. 9, paras. 34-50.
  161. Harding, Thomas (May 13, 2011). "Roswell 'was Soviet plot to create US panic'". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on May 20, 2011. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  162. Norris, Robert; Richelson, Jeffrey (July 11, 2011). "Dreamland Fantasies". Washington Decoded. Archived from the original on March 5, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  163. Rhodes, Richard (June 3, 2011). "Annie Jacobsen's "Area 51," the U.S. top-secret military base". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 10, 2015. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  164. ^ Carpenter, Les (September 30, 2017). "The curious case of the alien in the photo and the mystery that took years to solve". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
  165. Neale, Rick (February 8, 2020). "Stranger things?". Florida Today. Melbourne, Florida. pp. 1A, 8A, 9A. Archived from the original on February 8, 2020. Retrieved February 10, 2020.
  166. Siegler, Kirk; Baker, Liz (June 5, 2021). "The Truth Is (Still) Out There In 'UFO Capital' Roswell, New Mexico". NPR. Retrieved May 8, 2022.
  167. Ricketts 2011, p. 253
  168. Smith 2000, p. 19
  169. StarTrek.com Staff (February 16, 2012). "Catching Up With Director James L. Conway, Part 1". StarTrek.com.
  170. Handlen, Zach (January 17, 2013). "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Little Green Men"/"The Sword Of Kahless"". TV Club. Archived from the original on April 18, 2021. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
  171. Carey & Schmitt 2020, p. 160
  172. Klaver 2012, p. 149
  173. Carey & Schmitt 2020, p. 184
  174. Gulyas 2016, p. 84
  175. Frost, Warwick; Laing, Jennifer (December 9, 2013). "Commemorative Events: Memory, Identities, Conflict". Routledge – via Google Books.
  176. "Top 5 Roswell References in Movies and TV". Entertainment.ie. July 9, 2013. Archived from the original on July 8, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  177. "Albert Nimzicki: Two words, Mr. President: "Plausible deniability"". moviequotedb.com. Archived from the original on September 14, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
  178. LeMay, John (December 9, 2008). "Roswell". Arcadia Publishing – via Google Books.
  179. Handlen, Zach (May 28, 2015). "Futurama: "Roswell That Ends Well"/"Anthology Of Interest II"". TV Club. Archived from the original on November 4, 2019. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
  180. Lagerfield, Nathalie (June 24, 2016). "How an Alien Autopsy Hoax Captured the World's Imagination for a Decade". Time. Archived from the original on April 18, 2021. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
  181. Ebert, Roger (March 16, 2011). "Phone home? Dude, I'm into texting". RogerEbert.com.
  182. Beeler 2010, pp. 219, 214,
  183. Cordero, Rosy (May 12, 2022). "The CW's 'Roswell, New Mexico' Canceled After Four Seasons".
  184. Joseph 2008, p. 132
  185. Pflock 2001, p. 223
  186. Korff 1997, p. 248
  187. ^ Gildenberg 2003, pp. 64, 70
  188. Printy 1999, ch. 17
  189. ^ Broad 1997, p. 18
  190. The Roswell material has been attributed to a top secret military balloon by astrophysicist Adam Frank, historian Lt Col James Michael Young, science writer Kendrick Frazier, folklorist Thomas Bullard, historian Kathryn Olmsted, Project Mogul meteorologist B.D. Gildenberg, journalist Kal Korff, skeptical UFO researcher Philip J. Klass, and intelligence officer Captain James McAndrew among others:
    • Frank 2023, p. 551: "The weather-balloon story was indeed a lie. Instead, what crashed on Brazel's ranch was Project Mogul, a secret experimental program using high-altitude balloons to monitor Russian nuclear tests.
    • Young 2020, p. 27: "aunch #4 on June 4, 1947, captured the public's attention when a local rancher recovered the balloon debris. Noting unusual metallic objects attached to the debris and suspecting they belonged to the military, the rancher turned the material and objects over to officers at Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF)."
    • Frazier 2017a: " what we now know the debris to have been: remnants of a long train of research balloons and equipment launched by New York University atmospheric researchers "
    • Bullard 2016, p. 80: "the Air Force concluded that the wreckage belonged to a Project Mogul balloon array that had disappeared in June 1947."
    • Olmsted 2009, p. 184: "When one of these balloons smashed into the sands of the New Mexico ranch, the military decided to hide the project's real purpose."
    • Gildenberg 2003, p. 62: "One such flight, launched in early June, came down on a Roswell area sheep ranch, and created one of the most enduring mysteries of the century."
    • Korff 1997, fig. 7: "Unbeknownst to Major Marcel, the debris was actually the remnants of a highly classified military spy device known as Project Mogul."
