text:
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Roswell and the World in 1947
106 comments:
- Lance said...
Thanks for this entry, Kevin.
From my perspective, this shows again that at this early date, the thought by the military (and most folks) was that this was a problem that could be solved and solved fairly easily. There was an anxiety and fervor to find the answer.
When Marcel was led to the Mogul debris (if that is what it was), he came to it under this mindset (which your piece underlines). This background could easily be part of the equation as to why Marcel may have considered the stuff to be more than just balloon junk. He may have seen the debris as being just unusual enough to possibly fit into the flying disk reports.
We don't know the degree of committment Marcel had initially that the junk found was esoteric in some way.
Maybe he thought it was a doubtful match but worth considering.
I have suggested before that there is the possibility that what happened next was entirely a joke: that perhaps Haut's release was tongue in cheek, intended just for the local media.
After looking at the recovered junk, everyone DID quickly realize that it probably wasn't the answer to the disc mystery but the discussion of the possibility still took place.
Everything snowballed from there, of course.
- March 10, 2012 at 10:05 AM
- cda said...
And the great early post-war fear was, of course, Russia. Could Russia, conceivably, launch a missile or craft, to fly and then crash land in western USA?
No they could not, but nobody in the US military knew this for certain. Hence the fear that they could. And hence the post-war 'war nerves' of that era.
- March 10, 2012 at 12:04 PM
- starman said...
"We don't know the degree of commitment Marcel had initially that the junk found was esoteric in some way."
Esoteric enough to make a special trip home to show to his family.
- March 12, 2012 at 8:01 AM
- Lance said...
@ Starman,
Which could be any degree, of course.
When Roswell believers endeavor to quantify people's motivations, they often do so solely for their own purposes. And to further exasperate their error, they do it dogmatically.
Again, I am surmising that perhaps Marcel did think that he had found something usual--perhaps even a possible answer for the flying discs--but that he must also have realized that the thing was a pretty unimpressive contraption. Still maybe worth a drive-by to show the wife and kids.
- March 12, 2012 at 8:57 AM
- cda said...
I think you meant "exacerbate" above.
(Have I spelt it OK?)
The other thing is that Marcel would never have shown his wife and son highly classified material (if it was indeed such).
So either the junk was highly classified, i.e. what pro-ETHers would say was already suspected ET debris, or it was common junk. If it was common junk this explains why nobody bothered to retain any fragments.
I can see Kevin and his cohorts telling us that yes the stuff was still ET but not yet classified. Boy what a revelation! No wonder Mrs Marcel and Marcel jr were never threatened with death like some others were.
What is your answer, Kevin? Or are you beginning to have doubts that Marcel ever showed the debris to his wife and son?
- March 12, 2012 at 9:31 AM
- Lance said...
Thanks CDA for the correction and thoughts above.
I would blame my error on auto-correct but in truth, it was my own stupidty.
- March 12, 2012 at 9:39 AM
- David Rudiak said...
Kevin, thanks for the interesting sighting by UAL pilot Gibian along the same flight route as the famous sighting of Cpt. E. J. Smith on July 4. The Smith + copilot Idaho sighting was probably more heavily publicized than the nearby sighting of Kenneth Arnold on June 24, lent Arnold's sighting considerable credibility, and really got the ball rolling on heavy newspaper coverage of the flying saucers. For the next several days, newspaper front pages and headlines were full of stories about flying saucers, until Roswell was debunked as a weather balloon on July 9, after which coverage fell off dramatically. (Dang, ridicule sure is effective in killing stories.)
Looking over NARCAP's pilot sighting collection, only about 12 hours before the Smith sighting, another pilot/copilot sighting took place over Moscow, Idaho. And yet another UAL pilot/copilot sighting took place August 18 in the exact same Idaho area as the earlier Smith sighting. Two objects shaped like "skeet targets" were seen flying under the plane. Airline pilots in Idaho seemed to commonly suffer from delusions of seeing flying saucers.
Another interesting post-Roswell pilot/copilot sighting was that of Cpt. Jack Peck and copilot Vince Daly near Bethel, Alaska, August 4. This time the object seemed cigar-shaped, resembling their C-54, except it lacked any wings or visible propulsion. They swerved to avoid a possible collision since it seemed to be approaching at right angles, then they tried to follow it for several minutes. Peck had many thousands of hours of flight experience and was something of a legendary pilot in Alaska.
An interesting military air crew sighting that is virtually unknown took place near Austin, Texas, July 7, and I have in my list of Texas area UFO sightings. As they were leaving Bergstrom Field near Austin, members of the plane crew were reported seeing one of the "flying saucers" flying at about 1400 miles an hour because it overtook and passed their plane in such a short time. It also "blurred radio reception slightly."
In order to explain away all these pilot sightings, or Marcel's finding, our resident debunkers continuously resort to the "drooling idiot" theory of history. Let's just ignore all their years of training and experience. These pilots got caught up in flying saucer hysteria and only thought they saw something way out of the ordinary. Marcel was likewise hysterical and somehow deluded himself into thinking flimsy rubber balloon, balsa wood, Scotch tape, and foil-paper candy wrapping material must have come from one of these high speed saucers and had extraordinary physical properties. The delusions and foolishness continued on with Col. Blanchard, who put out the press release that they had one of these supersonic contraptions. More foolishness abounded when Gen. Ramey and brass at the Pentagon kept Blanchard and Marcel on at Roswell in charge of dropping A-bombs after they made the Air Force look like idiots with their misidentification of a common weather balloon. They even eventually promoted Blanchard to full General and were thinking of making him AF C/S. Ramey was so impressed with Marcel's gross stupidity that a year later he called him "outstanding" and command officer material.
The intelligence idiocy extended beyond Marcel. AAF Asst. C/S Intelligence Gen. George Schulgen at the Pentagon was so impressed with the idiot pilot sightings that he started an intelligence review of the sightings July 9 that concluded 3 weeks later that the saucers were real. Future AF C/S Nathan Twining concluded the same thing, based on a review by the Engineering and Intelligence divisions at Wright Field—real aircraft—in his famous memo that October that led to Project Sign.
I honestly don't know how we survived all these drooling idiots flying our planes and running our military, with their delusional sightings and belief that flying saucers were real.
- March 12, 2012 at 12:26 PM
- cda said...
"More foolishness abounded when Gen. Ramey and brass at the Pentagon kept Blanchard and Marcel on at Roswell in charge of dropping A-bombs after they made the Air Force look like idiots with their misidentification of a common weather balloon."
Was there any comment in the press or elsewhere AT THE TIME suggesting that Blanchard and Marcel had made the Air Force look like idiots? Or that the AF had made Blanchard and Marcel look like idiots?
No there was not. At least I have never seen any. Such ideas only arose decades later when certain investigators began promoting the idea that Roswell was a crashed ET craft.
The early post-war 'war nerves' accounts for the official concern by Twining and others over a phenomenon that was still new and believed to be real. As time went by things cooled off and the concern lessened. In 1948 there was the "Estimate of the Situation" (by a small group of individuals at Blue Book) and there was a brief mild dose of hysteria, according to Keyhoe, in Washington in 1952. Hence the Robertson committee.
Later flaps did not generate the same official interest, and today such flaps would be, and are, officially ignored.
But in those early 'golden days' of 47-48 the attitude was quite different, as you would expect. Also, although officials were scratching their heads, no real AF investigation had yet got going in the summer of '47.
- March 12, 2012 at 2:44 PM
- Lance said...
Let me clear up a few of the misstatements that Dr. Rudiak unintentionally made above:
"our resident debunkers continuously resort to the "drooling idiot" theory of history. Let's just ignore all their years of training and experience."
No, I think we just say that these folks may have been mistaken or caught up in the mass hysteria of the time. Like, for instance, Chilles-Whited, who probably viewed a meteor. Where did all that training help then?
And it isn't just skeptics who say this. Even the UFO organizations themselves admit that most (90% is often mentioned) sightings are prosaic. Surely Dr. Rudiak isn't also suggesting that MUFON or NICAP is using his dubious "drooling idiot" theory?
True Saucer Believers like to pretend that things like mass hysteria could not play a role in their favorite topic. One has has only to look at the recent case of the twitching Le Roy girls (now all apparently miraculously cured after weaning themselves off of Facebook) to see that mass hysteria is a real thing and that it really happens (and that it isn't easy to explain or explain away).
"Marcel was likewise hysterical and somehow deluded himself into thinking flimsy rubber balloon, balsa wood, Scotch tape, and foil-paper candy wrapping material must have come from one of these high speed saucers and had extraordinary physical properties"
One must smile and ask if this is more likely or is it more likely that Marcel was under the spell of Space Foil and Space Sticks that JUST HAPPENED to look EXACTLY like the stuff Dr. Rudiak describes above.
- March 12, 2012 at 3:42 PM
Lance wrote: "I have suggested before that there is the possibility that what happened next was entirely a joke: that perhaps Haut's release was tongue in cheek, intended just for the local media."
Lance, why do you think Ramey ordered Marcel and the "object" flown to is office in Ft Worth?
- March 13, 2012 at 5:26 AM
- Lance said...
Hi Don,
Now realize that I am only surmising what happened. I'm not pretending to know exactly the motivations, etc.
What I could suggest is that, after the story took on its national scope, it was decided that an official response had to be made and Ramey decided he wanted to control that response because the story became inadvertently so big.
- March 13, 2012 at 6:51 AM
Lance wrote: "What I could suggest is that, after the story took on its national scope, it was decided that an official response had to be made and Ramey decided he wanted to control that response because the story became inadvertently so big."
Lance, that was strongly suggested by Ted Bloecher in the mid-60s. Even Friedman in 'Corona' wrote it was "quite possible".
The problem is the last sentence of the press release...the document that created the story that was "so very big" and of "national scope" has Marcel and the "object" on its way to "higher headquarters".
There is no way the press interest in the Roswell flying disc story caused the transportation to "higher headquarters", which we assume was Ramey (I don't think you want to suggest the headquarters of the press release was higher than Ramey).
- March 13, 2012 at 7:20 AM
- cda said...
"why do you think Ramey ordered Marcel and the "object" flown to his office in Ft Worth?"
Natural curiosity.
A phone call between Blanchard and Ramey, once the debris arrived at RAAF (even if the stuff had been virtually identified as mundane) would have caused Ramey to want it for examination at Ft Worth. Natural curiosity. And if necessary, it would need to go on from there to Dayton, if Dayton requested it.
No need for 'drooling idiots' and none existed. Instead everyone was a bit tetchy, suffering from war nerves and fear of Russia. Hence the desire to see this odd-looking junk.
- March 13, 2012 at 8:19 AM
CDA, how do you explain Ramey's opinion (Dick Pearce, SF Examiner)-- and that of apparently his staff -- that it was a weather balloon and kite, prior to Marcel's appearance in Ramey's office?
Also, at the same time as Pearce's article had it, a UP wire out of Carrizozo referred to what was obviously a balloon and kite.
Why were the officers of 8th Army air forces HQ, sight unseen and having only what Blanchard told Ramey, able to make that determination, while those who had seen it apparently couldn't recognize materials a child could tear and break?
The evidence from 1947 stands against the idea that Ramey was simply "naturally curious" about it.
- March 13, 2012 at 9:58 AM
- cda said...
Pearce says he was the "first to reach him [Ramey]", having gone directly to him instead of to Wilcox at Roswell. He also says he "surmised" that the stuff had gone to Ramey. It follows that either Ramey made a shrewd deduction what the object was as a result of a phone canversation with Blanchard, or the stuff was in Ramey's office and recognisable almost at once. (Newton having been called in to verify this a bit later).
Neither is there is any question of the stuff being recognised at Roswell. It had been recognised with reasonable certainty, but because of 'war nerves' and anxiety over a possible Russian connection, slight doubts existed. Hence the rush to get it to Ft Worth.
Note how Pearce writes with tongue slightly in cheek when he says "an actual flying disc had been found near the cradle of the atomic bomb in New Mexico".
How far was this find from the 'cradle', i.e. from Trinity Site?
- March 13, 2012 at 10:35 AM
Pearce wrote "As a result the Examiner was able to give a prosaic name to the Army's saucer long before the Army itself corrected the boner of its public relations officer at Roswell."
There are no grounds for your notion of Ramey's curiosity.
CDA wrote: "How far was this find from the 'cradle', i.e. from Trinity Site?"
I recall Carrizozo was the nearest population center. I know the army gave special consideration during Trinity to the Carrizozo area. Both it and Corona were in a danger zone ; Roswell was just outside that perimeter.
So, I'd say, right smack dab in it.
- March 13, 2012 at 11:01 AM
- David Rudiak said...
Don wrote:
Why were the officers of 8th Army air forces HQ, sight unseen and having only what Blanchard told Ramey, able to make that determination, while those who had seen it apparently couldn't recognize materials a child could tear and break?
The drooling idiot theory again. Marcel and Blanchard were total fools, even though the seemingly intact weather balloon pictured in Ramey's office would have given it away--the whole schmeer was some sort of weather device, even if Marcel--who also had a radar officer MO and who routinely collated weather intelligence for Operation Crossroads the year before which involved these verys same targets--had no idea what a radar target kite was.
The total flimsiness and commonness of the materials alone would have instantly tipped off Marcel and Blanchard that this had absolutely nothing to do with the strange metallic aircraft reported flying at high speeds--the flying disks. Doesn't matter what the hayseed rancher may have thought he had. It would be quite impossible to confuse with a flying disc except for--the drooling idiot theory.
cda is also back to talking out of both sides of his mouth. Marcel and Blanchard didn't know what it was, hence the bungling press release. But when I raised the question of how did Ramey, while also saying none of his men knew what it was, came up with a "hexagonal" description , which would only be possibly true for a totally intact and assembled radar target, not one torn up into pieces, cda's "answer" was more telephone conversations between Ramey and Roswell.
You see, the drooling idiots at Roswell finally got their act together and figured out it was just a weather balloon and radar target, thus so informed the general. Unfortunately, just the name "rawin" or "radar target" doesn't tell you what shape it was, and "hexagonal" is already a very oddball description of an INTACT one seen at a distance, when all they had was a torn up one. So even if the looneys at Roswell somehow figured out radar target once it flew the coop to Fort Worth, it still doesn't explain "hexagonal", which had to have been been scripted for Ramey by someone quite knowledgable about them, part of confusing the very non-disclike rawins with "flying discs" and "flying saucers".
Even after supposedly figuring it out, guys like Ramey and Marcel kept putting their foot in their mouth with quoted statements like the debris being scattered over a square mile (Marcel), or the kite when "reconstructed" would measure "25 feet across" (Ramey), or was it 20 feet, or, oops it was the balloon that was 20-25 feet across ?
Brazel's "flower tape" is missing from the FW photos, as are his "rubber strips"--just an intact balloon instead. The neoprene balloon isn't properly weathered for being in the sun for a month (should have been reduced to black flakes by then). The target likewise isn't weathered, still having pristine white paper backing.
Mogul's hundreds of yards of twine are never described by anyone, not even Brazel, who specifically denied finding ANY string.
The quantity of Ramey's debris isn't sufficient to add up to even Brazel's "five pounds", much less a Mogul balloon (10+ times that much), much less scatter over a "square mile" or even Brazel's 200 yards. All the debris depicted is indeed Ramey's singular weather balloon and radar target (less than 2 pounds), not a multi-balloon/target Mogul.
But rest assured it was a Mogul balloon and Marcel and Blanchard screwed up because they were drooling idiots.
- March 13, 2012 at 11:18 AM
- David Rudiak said...
cda wrote (part 1):
Was there any comment in the press or elsewhere AT THE TIME suggesting that Blanchard and Marcel had made the Air Force look like idiots? Or that the AF had made Blanchard and Marcel look like idiots?
CDA in his usual spin mode, not addressing the actual points. It doesn't matter what the press or public thought. What did the Pentagon brass think? You have a bomber base charged with dropping atomic bombs, which means you better have very competent and level-headed officers in charge. Instead the base commander puts out a press release they have an actual flying disk, presumably based on information supplied by the base head intelligence officer.
Then the official story, was oops, big mistake, it was nothing but incredibly flimsy and mundane weather balloon materials that would all fit into a paper bag.
How could the C/O and head intel officer of your atomic bomber base make such a huge mistake? And it wasn't internal but a very public mistake reported all over the country. In the real world, not DebunkerLand, if it really were some huge mistake, the brass was going to demand an explanation and want those responsible held accountable in some way. Never happened. Why not?
No there was not. At least I have never seen any.
Well, let's see. UP said it was Blanchard's press release. AP tried to pin the blame on base PIO Walter Haut, with some editorials mocking him as an eager-beaver PIO and others mocking the military screw-up in general. UP also wrote the Pentagon allegedly called up Roswell and "rebuked" "officers" there for putting out the press release.
In addition, this was a huge national and even international story, and press stories DO indicate disruption of normal military function for the day. Phone lines were said tied up into New Mexico (Roswell), Fort Worth, and the Pentagon. Gen. Vandenberg had to disrupt his normal schedule to take charge in the AAF press room at the Pentagon. Ramey said Washington had imposed a security lid on the whole affair (until he put out the weather balloon story).
So clearly the press was saying the "officers" at Roswell had screwed up, confusing a completely ordinary and commonplace weather balloon and creating a totally unnecessary kerfluffle that ended up disrupting military high command for the day. But, yes, they didn't call them "drooling idiots."
Such ideas only arose decades later when certain investigators began promoting the idea that Roswell was a crashed ET craft.
If you say so cda, but history says differently.
The early post-war 'war nerves' accounts for the official concern by Twining and others over a phenomenon that was still new and believed to be real.
But why in the world world would the military studies conclude the phenomenon was real? (Schulgen, Twining) Oh yes, just "war nerves". Back to the debunking "drooling idiot" theory that the pilots and military personnel reporting seeing these things plus the intel/engineering people conducting the studies were just "seeing things" because of war nerves. Nothing unusual at all was flying around.
- March 13, 2012 at 12:01 PM
- David Rudiak said...
cda wrote (part 2):
As time went by things cooled off and the concern lessened. In 1948 there was the "Estimate of the Situation" (by a small group of individuals at Blue Book) and there was a brief mild dose of hysteria,
Notice, again everything is just "hysteria." Project Sign engineers, scientists, and intelligence people were apparently incapable of coolly looking at the data and drawing logical conclusions from it. More drooling idiots at the helm.
cda also left out such things as the green fireballs, which everybody agreed were absolutely real (according to Ruppelt, the scientists and technicians at Los Alamos who had seen the things, even telling him they thought they were ET in origin), and also left out the intel estimate of Swedish military intelligence, who in 1948 told the USAF Europe in a top secret document that their analysts thought the ghost rockets and flying saucers were not only real, but ET because no country on earth was capable of making them. No doubt more "war nerves" and "hysteria" at work.
according to Keyhoe, in Washington in 1952. Hence the Robertson committee.
Which said, ho hum, nothing here to see, move along. But even with Robertson Panel debunkery, Twining, now AF C/S, in 1953 and 1954 put out AF Regulation 200-2, which defined UFOs as flying "objects" of unusual design and/or flight characteristics that remained unidentified even after investigation by their experts, and which were to be studied because of their "technical aspects" and potential threat to national security. Sounds like Twining was also still suffering from some of those WWII "war nerves" along with all the pilots seeing these things.
Later flaps did not generate the same official interest, and today such flaps would be, and are, officially ignored.
Because cda says so. Nothing really there up in the sky, thus more post WWII "war nerves". Belgium, Rendlesham, Chicago O'Hare, Stephensville, incursions into missile silos with shutdown of missiles...war nerves, war nerves, war nerves. Nothing happened.
But back to reality. It would be totally irresponsible of the Air Force of any nation to "ignore" unidentified intrusions into their country's airspace. Missile shutdowns in 1975—you bet they investigated! As Gen. Bolander's 1969 memo noted, UFO reports that could affect national security were already not part of the Blue Book system and were to be reported through a second system already in place. This would have included all CIRVIS reports (those sightings of anything involving national security), as described in JANAP 146, eventually superseded by Air Force Manual 55-11 in the 1960s, which included the reporting of "Unidentified Flying Objects" as distinctly different from unidentified aircraft, missiles, submarines, etc., i.e. UFO does NOT mean anything "unidentified", only those objects clearly different from anything conventional or known and of national security interest. Do you think they're talking about meteors, Venus, flocks of birds, radar ghosts, weather balloons?
But in those early 'golden days' of 47-48 the attitude was quite different, as you would expect. Also, although officials were scratching their heads, no real AF investigation had yet got going in the summer of '47.
CDA, thank you again for totally rewriting actual history.
- March 13, 2012 at 12:05 PM
David wrote: "But why in the world world would the military studies conclude the phenomenon was real? (Schulgen, Twining) Oh yes, just "war nerves"."
They still had the willies in December 1948 when USAF and Navy Intelligence published "Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.".
- March 13, 2012 at 12:18 PM
- cda said...
"So, I'd say, right smack dab in it."
You would, would you?
I got out a map and I estimate as follows:
Los Alamos to Foster ranch = 130 miles.
Trinity site to Foster ranch = 60 miles.
Both approximate. So Pearce was being, shall we say, a bit loose with his figures. But maybe it is near enough, considering the total size of NM.
- March 13, 2012 at 2:24 PM
- cda said...
The screw-up and the short-lived frenzy and kerfuffle was caused by the press release, not by any failing of those who handled the object. Obviously it was sent out prematurely and MAY have been partly to give the AF base some publicity. Haut sent it out without having ever seen the debris.
This point has been discussed before.
Also, nobody anywhere ever said the AF officers at Roswell were 'idiots', drooling or otherwise. That, Dr Rudiak, is a phrase invented by yourself. And yes, I maintain the AF men who handled the debris DID recognise it for what it was (with perhaps 80-90% certainty), before the silly press release went out.
And yes, there were 'war nerves' in '47 and maybe '48 as well.
As for Rendlesham, do you seriously think the UK MOD ever investigated this affair? They did not. Neither did the USAF. Goodness, Halt could not even get his dates right. Fat chance of any official investigation getting anywhere. What a shambles!
- March 13, 2012 at 2:55 PM
Me: "So, I'd say, right smack dab in it."
CDA: "You would, would you?"
Yep. Pearce wrote "near the cradle..." I think 60 miles east of ground zero of an atom bomb test is "near". Carrizozo was the nearest population center. The Foster Ranch (or the part of it of interest) is closer to Carrizozo than Corona. Our story rationally should have been called The Carrizozo Incident, or Crash At Carrizozo.
- March 13, 2012 at 3:47 PM
CDA wrote: "So Pearce was being, shall we say, a bit loose with his figures."
He wasn't calculating anything but a turn of phrase. Is it somehow relevant to the press release?
My understanding of 'Roswell' involves both Trinity and Carrizozo, so I am interested in why you have latched onto Pearce's phrase. Is there some connnection you see between it and the press release or other aspects of 'Roswell'?
- March 13, 2012 at 4:05 PM
- David Rudiak said...
cda wrote:
The screw-up and the short-lived frenzy and kerfuffle was caused by the press release, not by any failing of those who handled the object.
But weren't these the same people responsible for not only the press release but the contents as well? They hadn't found some nondescript something but a real "flying disc."
Obviously it was sent out prematurely
"Obviously"? Because you say so? As I discuss further below, the final release would necessarily be carefully reviewed first by Blanchard before the OK would be given to hand it out. It didn't go out on Haut's whim.
and MAY have been partly to give the AF base some publicity.
Blanchard orders Haut to put out a sensational press release guaranteed to give the base publicity? Is that SOP for a highly sensitive base? Their stated MISSION was to be the A-bomb wing of the Air Force. Do you really want to draw a lot of unnecessary attention to yourself?
Could Haut do this on his own? Not without breaking every regulation in the book and then getting his head handed to him.
Yes, if he wanted to publicize the base BBQ, he could put out a release on his own. BUT, as he explained personally to me, any release of ANY importance necessarily went back through Blanchard's office for review and approval before it could be made public.
Haut sent it out without having ever seen the debris.
So says his initial affidavit, retracted in his last affidavit, where he states he had indeed seen the debris, and it wasn't mundane. Also, detailed below, Haut still made it clear in his first affidavit that he was quite sure Blanchard and Marcel hadn't made any sort of mistake in the identification and it really was a space ship.
Again, the release said they had an actual flying disc, and this language HAD to be approved either personally by Blanchard or his adjutant before Haut could put it out in Blanchard's name.
This point has been discussed before. Also, nobody anywhere ever said the AF officers at Roswell were 'idiots', drooling or otherwise. That, Dr Rudiak, is a phrase invented by yourself.
Yes, invented by me as a handy satirical description of the silly, self-contractiory theories of people like yourself to try to "explain" away Roswell and UFOs in general. Military people in charge were simultaneously very competent but did incredibly stupid things saying they weren't competent at all.
And yes, I maintain the AF men who handled the debris DID recognise it for what it was (with perhaps 80-90% certainty), before the silly press release went out.
So they recognized it for what it was (by this you obviously mean a balloon, not a crashed space ship), but STILL put out the press release of having an actual flying disc in their possession, which would be absolutely guaranteed to create a sensation. (You should read the newspapers back then and the tremendous publicity being given to the subject.)
And all this was supposedly to give the base a little publicity they so lacked and craved--thus immediately back to drooling idiot theory again.
Let's see what Haut himself had to say in his first affidavit about cda's claim:
"I believe Col. Blanchard saw the material, because he sounded positive about what the material was. There is no chance that he would have mistaken it for a weather balloon. Neither is their any chance that Major Marcel would have been mistaken.
"In 1980, Jesse Marcel told me that the material photographed in Gen. Ramey's office was not the material he had recovered.
"I am convinced that the material recovered was some type of craft from outer space."
Really, the only way you can't simultaneously have drooling idiots putting out a false press release is if the release was stating the truth. They really did recover a "flying disk", and they DIDN'T mean some silly weather balloon.
- March 13, 2012 at 4:12 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Don wrote:
CDA wrote: "So Pearce was being, shall we say, a bit loose with his figures."
He wasn't calculating anything but a turn of phrase. Is it somehow relevant to the press release?
My understanding of 'Roswell' involves both Trinity and Carrizozo, so I am interested in why you have latched onto Pearce's phrase. Is there some connnection you see between it and the press release or other aspects of 'Roswell'?
It's another of CDA's pointless points that has nothing to do with anything.
I dug into SF Examiner science editor Dick Pearce's background. The Examiner Roswell article by Pearce (http://www.roswellproof.com/SFExaminer_July9.html) is an important one because Pearce did independent reporting, personally calling up Ramey and claiming to be the first to get through to him. He said he surmised "higher headquarters" in the press release meant Ramey and 8th AAF HQ in Fort Worth and placed a call to him directly within an hour rather than trying to call through the jammed phone lines to Roswell.
Pearce said Ramey told him he thought it was a weather balloon, just like the ones they sent up at Oakland airport everyday (i.e., with a radar target). He further claimed the Examiner was the first to break the true identity of the Roswell "flying disc". Like AP, he blaimed the "boner" on Walter Haut.
How did Pearce know about Ramey and why was it so easy for him to get through Ramey? When I examined the morgue files of the Examiner at SF public library, I discovered Pearce had met and knew Ramey, along with various atomic scientists at U.C. Berkeley, such as Ernest O. Lawrence. There was a photo of them together during Operation Crossroads in the summer of 1946. (S.F. was the jumping off point for the support flights to Hawaii and then to the Marshall Islands.)
Pearce also wrote an article in June 1947, a month before Roswell, about the new B-36 bombers Ramey was getting for the 8th AAF in Fort Worth. Yes, Pearce knew about Ramey and his command.
I contacted Pearce's widow, Carol, who was very familiar with that photo. She said they were very proud of it and an enlargement sat on their mantle. It was taken at the S.F. Press Club.
Her husband knew all the atomic scientists at U.C. Berkeley, who fed him a lot of inside information. In fact, Pearce was the first reporter to break the story of the race to build the A-bomb by the major powers, clear back in 1941.
Carol Pearce sent me a copy of that photo of Pearce with Ramey and Lawrence and it is now up on my website:
So Pearce knew whom to call, and Ramey knew Pearce, a skeptical science reporter to recite the weather balloon story to.
Unfortunately Pearce died in the 1990s, because it would have been very interesting to get his side of it all. Carol Pearce didn't really know anything about his Roswell article.
- March 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM
- Lance said...
First off a big thanks to Dr. Rudiak for collecting all of the press reports on Roswell. While we certainly disagree on the nature of Roswell, your site is valuable resource.
Dr Rudiak mentions above that we can not see the flowered tape in any of the photos and as far as I know this is true.
But I wonder if your are saying, Dr. Rudiak, that the flowered tape never existed and is part of the cover story?
It is curious that Brazel specifically refers to the tape:
"Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction."
I know that the standard Roswell claim is that there were wood-like beams with "hieroglyphics" on them.
Isn't it a pretty hard strike against this story that Brazel would make such a specific reference to tape.
Why refer to flowered tape tape? Where did that come from?
- March 13, 2012 at 10:11 PM
- cda said...
"It's another of CDA's pointless points that has nothing to do with anything."
Read that sentence again. A 'pointless point' and 'nothing to do with anything'!
However, I agree that this is not an English class.
Most of your reply about Dick Pearce has nothing to do with the case at all. But thank God his wife was not one of those who said things like "he took this big secret to his grave".
Haut wrote:
"I am convinced that the material recovered was some type of craft from outer space."
What would you expect Haut to say in his 1993 affidavit, having by then been thoroughly indoctrinated with an ET crash? (Does this affidavit mean anything now, in view of his totally revised one, with far more revelations, years later?)
Marcel took the great debris home, having realised as soon as he arrived at the debris field that it was 'not of this earth'. See the Randle/Schmitt books for this story. It was not yet classified, so we are told. Yet we also hear that the crash had taken place 3 or 4 days earlier, elsewhere, and an armed guard was already in place! But the stuff Marcel took home to show his wife and son was still unclassified (!). Absolutely marvellous. I was wrong - perhaps Marcel really was a 'drooling idiot' after all.
These are just some contradictory aspects of the tale as commonly told.
You can accept Haut's first affidavit and reject the second or vice-versa, or you can accept both or reject both (as I would). I would accept an affidavit written in July '47, not one reconstructed from memory, and after intense interviews by ETH proponents, 46 years later, and another one a decade after that.
Haut again:
"I believe Col. Blanchard saw the material, because he sounded positive about what the material was".
And what was this material? Neither Blanchard, Marcel nor anyone else had EVER seen an ET craft, so how was Blanchard (and Marcel too) so positive? Answer: He was not, he was merely being negative and saying what the debris wasn't, not what it was. There is no statement of any kind directly from Blanchard about the object's identity. None.
Simply because RAAF was a top security base does not debar them from indulging in a bit of publicity seeking. I am not saying this was a partial reason for the press release, but certainly it was premature and out of order.
Don is the one most interested in this, I believe. Was it partly motivated by either a desire for publicity or because of the $3000 prize offer?
Notice how we have strayed, again, from the original topic.
- March 14, 2012 at 2:58 AM
- Lance said...
I am also interested in this idea and think that it ties in with my notion that the press release might have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek, intended for local press consumption without the base appreciating the idea of how a story can go "viral".
Reading through the press coverage of the time is infinitely more efficacious than listening to someone's post ad hoc and dogmatic statements of exactly what someone WOULD have done.
While the proponents work mightily to avoid the fact, the nature of the debris is an albatross that really destroys the case.
The Roswell faithful frequently ridicule the idea that Marcel would have been fooled by the Mogul debris. And yet, in the some of the fascinating contemporaneous news stories, it is clear that folks were looking at the pieces of foil and sticks and still not quite sure that the stuff didn't represent some kind of craft, a box kite or something else.
These people weren't fools.
After all, one of the very best fake UFOs is created using just balsa sticks and a laundry bag (I saw one as a kid--it was startling. If I hadn't run across the folks who launched it, I might not be a skeptic). It is possible that these folks, Marcel included, were smart enough to think that the not wholly familiar junk that he found could have been the contraption that everyone was talking about.
That Roswell believers can take the very clear reports and interviews of 1947 that describe things like flowered tape and balsa wood sticks and tin foil (all of these descriptions well prior to any research from the conspiracy-shrouded buffs) and pathetically grasp onto the Super Space Sticks and Outer Space Foil idea says a lot about the folks doing the research (and the tricksters that made up the whole of the now discarded first hand witnesses) but takes us further and further away from 1947.
- March 14, 2012 at 8:33 AM
- Lance said...
Just to be a bit more clear about my point above (hopefully):
In contrast to what the Roswell defenders say would have happened if trained folks got a gander at Mogul (or weather balloon) debris, there is compelling evidence that folks considered that the stuff could have represented some (however unlikely) low tech possible answer for the saucer mystery.
They didn't just instantly reject the stuff as we are told Marcel WOULD have done. It seems we are always told by the believers what people would have done.
- March 14, 2012 at 8:44 AM
Kevin, is there a reason why my reply this morning was deleted?
- March 14, 2012 at 9:06 AM
- jeff thompson said...
All this nonsense is what you get when you try to "prove" what happened during a 55 year old incident. There is no proof, only supposition and opinions.
- March 14, 2012 at 9:07 AM
- KRandle said...
Don -
I have deleted nothing from this posting so I have no idea why it would have been deleted. I didn't do it.
All -
Did any of you read the actual post? It had nothing to do with the arguments that now rage. I have avoided them because they do not advance our knowledge. They are opinion often back up with speculation...
But really, Haut took the press release around to the four media outlets to promote the base (for what purpose?) or as some kind of tongue in cheek joke... really?
Debaters - rage on.
- March 14, 2012 at 9:46 AM
- cda said...
It's 65 years old now - old enough to qualify for its pension.
Agreed. Maybe it was partly tongue-in-cheek. That really would make quite a different slant on it all.
You need to give careful thought to Marcel taking the material home. What was this material Kevin? Was it spaceship material (in which case by your own insistence, it would have been highly classified) or was it mundane stuff of no real interest to anyone?
Remember the army had (by your own timeline) cordoned off and had armed guards posted for the previous 3 days over another site nearby, the real crash site.
Perhaps Kevin is saying that although the other site was the crash site, the debris field only contained insignificant bits and pieces, and it was thus quite safe to take them home and spread them out on the floor!
Unfortunately Marcel jr tells us otherwise, doesn't he? I-beams and such, i.e. important stuff.
So, which is it Kevin? Was the debris Marcel took home the real space stuff, or was it bits & pieces of something else, a mundane object?
- March 14, 2012 at 10:08 AM
- Lance said...
I tried to tie my comments into your post, suggesting that the fervor for saucers at the time plays a role in the skeptical scenario.
You mention 4 media outlets....you should also mention that these were just the small town local radio and newspaper offices and he probably did it by phone...
Kevin, it is unfortunate that you seem unable to consider ANY new idea that runs counter to your long held notions about this case. That you dismiss the above discussion as just opinion really is the pot calling the kettle black.
Now that you have hooked in with several dream team members who fervently believe Haut's ridiculous and transparent new story about seeing bodies, will we also see a rehabilitation of Kaufmann? After all Haut said Kaufmann's word was gold.
Is there any chance that the dream team might take that idiotic statement and reevaluate the value of Haut's word?
I know where I would put my money!
- March 14, 2012 at 10:33 AM
Thanks, Kevin. I don't know what happened. I saw it appear and when I went to another machine, it was not there.
My comments were in response to CDA, and the skeptics generally re Roswell. They can only discuss Roswell in terms of debating ET with ET advocates in mind.
I thought we all had discussed the "prize" to the point that no one here would bring it up again as a "possibility". I thought we'd driven a stake through its heart. But no...
My best guess about the press release is that is was intended to disinform. Who it wanted to disinform is another subject.
Regarding your original post, I would not elide Smith's description. Yes, an irregular topside to the object, but also the word "rough", because topside 'roughness' is mentioned in several other concurrent sightings.
Regarding the Muroc standby flight, I don't think it was the only such. Do you know if there was one at March Field?
- March 14, 2012 at 11:08 AM
Lance wrote: "You mention 4 media outlets....you should also mention that these were just the small town local radio and newspaper offices and he probably did it by phone..."
Both Pflock and Printy are wrong on the "by phone" part. I disagree with Kevin, though, on whether Haut delivered a copy to the RDR. There is no supporting evidence for that, as there is for the other three.
The UP story is identical to the AP's Haughts Statement in the sequence of events, in the words and phrases used and the order they appear. The timeframe between their first appearances does not allow for the UP to have copied the AP.
The Daily Record's story doesn't match up with the AP and UP versions.
"Kevin, it is unfortunate that you seem unable to consider ANY new idea that runs counter to your long held notions about this case. That you dismiss the above discussion as just opinion really is the pot calling the kettle black."
What are the new ideas? Your idea that Ramey Ft Worth event was caused by the press interest in the press release story?
CDA's idea that Haut wanted a shot at the "prize"?
Why should anyone consider those new ideas when they are proven false?
The reason you and CDA want the press release to be a "joke", "hoax", "mistake" isn't because you have any supporting evidence, but because, if it is not something of those sorts, then the "object" was not ordinary.
You've got nothing for a reason except that.
- March 14, 2012 at 11:31 AM
- Lance said...
"My comments were in response to CDA, and the skeptics generally re Roswell. They can only discuss Roswell in terms of debating ET with ET advocates in mind."
Don, this statement means nothing. We mostly argue this with folks here who ARE ET crash believers (like Kevin) and yet this the skeptics fault? Skeptical opinion of Roswell asserts that those who claim something esoteric about Roswell haven't met the burden of proof (hell, they haven't even come close). This includes the few non ET theories as well.
Can you clarify you objections to the joke/mistake theory particularly the stuff about the AP/UPI release?
- March 14, 2012 at 12:28 PM
- KRandle said...
I am loathe to be drawn into these ridiculous arguments where people just make things up and then are annoyed that they are rejected.
No, Walter Haut (or Butch Blanchard or anyone else) did not make up the press release as a joke. To do so would have ended a career... if for no other reason than the mission of the 509th.
Walter said he took it to the four media outlets in Roswell. He told me specifically that he had done so. He alternated which got it first so that one couldn't complain about favortism.
Oh, right, we can't believe anything he said because these were memories of decades earlier and we reject all of that out of hand... unless, of course it is someone like Charles Moore who remembered Mogul Flight #4 heading off toward Arabela... then the memories are accurate.
And I will now suspend the investigation into Roswell because Lance and CDA already know the outcome. No reason to continue now that they know what will happen.
I have avoided answering some questions because we are still gathering facts... not speculations built on desire, but facts that might supply some answers.
This posting was about some of the interesting things that appeared in the newspapers that I had been reviewing. The CAP search and the second sighting by an airline crew of a specific United flight on a regular schedule caught my eye. I thought it was interesting. It wasn't an attempt to prove anything about UFOs or Roswell.
And Lance, you really need to stuff your snarky little comments in sack. They are tiresome.
- March 14, 2012 at 1:00 PM
- cda said...
You revived the 1947 wave and put Roswell in the title. Everyone loves 1947 because of the 'golden days' aspect, Arnold, Maury Island, other sightings galore if you look for them, Twining's famous memo, official concern, early AF and FBI pronouncements, and so on.
It was also a 'war nerves' period beyond doubt. Then within months came Mantell, Aztec (only publicised two years later), Chiles-Whitted and the fantastic and unique "Estimate of the Situation". Boy what a golden period.
Looking back, it was a tremendous UFO period, wasn't it?
Then came, very belatedly, Roswell, to which 65 years on a dedicated group of people are still insisting was caused by an event that was, and is, not known to science, or to scientists anywhere on earth. And if this decicated team 'proves' for the umpteenth time that the event was ET it is absolutely certain that science, and officialdom, will ignore it, again.
Never mind, dream on!
By the way, what about that stuff Marcel jr saw at home?
- March 14, 2012 at 2:04 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Brazel's "flower tape" description in the Roswell Daily Record story--where did it come from?
First a basic time line (Roswell time):
~2:30: AP "flying disc" press release hits the wire
~3:30: Ramey already changing story to weather balloon/radar target (e.g. Dick Pearce S.F. Examiner story, Los Angeles Herald Examiner story & headline July 8 evening edition)
~4:30: Ramey taking pictures with weather balloon debris in his office
~5:30: First AP stories announcing now official weather balloon explanation.
~7:30: Brazel led to RDR and interviewed
Point 1: Brazel wasn't giving his "flower tape" and weather balloon description until approximately 4 hours after the story was being changed to weather balloon from original flying disc.
Point 2: This gave the military plenty of time to "coach" Brazel on what they wanted him to say.
(Despite the naysayers, there is plenty of testimony from those at the interview that Brazel was led to it and taken away by military escort. Others, such as base provost marshal Easley, said he was held at the base.)
All it would take for Brazel to give a radar target description would be to hand him a target--any target--and tell him to describe it when he went for his interview.
Mogul guys like Moore and Trakowski may very well be telling the truth that the targets THEY used had the tape with patterns. If Roswell base didn't have a rawin target in stock, Alamogordo or the White Sands weather station, which also used them, were less than an hour away by air. So procurement of a target was easy and then was plenty of time to do it (timeline).
All Brazel's flower tape description tells us is what Brazel said at the interview, not necessarily what he actually found (although skeptics assume the latter as an absolute). However, if you take the "flower tape" at face value, then you must take his other statements at face value as well, such as his final disavowal saying he knew what weather balloons looked like and this wasn't anything like that. Or his denial of finding any string or wire that supposedly held the thing up.
If this is what he actually found, then why no suspension string? Brazel also mentioned the rawin eyelets where they tied the string. Even an ordinary weather balloon rawin target would have had some string still tied to it at the eyelets. And a Mogul should have had hundreds of yards of twine and string lying around.
So taking Brazel's description literally, he is describing any rawin target, not one that would be found in the field, but one that came fresh out of a box and never had any string tied to it.
The rawin in Fort Worth likewise has no string, and nobody has ever been able to find any evidence of tape with patterns on it. This includes the Air Force back in 1994 when they sent the photos off to some unnamed photoanalysis lab for scrutiny--no "flower tape."
There are other indications that the rawin in Fort Worth also came out of a box, not the field, such as the pristine clean white paper backing on the foil. The balloon in the photo is also in too good of condition for one that supposedly lay out in the N.M. sun for a month.
In case anyone wants to argue they didn't have any rawins at Fort Worth, or couldn't get one in a hurry, here are photos showing a rawin demonstration there 2 days later:
- March 14, 2012 at 3:54 PM
- David Rudiak said...
To get back to Kevin's original blog:
1. June/July had numerous reported flying discs, perhaps numbering in the thousands. (Bloechner's review of only about 2% of the nation's newspapers alone came up with 800 reports.)
2. Roswell happened in the midst of this huge UFO wave.
3. The military brass was already commenting, even before Roswell. Generals Twining and Vandenberg said they were under investigation. (Vandenberg said this back on July 3.) Twining added that evidently people were seeing something. General Ramey and his intelligence chief Col. Kalberer were already debunking the idea that they might be space ships from Mars clear back on June 29, only 5 days after Arnold's sighting. Major sightings had already occurred in the White Sands area and were widely reported.
4. The morning of July 8, just before the infamous Roswell flying disc press release went out, the Pentagon put out its own press release, denying that the flying discs were "space ships", also denying they were Russian or some secret U.S. project.
5. A number of these reports, particularly from very experienced military and civilian pilots, were hard to dismiss, and very much impressed some generals. General Schulgen started his intelligence review July 9 and concluded three weeks later after reviewing the best cases that the flying saucers were quite real. Twining and his Air Materiel Staff at Wright Field (intelligence and engineering), concluded the same thing. They weren't fictitious or imaginary but real metallic aircraft showing extreme speeds and maneuvers, and exhibiting intelligent control (formation flying, evasion upon pursuit).
5. Twining's famous memo led to the formation of Project Sign, which concluded in the summer of 1948 they were ET. According to Ruppelt, the infamous Estimate was ordered destroyed by Gen. Vandenberg.
6. Some other studies also concluded ET (or at least very real flying objects), such as Swedish military intelligence, which so informed the USAF Europe in December 1948 in a Top Secret memo.
7. Immediately following Gen. Samford's and Gen. Ramey's (same Ramey) debunking of flying saucers over Washington D.C. in 1952, the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence did it's own review and concluded real unknown craft were flying in our atmosphere and the situation was urgent.
7. The 1953 CIA Robertson Panel was debunked the saucers and urged a campaign of public ridicule and surveillance of UFO groups. But the Air Force continued to take them seriously, such as Gen. Twining issuing AFR 200-2 defining UFOs as real unidentified objects with anomalous characteristics that were to be studied for their "technical aspects" and national security implications.
8. Even following the shutdown of Project Blue Book in 1970, the Air Force continued to take UFO reports from their own people under the CIRVIS system of reporting incidents of national security importance. UFOs continued to be defined as distinct from ordinary unidentified aircraft, missiles, or anything else conventional.
But according to CDA, nobody took UFOs seriously after about 1948. But real history says otherwise.
- March 14, 2012 at 4:22 PM
- Don said...
Kevin wrote: "I am loathe to be drawn into these ridiculous arguments where people just make things up and then are annoyed that they are rejected."
The first Roswell skeptic was Ted Bloecher. In his polemic against the press for what he saw as its frivolous coverage of UFOs that had turned scientists, academics, and the military against taking ufos seriously, he lost track of just what was in the press release, especially the last sentence. He wanted Ramey's response to be an effect of the press frenzy he imagined was caused by the press release. He forgot or didn't notice that the decision to fly Marcel and the object to higher headquarters was in the press release. Lance, above, made the same error. I think current day skeptics do not consider the importance of it.
It strongly implies the object was not ordinary. That's why the skeptics' desire for a joke or hoax, anything but serious business.
So we get weak and strained arguments that it's ok for it to have been just a little "bit unusual" and for General Ramey to have had a bout of "natural curiosity" about it...just enough to ooch it along to Ft Worth.
"No, Walter Haut (or Butch Blanchard or anyone else) did not make up the press release as a joke. To do so would have ended a career... if for no other reason than the mission of the 509th."
If Haut played a joke, he was joking with General Ramey's orders, something I find extremely unlikely. But it doesn't matter if it was a joke because of that last sentence: joke or serious, we know Marcel and what he carried were brought to Ft Worth and to Ramey.
Kevin, Google screwed up its authorization of my missing posts. Not your site's fault at all. I replied in email to Lance regarding his question to me about the UP and AP stories.
- March 14, 2012 at 10:15 PM
- cda said...
"But according to CDA, nobody took UFOs seriously after about 1948. But real history says otherwise."
Actually I said interest lessened considerably after 1948 (but revived again in 1952). UFOs were still taken seriously, officially, until Blue Book closed down in Dec 1969.
But the interest of the golden days was long gone. Robertson stifled interest in 1953 and Condon put the final damper on it in 1969.
No I am not rewriting history. The dates above are correct. I suppose you could say that interest was again revived in 1994 with Senator Schiff and Roswell, but it was short lived and killed off again in 1994 and yet again in 1997.
Concerning that press release, I'd like to ask Don, or anyone else:
Why was this press release issued at all? Why was it ever written?
Dammit, the stuff was by then 3 weeks old and only a very few people had seen it. It would have been far better for the AF to keep silent. Over-excitement maybe?
If by the time Haut 'released' it, the ET origins of the debris were known (or strongly suspected), why issue ANY release? As it was all allegedly top secret, it makes no sense to me. It is not customary to titillate the public with something that attracts world-wide attention when you have the top secret evidence in your very hands.
So what is the answer?
- March 15, 2012 at 3:12 AM
- Don said...
CDA wrote: "Concerning that press release, I'd like to ask Don, or anyone else:
Why was this press release issued at all?"
It is not only the skeptics who are affected by the press release (I'll call it the Bloecher Effect). Earlier I mentioned Friedman offering something similar as "quite possible" in Crash At Corona. If you turn to page 28 (in my copy) of The Roswell Incident, right after the famous "nothing made on this earth", one can read the most explicit example of The Bloecher Effect. It can be found in The Roswell Report as well (I read the non-Mogul parts of the report).
It seems the press release and the story can introduce a cognitive dissonance, as if it were a "killing joke".
I can't help thinking "disinformation" and "counter intelligence" are involved in it. If I consider the mission of the CIC and the FBI in places like Roswell and the RAAF, and their involvement generally in ufo investigations during the Wave, the notion that the press release was intended as disinforming counter intelligence begins to seem worth considering.
I don't think it changes the skeptic/advocate dispute. It just shifts the scenery.
- March 15, 2012 at 6:59 AM
- Lance said...
Thanks for the responses above (and thanks, Don, for the email).
If the base press release (and it seems fairly clear that we don't know the precise wording of the release) was serious business about a real crashed saucer, then why did the base decide, for this earth shattering story, to just go to the local yokel radio and newspaper offices?
Was it because Blanchard was acting alone to get some glory for himself? Kevin assures us that this can't be the case--he wouldn't be that reckless. So we are to believe, I suppose, that the Army authorized the release and decided the way to get the story to the press was for Walter Haut to get on the telephone and call the small town local radio and newspaper offices? Who does this make sense to?
Kevin speaks as though the idea that Haut might have generated the story himself is so stupid that it is beneath contempt.
And yet, Roswell darling, Saint Marcel himself, heard that this might have been what happened and didn't think it was outside the realm of possibility.
"an eager beaver PIO who took it upon himself to call the AP on this thing"
Unfortunately, Kevin wasn't around to slap some sense into Marcel. After all, the Roswell High Priests tell us what people would or would not do. And they do so with all the dogmatic certainty that makes every religion such a productive science.
- March 15, 2012 at 7:09 AM
- Don said...
Lance wrote: "If the base press release (and it seems fairly clear that we don't know the precise wording of the release)..."
"Haught's Statement" in the AP is probably the best we have, absent an original.
"...was serious business about a real crashed saucer..."
I don't know if the object was a real crashed saucer. I assume it was at least something that none of the principals in the story could identify, including Blanchard, but appeared significant: they believed it to have come from the sky, for example.
Ramey offers that it (the 25 ft diameter object he claimed to have) couldn't hold a pilot and there was no power source, and that no one saw it in the sky. The last two come up in the Brazel interview as well.
What do you make of these disclaimers? Who do you think Ramey had in mind when he made them? Who was his intended audience?
"...then why did the base decide, for this earth shattering story, to just go to the local yokel radio and newspaper offices?"
Because more than "local yokels" were interested in activity at the RAAF, as well as along the north/south corridor where we find Carrizozo and Corona.
"an eager beaver PIO who took it upon himself to call the AP on this thing"
Marcel was repeating what he had read. If you read his statements in The Roswell Incident, he is confident about what he was directily involved in -- such as the Foster Ranch and Ft Worth, but other stuff, such as Haut, and what was going on at the RAAF and in Roswell -- while he was in Ft Worth, for example, he is much less confident. It was what he got from the press and hearsay.
- March 15, 2012 at 7:52 AM
- Lance said...
The point about Haut is that here we have Marcel, a military guy, speaking about this idea of Haut acting alone and not considering it implausible.
Kevin makes it sound like it is out of the realm of all possibility.
Indeed, much of the Roswell mythology is based upon people stating as fact exactly how people would have reacted and performed from their perspective a half century after the event.
- March 15, 2012 at 8:01 AM
- Don said...
Lance wrote: "The point about Haut is that here we have Marcel, a military guy, speaking about this idea of Haut acting alone and not considering it implausible."
Marcel is actually quoting an AP story, or quoting someone else who told it to him. Marcel had no need to know anything at all about the press release. Marcel's preparation for the flight to Ft Worth occurs at the same time as the press release is being typed up. He only knew what he'd read about it. When he reported to Blanchard, Marcel was no longer a protagonist, and neither was Blanchard once he reported to Ramey.
Marcel says Haut called the AP. He didn't. Marcel said "I *heard* he wasn't authorized to do this, and I believe he was severely reprimanded for it." He also says "We had calls from everywhere...". When did Marcel man the phonelines at the RAAF? It is something he heard about or read.
If you think there is something in it to dispute with something Kevin wrote. I don't know what it is. Maybe he'll reply.
- March 15, 2012 at 8:29 AM
- Lance said...
You will find no argument with me about Marcel's reliability. But again, I think you miss the point.
If we are to rely upon the Roswell faithful, Marcel was a big hero and the military man's military man.
My point doesn't rely upon Marcel having direct knowledge of Haut's action.
Kevin suggested that the idea that Haut created the press release himself is too silly consider and the skeptics are stupid to suggest it.
But here, obviously Marcel has considered the idea and DOESN"T consider it to be as far fetched as Kevin dictates (from his position of knowing exactly what people would or would not do).
And in my opinion Marcel is a lot closer to 1947 Haut than Kevin is.
- March 15, 2012 at 9:08 AM
- cda said...
Have you not struck at the very heart of the affair?
We simply do not, and never will, know what anyone thought or said at the time (unless it is printed in the press). All we know is what they recall, 30-40 years later, they said or thought. If Marcel tells someone in 1980 that he did this or that in 1947 he may be recalling correctly, or he may not. We cannot say. Supporting statements from others are only helpful if they are NOT the result of prompting or intensive questioning by biased investigators.
That is the heart of the whole problem.
That is why, for example, all this new stuff dug up by Anthony Bragalia about the involvement of the two children at the site is useless. It is contrary to what the contemporary press tells us, and is based on decades old fading memories. Yet he takes it as gospel. Perhaps Kevin does as well.
Haut's release is, on the face of it, pointless and superfluous. His affidavit in 1993 is largely useless because of the time lapse and the constant questioning and interviews by biased investigators. His second one a decade later is so laughable that I'll say no more.
- March 15, 2012 at 9:11 AM
- Lance said...
As I looked through the press reports and interviews again, I am fascinated by how the believers pick and choose what they embrace.
Marcel says that was never debriefed about the secrecy of the Space foil and Rocket Sticks that he found.
He says he just knew not to mention it.
Is that that really an accepted part of the myth? It's supposedly the tightest, most perfect, largest, and most important coverup of all time and yet it is run by assuming that the witnesses "just know what to do".
- March 15, 2012 at 9:29 AM
- cda said...
But they were given death threats and told they might end up buried in the desert, fed to the dogs and, who knows, maybe burnt at the stake or even tortured on the rack if they so much as said a word. Even the kids!
- March 15, 2012 at 9:46 AM
- Lance said...
Not Marcel, apparently...they went with the soft touch approach with him.
- March 15, 2012 at 9:49 AM
- KRandle said...
Lance -
Since you worry so much about our picking and choosing comments, I remind you that you wrote:
"It is curious that Brazel specifically refers to the tape:
"Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction."
Please tell me where, specifically, this quote was attributed to Brazel. There is nothing in the original article to show that this description came from Brazel...
And you always forget that Brazel is quoted as saying, "I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation ballon..."
And the newspaper noted, "Brazel said that he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these."
Except, of course, had it been Mogul balloons that is exactly what it would have resembled.
- March 15, 2012 at 9:51 AM
- Lance said...
Hi Kevin,
What I think the skeptics are surmising here (and hopefully Christopher will correct me if I am wrong) is that something about the debris made it look like a plausible candidate for something more than just a weather balloon. Maybe it was the way the foil structure was shaped or the amount of the stuff or something else. We don't know for sure (nor do you). We also, I think suggest, that the mania for flying disks had a role in the misidentification.
So the other statements by Brazel still fit this scenario. It didn't look like a weather balloon....it wasn't a weather balloon, it was Project Mogul stuff that looked different.
That is the skeptic scenario, I think.
But let me say that the statements really DON'T fit in any way with the scenario layed out by Dr. Rudiak above.
He suggests that Brazel was carefully coached as to what to say and that he even was briefed on flowered tape cover story (a detail so arcane that it beggars belief that it would have been devised and fed to Brazel at this early date). So under Dr. Rudiak's scenario, Brazel CAREFULLY and PERFECTLY followed the direction of his brutal captors.
But then he drew doubt upon their whole cover story by disavowing the official weather balloon story?
- March 15, 2012 at 10:17 AM
- cda said...
"And you always forget that Brazel is quoted as saying, 'I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation ballon...' "
This shows that, contrary to what Dr Rudiak tells us, Brazel was NOT coached what to say by AF officers. Brazel would hardly have said the exact opposite of what the AF wanted to put over.
But in fact there is an 'out' here. The reporter was maybe slightly careless and mistook Brazel's exact words. I contend that even if Brazel had seen two previous balloons he had not seen one with a radar reflector. It was THIS that he was referring to in his statement to Kellahin (i.e. the thing he and Marcel tried to make a kite out of).
- March 15, 2012 at 10:21 AM
- Lance said...
The stuff about the kite seems also to support the spirit of the skeptical scenario mentioned above.
It may show Marcel's desire to imagine how the contraption could have flown....and it tends to support the idea that he DIDN'T know fully what he was looking at.
Marcel might have been thinking that the flying disks were some earthly prosaic contraption.
I'm sure we will be told next whether to accept or not accept Brazel's kite statement by those who decide these things.
- March 15, 2012 at 10:34 AM
- Lance said...
I am posting this for Don, who is having problems getting his posts to go through here:
Lance, your dispute is with Kevin and other Roswell ET advocates.
I don't think Haut would have publicized Ramey's order unless he was authorized to. It would certainly be remarkable if he did. I can even live with him having done so. Haut is important to the advocates because he was the longest lived, and was accessible, and lived in Roswell. But he is barely an issue for me since he was merely a 'delivery boy' in 1947, not a protagonist.
Marcel doesn't say anything at all about his opinion of Haut or the press release in what you quote or that I recall. He clearly means 'This is what I heard about it'. Marcel chose not to opine on the matter.
CDA wrote: "We simply do not, and never will, know what anyone thought or said at the time (unless it is printed in the press)."
Not even in the press often as not. We can however, determine whether the comments refer to the summer of 1947 or some other time. We can know if it was possible for some activity or behavior to have occured or not at a certain time and place.
Here are two versions of why Brazel went to Roswell. The Daily Record said he came to town to sell some wool. Bill Brazel said that was not the case because wool buyers drove down from Utah to the ranch.
A bit of research determines that wool auctions occured in Roswell, but I haven't access to the Daily Record so I haven't found out if one was held in early July 1947 (although some auctions there were held in July in other years) -- incidently, Roswell wool commanded a premium, and I've found clothing ads in the newspapers with copy that their clothes were made from "Roswell wool".
So, if there were an auction that summer, maybe the RDR is right, and Bill wrong. If so, what was he referring to? Possibly during the war, buyers got the contracts to supply the army and went directly to the producers for it. Maybe they stopped doing that after the war. Maybe not.
Point is, we can find out whether Bill's memory was accurate or not on that matter with a little research. In Bill's favor, the truck he says his father intended to buy was in fact a model first put on the market in 1947. That he returned without it is believable because of the coal strike which produced a steel shutdown which meant a shortage of cars on the market.
So, we may not be able to know what exactly anyone thought or said at the time, but we can determine in many instances what was likely, what was not, and what was impossible.
I'll say this for Tony Bragalia. He has made efforts to humanize the story, put faces on the "witnesses". In the faux courtroom of witnesses, testimony, affidavits, that element is often forgotten.
- March 15, 2012 at 10:59 AM
- David Rudiak said...
Since you worry so much about our picking and choosing comments, I remind you that you wrote:
"It is curious that Brazel specifically refers to the tape:
"Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction."
Please tell me where, specifically, this quote was attributed to Brazel. There is nothing in the original article to show that this description came from Brazel...
I would say the statement was a paraphrase. The implication was that it certainly came from Brazel, since the interview was with Brazel.
However, the AP's Kellahin had no such quote in his article on Brazel.
And there is no flower tape anywhere to be seen in the Fort Worth photos. The quantity and state of the debris there also doesn't agree with the descriptions attributed to Brazel. Where are Brazel's "rubber strips", e.g., and why hasn't Ramey's largely intact neoprene balloon disintegrated into black ash-like shards, as it should have after one month's exposure?
And you always forget that Brazel is quoted as saying, "I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation ballon..."
They also forget that Brazel denied finding any string:
"No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used."
A Mogul would have left hundreds of yards out in the field, but not one participant ever mentions anything remotely like that. There should have been some remnant of string, even for Ramey's singular radar target/balloon. But Brazel specifically notes its total absence, even though mentioning the eyelets where at least some fragment would still be tied on.
Same with Ramey's radar target--no string anywhere to be found.
These are descriptions of fresh targets out of a box that have never been tied to a balloon and flown. Along with all the testimony of Brazel being in military custody at the time, i.e., a coerced witness, these are some of the reasons I think Brazel was simply shown a radar target and asked to describe it at his interview.
A final question for the skeptics. What was Brazel doing back in Roswell anyway for a newspaper interview? He rarely made the trip to Roswell, and had just been left back at his ranch by Marcel and Cavitt the previous night. Yet here is back in town supposedly setting the record straight. Why is he back in town?
A final enigma, taking Brazel's reported comments literally again, how did he find out and get to Roswell so quickly? Again from the RDR article: "Then Major Marcel brought it to Roswell and that was the last he heard of it until the story broke that he had found a flying disk."
Brazel lived in the middle of nowhere without electricity, no radio, and no phone, and a 3-4 hour drive to Roswell. So how did he hear about it when the "story broke"? The only logical conclusion was that he had to be back in Roswell at the time, but notice the stories have absolutely nothing about him IMMEDIATELY returning to Roswell (leaving his ranch unattended AGAIN), or why he would do so.
Obviously, it had to be something pretty damn important that he would make two trips to Roswell in only two or three days. Over what, exactly? A balloon he ended up disavowing at the end of his interview?
- March 15, 2012 at 11:00 AM
- Lance said...
Dr. Rudiak makes some good points above but I believe that the ideas still fit into the skeptical scenario.
When an excited Marcel left the ranch, perhaps having convinced Brazel that the stuff they picked up was something special, is it really so surprising that Brazel would have gone into town to find out what happened next?
That the newspaper reports don't carefully document the comings and goings of Brazel is not meaningful.
With the debris spread all over a wide area, is it really impossible that the string was just not part of the debris that ended up on the ranch? I believe that some folks did report silklike threads but i don't have the reference handy at the moment.
This gets brought up often but I have yet to see clear evidence that ALL of the debris was brought out for the photo session. Where is this confirmed.
There is evidence that the balloon is sun damaged in the photos, deciding the exact degree of damage that MUST have occurred is probably not an exact science.
Again, we need to see assurance that everything was spread out for the photos to even ask such a question. The scenario is that there were several different balloons and the brown strips were likely some of the other balloons.
I am still wondering why, after being supposedly terrorized by the Army, Brazel would have slavishly followed the cover story for most of the interview but then blown the cover at the end?
- March 15, 2012 at 12:10 PM
- cda said...
There is no problem with Brazel's whereabouts. He returned with Marcel and Cavitt to Roswell early Tuesday morning. I don't know how early. There is no contemporary data on this, only distant memories subject to date and time uncertainties. Remember Marcel and Cavitt had to be guided by Brazel to the ranch the previous day, so it is highly likely he had to accompany them back to town, otherwise they might well have lost their way.
I am conjecturing the above, of course. But at least it answers DR's question. Thus he had no need to make another round trip journey, and was thus available for interview late afternoon Tuesday.
I assume Walt Whitmore housed him for a while Tuesday & Wednesday. I think Karl Pflock accepts this scenario.
I do accept that the lack of any string is a puzzle. Not a serious puzzle but a puzzle all the same.
Perhaps it got carried way off the ranch amid the other 20-odd balloons in the array.
- March 15, 2012 at 12:47 PM
- Lance said...
It was Brazel, Jr. who reported seeing wire or monofilament .
- March 15, 2012 at 1:12 PM
- KRandle said...
David -
My point was that the quote was unattributed... not like the paraphrase about finding other balloons, which was attributed. My point was that we can't say that this information came from Brazel, though he certainly was the source for the interview.
According to Marcel, Cavitt returned to Roswell early and alone. Marcel returned much later and alone. Once they were on the field where this material was found, they would not have needed anyone to escort them off it.
According to Walt Whitmore, Jr. and I believe Jud Roberts, Brazel was brought back into town by Walt Whitmore, Sr., and once he had finished his interview, he escorted Brazel out to the base.
Remember, Bessie Brazel said that her father did not return to Roswell and that if he had been away over night, her mother would have been irritated. She said this just didn't happen. (I mention this only because that was what she had claimed in several of the interviews conducted in the 1990s).
And now, I have to return to the book I'm working on because it is due in a few weeks and the publisher, some very nice people, are expecting it.
- March 15, 2012 at 1:53 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Lance wrote: "What I could suggest is that, after the story took on its national scope, it was decided that an official response had to be made and Ramey decided he wanted to control that response because the story became inadvertently so big."
Don responded:
Lance, that was strongly suggested by Ted Bloecher in the mid-60s. Even Friedman in 'Corona' wrote it was "quite possible".
Bloecher "bloeched" his reporting of Roswell (though being the first prominent Ufologist in the 1960s to mention the incident in his review of the 1947 wave). As I write up on my website--shameless plug follows-- http://www.roswellproof.com/Post-1947-Roswell-references.html
"Bloecher wrote off the case as 'an embarrassingly obvious mistake' and the result of 'a series of clumsy blunders in public relations', and the base press release saying they recovered a disc a 'reckless statement.' Also Bloecher does some mind-reading, claiming the press was allegedly desirous of a 'crashed disc' and eagerly blew up the story out of all proportion. (What else were they supposed to do with an OFFICIAL press release that the Army had recovered a flying disc?) Nevertheless, Bloecher's dismissive attitude towards Roswell and other crashed saucer stories was probably typical of most Ufologists then, and to some extent even now.
"Bloecher also made several bad factual mistakes, which is odd if he relied exclusively on newspaper stories. It was almost as if Bloecher also used a little artistic license in writing up the case in order to ridicule it (therefore ironically guilty of the same exaggerated reporting he accuses the press of engaging in back then.) E.g., rancher Brazel did NOT report what he found after 'hearing news broadcasts of flying saucer broadcasts.' (He had no electricity, much less a radio—the papers and later witnesses actually say he heard about the saucers when he went to Corona or after speaking with neighbors.) And Bloecher erroneously claimed a 'search party' was sent out to the ranch AFTER the press reports and then delivered the 'collected remains' to Fort Worth to be identified by Gen. Ramey as a weather device. No newspaper ever reported any such thing. Instead, Gen. Ramey QUICKLY identified and debunked the Roswell saucer as a balloon. Therefore the ID had nothing to do with a 'search party' being sent out AFTER the base announcement. Instead, the 'search party' was sent out BEFORE and collected debris, which led to the base press release. Bloecher has the events backwards."
The problem is the last sentence of the press release...the document that created the story that was "so very big" and of "national scope" has Marcel and the "object" on its way to "higher headquarters".
There is no way the press interest in the Roswell flying disc story caused the transportation to "higher headquarters", which we assume was Ramey (I don't think you want to suggest the headquarters of the press release was higher than Ramey).
Exactly! Lance is engaging in the usual skeptical time travel theories of Roswell. No doubt high press interest in the release resulted in "higher headquarters" ordering the flight, with "higher headquarters" then time traveling back in time to be inserted into the original press release that caused all the press interest to begin with.
Naturally, I'm teasing Lance with not thinking logically. Another BIG problem with the theory is the lack of sufficient time for Ramey to order up the flight after all the press excitement, with Marcel showing up only 2 hours later in Ramey's office for photos. It takes time to prep a B-29 for flight (usually several hours). They're not sitting idling on the runway at all times for emergency flights to higher headquarters. So again, Lance not thinking very logically.
- March 15, 2012 at 2:15 PM
- cda said...
Yor picture is impossible. How can Whitmore, sr or jr, drive out in the boondocks to a remote ranch on open range land to bring back Brazel?
The point is that nobody knew the way. Brazel would have to escort anyone going there for the first time, surely?
I put it to you that Whitmore's story of his father driving out to the ranch to bring Brazel back is virtually impossible, and is the result of faulty memory on Whitmore's part.
Did ANYBODY, apart from Brazel and his immediate family, know the way?
A case of trusting these decades old memories, again.
- March 15, 2012 at 2:59 PM
- KRandle said...
You just make me tire all over... The problem was finding the field in which the debris was located and not in finding the ranch house where Brazel lived. Those in Corona could have pointed the way...
And let's not forget that Frank Joyce said that he had accompanied Jud Roberts and Walt Whitmore out to the ranch house...
I mean, we just keep going over and over this stuff and you just keep forgetting aspects of it.
- March 15, 2012 at 3:28 PM
- Don said...
David wrote: "General Ramey and his intelligence chief Col. Kalberer were already debunking the idea that they might be space ships from Mars clear back on June 29, only 5 days after Arnold's sighting."
It seems the ETH re the saucers originated in the army air forces. I am not aware of any public statements in June advocating the saucers were interplanetary spaceships which the army might be debunking. This is before Scully, or Keyhoe, and before Roswell. Or was it? June 29, 1947 was "some time last week". Maybe the skeptics should be wary of insisting on a June date for Brazel's discovery 8-)
So, to the 'why' of the press release, the 'why' of Ramey ordering Marcel and the object to him, we can add the 'why' of the army air force's denial the saucers were space ships when nobody at least in public was proposing it.
- March 15, 2012 at 5:38 PM
- Lance said...
I am going to concede the point that Don and Dr. Rudiak make (thanks to both of you for explaining it to me):
The furor over the disc announcement probably was not the reason the debris was sent to Ramey because of the timing issues.
The skeptical position, it seems to me, has to be that the debris was unusual enough that Marcel and perhaps other folks thought that it might represent some sort of flying contraption that could possibly explain the flying disc reports.
Note that I am not saying that the debris represented some fantastic futuristic flying vessel. Instead it just seemed to be something that obviously was made to fly (due to the balloons) but that didn't look like a standard weather balloon (due to all of the target foil and extra balloons, etc.). It was made more mysterious by the lack of identification except for some numbers and possibly the inscribed tape and also possibly the few other pieces of Mogul payload.
While probably no one thought that the stuff was a slam dunk answer to the disc mystery, it still was worth considering.
Is it that far fetched to imagine a phone conversation that went something like this:
Roswell: One of our officers went out to a ranch and found debris that looks sort of like a weather balloon but not exactly. He thinks it may be one of those flying discs.
Ft. Worth: Well, send him over here with the stuff and we will have a look.
And then Haut or maybe Blanchard decided to tell the local media.
I am aware that those of you on the pro-Roswell side don't agree with this this but I am wondering if it accurately sums up the skeptical side of things.
The Circleville incident follow this scenario almost to the letter except it got identified pretty quickly (and didn't have the additional Mogul configuration).
- March 15, 2012 at 5:50 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Lance wrote:
So the other statements by Brazel still fit this scenario. It didn't look like a weather balloon....it wasn't a weather balloon, it was Project Mogul stuff that looked different.
What specific "Project Mogul stuff" did Brazel or anybody else back then describe? Please be specific. No handwaving allowed.
A generic weather balloon and radar target was NOT specific to Mogul. As Ramey's weather officer told me and others and said back in 1947, those could have come from anywhere, and he is absolutely right. I have lots of examples in the newspapers from 1947. These were in no way specific to Project Mogul.
NONE of the expected "Project Mogul stuff" was found or described by anybody then or now (such as the hundreds of yards of twine that should have been there, or multiple multiple balloons, or ballast equipment, parachutes, sonobuoy, etc., etc.). Where was it?
That is the skeptic scenario, I think.
Right, no explanation parading as an "explanation".
But let me say that the statements really DON'T fit in any way with the scenario layed out by Dr. Rudiak above.
He suggests that Brazel was carefully coached as to what to say and that he even was briefed on flowered tape cover story (a detail so arcane that it beggars belief that it would have been devised and fed to Brazel at this early date). So under Dr. Rudiak's scenario, Brazel CAREFULLY and PERFECTLY followed the direction of his brutal captors.
Thank you Lance for completely misrepresenting what I said. What I REALLY said is all that was needed to explain Brazel's "flower tape" description was to hand him a radar target and tell him they wanted that described. If it had "flower tape", then that would be part of the description if Brazel decided to describe that particular detail.
Never did I say anybody told him to specifically describe such tape as part of a cover story.
Unfortunately, they probably gave him a fresh target out of a box that had never flown and thus never had any suspension string tied to those eyelets Brazel also mentioned.
I still haven't heard you or anybody else with the "skeptical scenario" explain in any rational way why Brazel would deny finding any sort of string/wire, when that would be an absolutely necessary part of a Mogul crash, or even an ordinary weather balloon crash. It doesn't just evaporate or hide in the crevices. The knots don't magically untie themselves from the eyelets. No, the string is going to still be attached to any balloons or radar targets and get tangled on the rocks and brush.
Even USAF's debunker Lt. McAndrew questioning Charles Moore realized it was a problem, asking him if he had an explanation for why it wasn't there, such as disintegrating in the sun. Moore said no, he didn't think so, at which point McAndrew dropped the point, and like you and all the other debunkers, swept it under the rug as an inconvenient truth that obviously seriously conflicted with the Mogul Kool-Aid they wanted everybody to drink.
- March 15, 2012 at 10:21 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Don wrote:
David wrote: "General Ramey and his intelligence chief Col. Kalberer were already debunking the idea that they might be space ships from Mars clear back on June 29, only 5 days after Arnold's sighting."
It seems the ETH re the saucers originated in the army air forces. I am not aware of any public statements in June advocating the saucers were interplanetary spaceships which the army might be debunking. This is before Scully, or Keyhoe, and before Roswell. Or was it? June 29, 1947 was "some time last week". Maybe the skeptics should be wary of insisting on a June date for Brazel's discovery 8-)
So, to the 'why' of the press release, the 'why' of Ramey ordering Marcel and the object to him, we can add the 'why' of the army air force's denial the saucers were space ships when nobody at least in public was proposing it.
It wasn't just Ramey & Kalberer back on June 29. Early July 8, just before the Roswell press release came out, the Pentagon issued their own press release denying that the saucers were "space ships". (UP story) What a "coincidence"!
You don't issue denials like this unless the public at large is seriously talking about such ideas and you want to kill the talk and maybe diminish the anxiety. I found a lot of such ET speculation in my recent review of June/July 1947 newspapers. Even Kenneth Arnold in the Chicago Times on July 7 was stating he believed the objects he saw were not from planet earth, unless they were some secret military project. He also was quoted saying that a lot of people thought these things came from another planet and were very disturbed at the idea--the government should come clean on what they knew.
One story that came out on June 27, had Arnold mentioning an unnerving encounter he had with a hysterical women in a cafe who, when recognizing him, screamed he was the one who had seen the "men from Mars", and rushed out to be with her children.
And this was just a small sampling of what at least part of the public was thinking back then. My compendium of such ET-related news stories can be found at:
- March 16, 2012 at 12:36 AM
- cda said...
DR and Kevin:
I gave a prosaic answer to the absence of the string or twine. All right it is not a definitive answer, but it will have to suffice. The string was carried away on the rest of the balloon array and landed many miles from the ranch.
DR wishes us to believe that not only was the Fort Worth conference a set-up (with a phoney balloon and radar reflector) but that the Roswell one was also (with a supplied reflector that had flower tape on it).
In other words, Brazel wasn't describing the stuff he found but some other stuff the USAF procured very quickly and handed to him a few minutes earlier. In fact, soon after the other ersatz balloon was magically procured for the cameras at Ft Worth.
The USAF thus planned and managed not one but two 'stage shows'.
This takes some beating!
Presumably Brazel also 'invented' the date June 14 because the AF officers told him to use this phony date instead of the real one.
Perhaps the total weight was really 5 tons, but to please the AF he told reporter Kellahin it was only 5 pounds.
My question: When is this twaddle peddled about Roswell going to stop?
When are ET believers going to cease their dotty ideas about conspiracy and cover-up? 65 years and still going.
We already have Marcel taking the junk home, showing it to his wife and son when, according to Kevin's own timeline, armed guards had been posted for the previous 3 days around the crash site a bit further south, with sheriff Wilcox and the local fire department in attendance and top secrecy imposed, with nobody allowed to see or touch the debris. Nobody except Viaud and Marcel jr.
The story gets crazier and crazier, but presumably all will be sorted out by the 'Dream Team' in due course. I am not holding my breath. Lance, please don't hold yours either.
- March 16, 2012 at 2:59 AM
- Lance said...
Dr. Rudiak,
I am trying to go low rhetoric for the past few posts just to sort out exactly what we are arguing about.
On the string, I didn't try to sweep it under the rug.
I can and did mention a few possibilities (alog with CDA:
1. That the string became deatched from the portion of debris that ended up on the ranch (only part of the full Mogul array).
2. That there was string, Jr. described what sounds like monofilament or wire.
3. Perhaps the newspaper account was imperfect or incomplete.
A few questions for you:
Would the new radar target(s) you describe have flowered tape on them? Seems supremely unlikely.
Do you think Brazel decided to ignore the cover story only at the end of the interview.
Do you have a reference for hundreds of yards of twine or any reference for how the arrays were rigged. I am wondering if there were lots of different lengths of string etc.
- March 16, 2012 at 4:38 AM
- Don said...
Lance wrote: "Do you think Brazel decided to ignore the cover story only at the end of the interview."
I'll just butt in here to make a minor point. We don't know it was at the end of the interview. We do know it is at the end of the news story. Sometimes we have advocates who write: "but at the end, he denied everything he'd said earlier!"
Earlier, later, the end etc. are read into the structure of the news story. In fact, the first words out of Brazel's mouth at the interview might have been "Look, I know what they're saying, but it wasn't any kind of weather balloon I've seen".
The sentiment is the last sentence for rhetorical effect. The editor placed it where it could not be missed.
The rhetorical effect intended by Kellahin's 'not a kite' sentence is due to it following immediately the reference to Ramey's 'it's a kite'.
Something I have not seen discussed is the editorial in the following day's Daily Record that Friedman quotes in "Corona".
Those of you who have actually paged through the Daily Record, will you confirm Friedman quotes it accurately? I'd like to know.
- March 16, 2012 at 8:19 AM
- Don said...
Lance, your "skeptical position" has two points. One is Mogul. This is one of the skeptics better arguments because it existed at the time and there is a lot of "balloon" in the news stories. But the advocates have good arguments on the matter, too. Neither side has convinced the other. Those unwilling to acquire some specialized information and also do the math are unlikely to read through a skeptic's or advocate's argument to the end, and will come down on one side or the other about it based on other things.
The second point is that the press release was not authorized by a higher headquarters. I don't understand why this is important to skeptics.
If David is right, and none of the balloon/kite descriptions in the press say "Mogul" or any other balloon that had been aloft or had been exposed for one to three weeks, I don't see how that affects either the object being a Mogul train or a spaceship. The army could be attempting to cover-up either one or the other (or something else unconsidered as of yet).
I guess the telephone conversation you offer is plausible. The problem with a 'plausible' is it has to co-exist with all the other 'plausibles' offered. If not, then all the 'plausibles' amount to one big mass of implausibility. This is what I think is the skeptics' biggest problem, creating a coherent narrative out of a string of unrelated plausibilities.
- March 16, 2012 at 9:28 AM
- Lance said...
Thanks for the thoughtful posts above.
You are right about there being no overly compelling need for the press release to have not come from higher authority but since we know that it came through Haut's office, a local vector seems most likely to me.
I understand what you are saying above about the two sides and whether their stories are at least internally consistent.
I was trying to sort of nail the skeptical narrative down and see what the weak points are.
In a lot of the arguments we have here, and I am guilty of this as well, there is a blindness to what the other side is trying to say.
For instance, It took both you and Dr. Rudiak telling me twice before I saw the timing issue mentioned above.
On the other hand, Dr. Rudiak frequently mentions things that are not in the photos but has never explained why we must assume that every piece of debris was hauled out for the photo shoot.
So can you (or anyone else, please chime in), seeing the Skeptical scenario above, say what the internally inconsistent factors are?
And please understand that when the arguments take the form of saying what someone MUST have done, that I don't put a lot of stock in those kinds of arguments. Guessing human behavior is not even close to science.
So an argument like Kevin makes above that Haut or Blanchard absolutely didn't create the press release because they would have ended their careers falls well short for me. I know a lot of people who have screwed up royally and somehow kept their jobs and careers. A lot of Roswell is built on such dogmatic, unsupported statements.
- March 16, 2012 at 10:34 AM
- Don said...
Lance wrote: "So can you (or anyone else, please chime in), seeing the Skeptical scenario above, say what the internally inconsistent factors are?"
That the thing least likely to blow away on Brazel's field did, and the thing most likely to blow away didn't. I mean a piece of foil skinning a structure of sticks, which was an unusual and unrecognized device (something from Mogul) is most likely to blow away in the wind. The thing that is supposed to have blown away (all the string) is least likely to blow away because it has an infinite number of attachment points to snag on stiff and spikely high desert plants -- which is pretty much every plant except Evening Primrose.
The plausibilities collide.
Also, the only instance I can think of in which a balloon untied itself from the device it held up was in a Roadrunner cartoon. Sorry, but true.
- March 16, 2012 at 11:52 AM
- David Rudiak said...
Lance wrote:
Do you think Brazel decided to ignore the cover story only at the end of the interview.
We don't know when Brazel made his "it wasn't a weather balloon" statement. In the RDR article it is presented chronologically at the very end of the interview after he had given a statement about when he found the debris, what it looked like, etc.
My guess, we have testimony that he deeply resented the way the Army was treating him. Also, he admitted coming to the sheriff's office and saying he thought he had a "flying disc". Now he was saying all he found were pieces of rubber from a balloon, guessed at the size of the balloon, and noted that there was no string for the rest of what he found to be suspended from the balloon. So clearly a balloon of some kind, so why would he think "flying disc" instead?
Brazel had his pride and he resented being kicked around and made to look like a country hick. The statement that it wasn't a balloon was his little rebellion, a way of saying that he wasn't a fool. He wouldn't report to the Sheriff that all he found was balloon and balsa wood kite trash. Saying he wouldn't report anything again unless it was a bomb, was also a way of saying this had caused him a great deal of grief, could even be interpreted as his way of saying he was being coerced by the Army.
Two of the reporters at this RDR interview stated he was indeed taken there and away by military escort. Several friends and neighbors of his likewise saw him under military escort. His son and base provost marshal Edwin Easley said he was held at the base for several days. Easley admitted to Kevin that Brazel was held under armed guard--for what? Finding rubber strips, tinfoil, sticks, and Scotch tape?
I think Brazel paid dearly for his little rebellion. He knew what a balloon looked like and it wasn't a damn balloon. He would also be damned if he'd report anything again unless it was something like a bomb. Oops, the rancher hadn't been tamed yet and was still a loose cannon.
Reporter Frank Joyce likewise said Brazel told him afterward that Joyce should likewise go along with the weather balloon story. Joyce claims Brazel told him that they (the Army) had been hard on him, and they would be hard on Joyce as well if he didn't play along.
Sheriff Wilcox in 1947 did more than hint that he wasn't a free agent. When AP pressed him to provide a more detailed description of the object Brazel found, Wilcox refused, stating he "was working with the fellows at the base."
This will again be spun into it being a nice friendly relationship between Wilcox and the base. But why wouldn't Wilcox answer a simple question, if all Brazel described to him or showed him was rubber, tinfoil, balsa sticks etc., etc.? Of course, we also have the testimony of multiple Wilcox family members that the relationship was anything but friendly, he was indeed threatened, and the whole incident totally disillusioned and broke him, to the point that he never ran for Sheriff again.
- March 16, 2012 at 12:41 PM
- Lance said...
Hi Don,
I think that the way Professor Moore described the idea is that the array would lose altitude and that some of the lower debris would drag along the ground and become detached from the main array (perhaps even far away from the Brazel find) then, newly lighter, the stuff would lift back up and move along with the wind, repeating this process.
What I am wondering as a possible solution is how the thing was rigged. Were there several single lines of monofilament stretching up through the various targets and other attachments so that, if the lines were broken, the stuff above the break might slide off without leaving the string behind?
I don't know the answer and would ask, if anyone does know a reference for this to please mention it.
Also, the foil targets had sticks attached to them and it seems to me are not likely to blow very far once fallen to the ground.
- March 16, 2012 at 12:51 PM
- cda said...
The above are your estimates, nothing else. They may be true or they may not be.
We simply do not know, and can only guess the following:
1. Whether more stuff was left behind than gathered up (do YOU know?).
2. How much of the debris was never discovered (too far away at the corners of the ranch)
3. What percentage of the stuff was not depicted in the Ft Worth pics.
4. The true number of balloons attached to the array and the quantity of string.
5. How many of them drifted far beyond the ranch, and carried the string with them.
6. The weather (storm or not?) on the night the cluster fell.
7. Number of radar reflectors either on the ranch or carried away with the remaining balloons.
We are stuck with such problems and with unanswered and unanswerable questions.
You can surmise this and that, but in the end you are left with pure conjecture, with varying probabilities.
What do YOU think is the probability that the USAF discovered a crashed ET craft, identified it as such, hid all the hard evidence, and withheld the news from the scientific world, and the public, for 65 years?
I claim that such probability is, to all intents and purposes, zero.
The ETHers (and conspirators) say it is quite high, but then they are forced into this position, aren't they? Because they HAVE to explain the complete lack of bodies, hardware or documentation to back up their case.
- March 16, 2012 at 12:53 PM
- Lance said...
Additionally the fact that now we have to add an additional false radar target (this one apparently with the flowered tape added to it!) to the conspiracy story should cause grave concerns in plausibility.
Does it not seem to you that doing this is the very definition of multiplying entities that Occam warns against?
Is Dr. Rudiak's second radar target part of the generally accepted proponent story or something new? I don't recall two sets of false debris in previous accounts.
- March 16, 2012 at 1:30 PM
- Don said...
CDA wrote: "What do YOU think is the probability that the USAF discovered a crashed ET craft, identified it as such, hid all the hard evidence, and withheld the news from the scientific world, and the public, for 65 years?"
I think the evidence points to something that was unidentifiable to those who saw and handled it.
I understand why they'd cover-up ET, and I understand why they'd cover-up evidence of Mogul, especially if the bits and pieces of it were in the possession of an unknown number of people in several counties.
But to guess at what was or was not shown in Fort Worth, or what was found and what was not there to find on the ranch, is as much speculation as anything you replied to (although I do have some experience route finding in the high desert backcountry).
My point is that both the skeptics and ET advocates can accept the debris described in the news stories was not what came down on Brazel's ranch without doing any violence to their belief it was Mogul or ET. But I understand why the skeptics want to hold on to all that balloon and kite material. If I were a skeptic, I'd hold onto it, too.
But I'm not, and my interest goes to why the US Army Air Forces would cover-up whatever it was. So, that's another conclusion of mine, that the evidence indicates they did cover-up.
- March 16, 2012 at 1:49 PM
- cda said...
How right you are.
The idea of two 'stage shows' (as I called them) is so preposterous that further words fail me. But DR may have a response. Anything is possible with conspiracists. They HAVE to account for the total absence of hardware, somehow.
- March 16, 2012 at 1:55 PM
- David Rudiak said...
(Part 1 of 2)
Lance wrote:
Would the new radar target(s) you describe have flowered tape on them? Seems supremely unlikely.
Question unclear, but I'm assuming Lance means the hypothetical radar target I've hypothesized they showed Mack Brazel to describe. If Mogul/White Sands had Moore's reinforced "flower tape" targets and they brought one over for Brazel to view (assuming no such targets at Roswell base), then yes, that could explain Brazel's "flower tape" description, without it being what Brazel actually found.
And no, "flower tape" didn't have to be part of a cover story, any more than Brazel mentioning Scotch tape and eyelets on the target. The cover story for the recovered "flying disc" WAS the radar target itself, just like it was for Gen. Ramey in Fort Worth, and the multiple radar target saucer debunking demonstrations that followed in the next few days. The details of the radar targets didn't matter (other than them being "metallic" in order to explain away the saucers seemingly being metallic). See my essay on how the military debunked the saucers with radar targets during and after Roswell:
That the military was running a debunkery campaign was openly admitted in the newspapers, as evidenced by the quotes I have from the papers at the beginning of the essay.
The question the skeptics continue to dodge, was why would Brazel describe flower tape, yet no flower tape can be seen in the Fort Worth photos? Lance's claim that they hid away other radar target debris which did have the flower tape and showed only the target without tape is another desperate grasping at straws.
For one, Brazel claimed he rolled all the shards of stick/foil debris into one bundle. (Marcel had a similar account in Fort Worth, only he had Brazel collecting the debris IMMEDIATELY, whereas Brazel claimed he was too busy and put it off for 3 weeks.) So if there were more than one target, they would now be all mixed together.
But in Roswell and/or Fort Worth when they unrolled the bundle, they carefully separated out "flower tape" radar target debris from "non-flower tape" radar target debris? I've computer reconstructed that radar target in the photos and it adds up to one radar target, not fragments of multiple targets. This was exactly what Gen. Ramey and his weather officer represented—a singular balloon and radar target on display, and all that was recovered at Roswell.
So then one has to postulate only one radar target left behind at the Foster Ranch, but then one also has to explain why Brazel describes flower tape on the singular target, but none can be found on the singular target in Fort Worth.
Either that or the military carefully disentangled multiple targets, and then displaying only the one reconstructed target with no flower tape, which makes no sense. And all these incredible contortions of logic in order to try to account for the missing "flower tape" in Fort Worth.
Now the much simpler explanation that accounts for everything—only one target with no string and "flower tape" in one instance (Brazel) and no flower tape or string and pristine clean white paper backing in the other (Fort Worth)--they took fresh targets out of a box, never tied any string to them, and had Brazel describe one in Roswell, and Ramey displayed another in Fort Worth. That explains everything very neatly, without resorting to drugs and/or magical thinking.
- March 16, 2012 at 2:23 PM
- David Rudiak said...
(Part 2 of 2)
I will now invoke a favorite overused device of the debunkers—Occam's razor, namely if you have two hypotheses to explain something, then the simplest one or one with the fewest assumptions is most likely to be the correct one. Fresh targets out of the box accounts for everything very directly without resorting to any additional assumptions. It is also totally consistent with what primary witnesses like Marcel and Dubose told us what actually happened. In addition, we can thoroughly document that the military was running a debunkery campaign at the time using the radar targets as the catch-all explanation for the new flying saucers.
In contrast, a radar target from a Mogul crash requires multiple highly improbable assumptions:
1) A totally undocumented Mogul existed but was never recorded, contrary to all other real Mogul flights.
2 ) That the undocumented Mogul flight must have mostly removed itself from the crash site in order to account for the absence of what would be expected at a real Mogul crash, such as hundreds of yards of twine and distinctive Mogul equipment, none of which was ever described, in fact denied as existing at the time by Brazel, Marcel, and Ramey.
3) And finally, the debris left behind had to be mixed together to be consistent with Brazel and Marcel's accounts of collecting the debris into "bundles", yet simultaneously carefully sorted into flower tape radar target debris and non-flower radar target debris, or intact, slightly weathered balloon in Fort Worth vs. Brazel's "rubber strips" and month-long weathered "balloon" at Roswell, Lance's "explanation" for why the Fort Worth photos don't match up with Brazel's description or what would really be expected from a Mogul crash.
The skeptics also have to account in a LOGICAL way for why such a small quantity of debris would confuse anybody or create such a ruckus. Instead we are treated the logically inconsistent spectable of a huge balloon crash of a giant balloon to confuse the principals, but hardly anything left behind to account for the absence of expected debris.
This is in a nutshell is the total absurdity of the skeptical "Mogul balloon" explanation and the desperate lengths they go to salvage it when the gross inconsistencies are pointed out to them.
- March 16, 2012 at 2:27 PM
- Lance said...
Dr. Rudiak,
Perhaps you might reread my narrative above to see that I have NOT made any claims, I just made suggestions...the things I am surmising above may well be wrong.
Have you any resource that documents the hundreds of yards of string and the method in which the balloon arrays might have been rigged together?
Several of the ideas that you mention above about Mogul flights are contested and I have yet to see a response from you that settles these matters. May I suggest that an attempt to remove some of the rhetoric might make your points more compelling? And yes, I am very aware of my own shortcomings in this area. And anyway we have both done the insults to death with little result!
May I ask also where are the source scans of the photos used for your analysis. Do you mind sending them to me so that I can have a look also? I do recall someone claiming to have found some evidence of the flower symbols (Morill?, could that be the name?) but I have never seen good enough scans to make such any determination.
Just trying to set some of baggage aside for a few posts!
- March 16, 2012 at 2:51 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Lance wrote:
Additionally the fact that now we have to add an additional false radar target (this one apparently with the flowered tape added to it!) to the conspiracy story should cause grave concerns in plausibility.
Does it not seem to you that doing this is the very definition of multiplying entities that Occam warns against?
Well Lance, quite independently in another post I just put up, I also invoked Occam's razor to demonstrate that my hypothesis of two separate fresh radar targets, one in Roswell for Brazel to describe, and another in Fort Worth for Ramey to display, directly and simply accounts for all the loose ends. Same with the the different balloon material described by Brazel in Roswell (also what would be expected for a month-old balloon crash laying in the sun) vs. what was actually shown in Fort Worth:
1. Finding of string denied by Brazel and not visible in Fort Worth because fresh targets out of a box never had any string tied to them.
2. Brazel describing flower tape, but no flower tape to be found in the Fort Worth photos.
3. The pristine clean white paper backing in Fort Worth with no evidence of weathering.
4. An intact, slightly weathered balloon in FW, vs. Brazel's "rubber strips", vs. Charles Moore's demonstrations of real neoprene balloons disintegrating to brittle black flakes after only 2-3 weeks exposure to sun.
On the other hand, multiple, HIGHLY UNLIKELY assuptions have to be invoked to make a Mogul hypothesis work:
1. A totally undocumented Mogul accounts for the crash;
2. This undocumented Mogul left almost no debris behind to account for absence of expected debris in the descriptions by principals like Brazel and Marcel. (Your hypothesis Lance, not mine) Simultaneously, it was so large, it supposedly confused the same principles into thinking it was the remains of a flying disc. (standard debunking line of other skeptics, like Dave Thomas or Tim Printy)
3. Brazel and Marcel describe the small quantity of debris being rolled into bundles. Yet somehow and for no logical discernible reason, these bundles were disentangled and sorted, such that exactly one radar target with no flower tape shows up in Fort Worth, likewise only an intact balloon and no rubber strips were shown there as well. (A more complete description of what it would take to make YOUR hypothesis work of why the debris in Fort Worth doesn't match Brazel's descriptions)
If you think the skeptic's "explanation" is somehow more in line with Occam's razor, then either you don't understand Occam or you can't think logically.
- March 16, 2012 at 2:54 PM
- Lance said...
Dr. Ruidak,
Again, in these last posts, I am trying to sort out and work though exactly what skeptics are trying to suggest happened and I'm not stating definitively my position at this time.
I'm also trying to sets aside the rhetorical part of our discussion for short break. We can be back at it like cats and dogs soon!
One question that occurs to me, if I am understanding your scenario, is how, if Mogul is not involved, the guys in Roswell knew to go and get a Mogul target with the flowered tape? Isn't that a point against this idea.
- March 16, 2012 at 3:02 PM
- cda said...
There is also the well-known Stanton Friedman theorem which states:
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".
This means that the absence of flower-tape in the Ft Worth photos is not evidence that the flower tape was not there. It means one of two things:
1. The flower-tape is there but is not discernable with the tools we have to examine the photos.
2. The flower-tape is present in the debris but was not in the portion of debris shown in the photos (i.e. it is still on the B-29 or left in another room).
Even if we could locate another witness who said he or she saw the said flower-tape, it could be refuted in the same way as myself, and other skeptics, do when refuting those witnesses who saw alien bodies. We reject all such claims, so why should ETHers accept as valid any supporting witness claim that he or she saw the flower-tape?
See how the arguments go on and on fruitlessly?
You need an advanced degree or PhD in crash-saucerology to get to the bottom of this, and even that may be insufficient.
- March 16, 2012 at 4:08 PM
- David Rudiak said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- March 16, 2012 at 4:11 PM
- David Rudiak said...
Lance wrote:
One question that occurs to me, if I am understanding your scenario, is how, if Mogul is not involved, the guys in Roswell knew to go and get a Mogul target with the flowered tape? Isn't that a point against this idea.
Once again, the "flowered tape" had nothing to do with the cover story. It was just one of several incidental details, like eyelets and Scotch tape, that Brazel described. The "flower tape" only got seized on in the present day by people like Charles Moore and the AFOSI debunkers who wrote the Roswell report. It was never part of the original cover story nor directly tied to the balloon launches at Alamogordo.
The real cover story was the idea that radar targets and weather balloons in general explained not only Roswell but all the flying saucer reports. This is all summarized in the following telegram the night of July 9 over on the Project 1947 website:
And then the debunking demonstrations by the Army and Navy using the radar targets began the next day, one being at Alamogordo, another at Fort Worth.
It was only necessary for the guys in Roswell to have a radar target to show to Brazel so he could describe it. Again, the flower tape has nothing to do with. It was the radar target. It may simply have been happenstance, if they had no targets already at Roswell the nearest ones may have been at Alamogordo or the White Sands weather station at Orogrande, that also used them. It would be less than one hour's flight in a Piper Cub to get one to Roswell, and they would have had at least several hours to prep Brazel, whose interview was a full four hours or more after Ramey began putting out the weather balloon story.
Did Ramey need to use the same radar target shown to Brazel? Why would he? Radar targets were plentiful. They were demonstrating one at Fort Worth AAF on July 10. If they didn't have one at FW on July 8, again this was the Air Force, and they could have quickly flown one in from a number of nearby places that did use them.
At the Alamogordo debunking demo the next day, no mention was made of "flower tape". Instead they said the targets they used resembled the object described by the rancher, so it might have come from them since they had been using so many of them recently. They also claimed that the balloon "radar training" flights at Alamogordo might explain all the reported flying saucers in the region, just like other radar targets elsewhere might explain the saucer reports in those regions.
The point was to debunk ALL the saucer reports, including Roswell, using radar targets. Ironically, they weren't trying to cover up the existence of the Mogul flights at all. Instead they were using them as part of this nationwide explanation for the flying saucers. The only Mogul cover story was their explanation that they were using the flights for radar tracking training, instead of their real purpose.
There was never any secrecy regarding the existence of these flights, which couldn't possibly be concealed from view anyway. Nor was there anything classified in any of the equipment at the time. The only real secret they were hiding was the purpose of the flights, not the debris. (Hence the story about "radar training") Some rancher could not discern the secret purpose of the flights from the debris, so there was never any real concern about other civilians coming across the balloon debris.
Most of these flights carried various ID tags for return, just in case civilians did find debris. An example recorded in Crary's diary was rancher Sid West who found the remains of Mogul Flight #6, launched June 7. He knew to report his find to Alamogordo. Crary's diary records they sent out two guys in a jeep to pick up the debris and bring it back to Alamogordo.
- March 16, 2012 at 4:11 PM
- David Rudiak said...
(part 1 of 2)
Continuing on with Lance's various questions:
Do you have a reference for hundreds of yards of twine or any reference for how the arrays were rigged. I am wondering if there were lots of different lengths of string etc.
Using the Flight #2 schematic as a model (as Charles Moore did):
...these early neoprene balloon trains consisted of a central high strength nylon line approximately 600' or 200 yards in length—each of about 2 dozen balloons was separated by 20' of main line and tied off the main line with 14' of secondary nylon line.,
So right there you have about 300 yards of high-strength nylon line that was missing.
Directly under the balloons and tied off it with string/twine of various lengths were all the other paraphenalia: 3-5 radar reflectors (sometimes, but only one documented N.M. flight in June/July 1947 carried them), all tied to the central line with string, multiple paper or silk parachutes, a radiosonde package for tracking, the main payload (usually a sonobuoy microphone), and finally suspended at the bottom was ballast/altitude control equipment, supposed to be cut off on descent (thus would be expected not to show up at a main crash site). All this adds up to a few more tens of yards of additional secondary line.
On the string, I didn't try to sweep it under the rug.
Nonsensical theories of why it all disappeared, such as your own about it all flying off leaving none behind, are indeed a way of sweeping it under the rug.
I can and did mention a few possibilities (alog with CDA:
1. That the string became deatched from the portion of debris that ended up on the ranch (only part of the full Mogul array).
2.That there was string, Jr. described what sounds like monofilament or wire.
3.Perhaps the newspaper account was imperfect or incomplete.
So to summarize, first of all you skeptics can't produce a single shred of Mogul documentation that Mogul flight #4, the alleged crash object, even existed. There was one note that the planned flight was canceled because of cloud cover, and indeed there is a blank in the flight sequence, along with flights #2 & #3, which were also clearly noted as canceled and also written out of the flight summaries.
But even assuming the nonexistent Mogul existed, there was ZERO expected distinctive Mogul debris described as found at the crash site, nor was there any in the Fort Worth photos. So how can the debunkers "know" Brazel was describing a Mogul balloon crash? Instead, we are treated to you and cda producing truly lame excuses why the expected Mogul debris isn't there in Brazel's reported descriptions or in the actual physical evidence, the photos, of which there are several taken at different angles and which can be scrutinized in agonizing detail—still no expected string or "flower tape".
The ONLY things shown in Fort Worth were Ramey's self-described singular balloon and radar target, which his own weather officer, Newton, said were widely used and could have come from anywhere. However, even here, the expected suspension string still tied the eyelets of the radar target seems to be missing. Ramey also denied any sort of instrumentation was found with the singular balloon and target, and Brazel and Marcel didn't describe any either.
- March 16, 2012 at 6:00 PM
- David Rudiak said...
(part 2 of 2 response to Lance)
As to your "explanation" for the absence of hundreds of yards of Mogul twine, remember, the balloons were tied off the main line with high strength nylon line You would have to postulate one balloon, and one balloon only (to match Ramey's singular balloon), tore off the main line at the balloon neck where it was tied, as well as only one radar target that ripped loose, all the rest flew away, the balloons, the parachutes, the radiosonde, the sonobuoy, etc.
How does a radar target rip away leaving no string behind unless the knots magically untie themselves or the eyelets where the string is tied to the target are ripped out? But, oops, Brazel described the eyelets, so they weren't ripped out. So where's the string? At the very least, that should still be there even assuming the rest of the improbable scenario of 99% of an already undocumented balloon flying off somewhere else.
The best "match" you can come up with for the hundreds of yards of missing Mogul twine/string are represented by Bill Brazel's descriptions 30+ years later of tiny fragments of something resembling nylon fishing line, except he couldn't cut it with a knife. So it doesn't really match nylon fishing line and still doesn't account for 99.99% of the expected missing Mogul line. (I remember another debunker here, Gilles F., also tried to pass Brazel's Jr.s few fragments of "fiber optic material" as a suitable explanation for 100's of yards of missing Mogul line.)
This is all rather amusing, since another standard skeptical refrain is that what allegedly "confused" people like Brazel and Marcel was the huge size of the Mogul balloon train. Now you are desperately trying to postulate hardly anything was left behind in order to try to resolve the enigmas of the missing twine and rest of the expected Mogul debris.
So in the end, the "scientific" skeptics explain Roswell with a nonexistent Mogul balloon flight that confuses the principals with its huge size, but also simultaneously disappears with 99% of its configuration in order to account for the complete absence of expected debris from a real Mogul crash. Brilliant! Further, it is wrong for me to accuse you of trying to sweep everything under the rug that clearly contradicts a Mogul explanation.
Clearly Air Force debunker Lt. McAndrew tried to sweep it under the rug, because he brought up the missing twine question with Charles Moore when he interviewed him. Moore couldn't come up with a reason why it might be missing, at which point McAndrew dropped the line of questioning like a hot potato. The issue was never brought up again by McAndrew or Col. Weaver in their summary statements, because it obviously conflicted with the Mogul debunkery explanation they were trying to sell to the American public. Likewise McAndrew lied about the existence of clearly documented canceled flights #2 and #3, in order to make a case for the equally canceled #4, which McAndrew and Weaver were trying to make into the Roswell crash object.
So why the fanatical clinging to an "explanation" that cannot be?-- A nonexistent balloon flight leaving no telltale debris behind, yet in the debunking community, this still MUST be the answer.
- March 16, 2012 at 6:05 PM
- Lance said...
Dr. Rudiak,
Thanks for the above. I'll try to consider it but I do see a pretty decent amount of rhetoric that is quite similar to the stuff we have passed back and forth many times with no discernable result.
In reference to the analysis of the photos for signs of the tape, etc., what was the source material used for this analysis and is it available online or can it be shared?
- March 16, 2012 at 10:00 PM
- cda said...
This is becoming a case of an "embattled truth", something defined in the Saler/Ziegler/Moore book. It means the ETHers try desperately to defend their cause as the 'embattlements' they have set up around the case collapse one by one.
DR tries desperately to disprove the Mogul explanation (and bolster the ET one) by various means: the absence of string, no flight 4, photo-analysis of the debris, etc. then finds the ONLY way he can explain his case is to posit that TWO stage-managed scenarios were set up by the USAF on the same day in different locations, using two new but different radar targets, with only about 2 to 3 hours between them; and by virtually inserting words into the witnesses' mouths in each place. Absolutely mind boggling!
Without this scenario his