    • Klass 1997a, fig. 3: " the debris was from a 600-foot long string of twenty-three weather balloons and three radar targets that had been launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field as part of a 'Top Secret' Project Mogul "
    • McAndrew 1997, p. 16: "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."
  191. Frazier 2017a
  192. Weaver & McAndrew 1995, p. 9: "... the material recovered near Roswell was consistent with a balloon device and most likely from one of the MOGUL balloons that had not been previously recovered."
  193. Weaver & McAndrew 1995, pp. 27–30
  194. Gildenberg 2003, pp. 62–72
  195. Weaver & McAndrew 1995, p. 160
  196. Gulyas 2016: "Numerous explanations have arisen, ranging from Japanese 'Fugo' balloons "
  197. Gulyas 2014: " from John Keel, who advocated a solution to the Roswell question which credited Japanese Fugo balloons as the 'mysterious craft,' to Nick Redfern, whose Body Snatchers in the Desert ".
  198. Huyghe 2001, p. 133: "Edward Doty, a meteorologist who established the Air Force's Balloon Branch at nearby Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico beginning in 1948, calls the Japanese Fu-Go balloons 'a very fine technical job with limited resources.' But 'no way could one of these balloons explain the Roswell episode,' says Doty,'because they could not possibly have stayed aloft for two years.'"
  199. ^ Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, p. 27
  200. Weaver & McAndrew 1995, p. 28: "Most interestingly, as this report was being written, Pflock published his own report of this matter under the auspices of FUFOR, entitled Roswell in Perspective (1994). Pflock concluded from his research that the Brazel Ranch debris originally reported as a "flying disc" was probably debris from a MOGUL balloon"
  201. "Los Angeles Times". January 30, 1994. p. 12 – via Newspapers.com.
  202. Weaver & McAndrew 1995, p. 316
  203. McAndrew 1997, pp. 35–36
  204. Korff 1997, pp. 77–81
  205. Korff 1997, pp. 86–104
  206. Korff 1997, pp. 107–108
  207. Pflock 2001, p. 118: "These are Frank Kaufmann, who also claimed to have seen a crash survivor; the late Jim Ragsdale; a Lt. Col. Albert Lovejoy Duran; and one Gerald Anderson, who, like Kaufmanno told not only of seeing bodies but also a survivor, this at a third alleged crash site on the Plains of San Agustin in Catron County, about two hundred miles west-northwest of Roswell."
  208. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 1–198
  209. ^ Nickell, Joe; McGaha, James (May–June 2012). "The Roswellian Syndrome: How Some UFO Myths Develop". Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 36, no. 3. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on January 26, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  210. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, p. 1
  211. Saler, Ziegler & Moore 1997, pp. 34–37
  212. Dwyer, Devin (March 22, 2012). "In Oil and UFO Country, Obama Says 'I Come in Peace'". ABC News. Archived from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  213. Simmons, Bill (November 17, 2015). "Bill Simmons Interviews President Obama, GQ's 2015 Man of the Year". GQ. Archived from the original on November 5, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
  214. Kopan, Tal (April 3, 2014). "Bill Clinton phones home on aliens". Politico. Archived from the original on April 19, 2021. Retrieved April 19, 2021.
  215. Madhani, Aamer (June 19, 2020). "Trump says he's heard 'interesting' things about Roswell". Military Times. Archived from the original on April 28, 2021. Retrieved April 28, 2021.
  216. Diaz, Eric (December 7, 2020). "President Obama Admits He Was Briefed on UFO Sightings". Nerdist. Archived from the original on April 27, 2021. Retrieved April 18, 2021.

Sources

Conspiracy theories
List of conspiracy theories
Overview
Core topics
Psychology
Astronomy and outer space
UFOs
Hoaxes
Deaths and disappearances
Assassination /
suicide theories
Accidents / disasters
Other cases
Body double hoax
Energy, environment
False flag allegations
Gender and sexuality
Health
Race, religion and/or ethnicity
Antisemitic
Christian / Anti-Christian
Islamophobic
Genocide denial /
Denial of mass killings
Regional
Asia
Americas
(outside the United States)
Middle East / North Africa
Russia
Turkey
Other European
United States
2020 election
Other
Pseudolaw
Satirical
See also
UFOs
Claimed sightings
General
Pre-20th century
20th century
21st century
Confirmed hoaxes
Sightings by country
Types of UFOs
Types of alleged
extraterrestrial beings
Studies and timeline
Hypotheses
Conspiracy theories
Involvement
Abduction claims
Other
Culture
Skepticism
Government & Law
Categories: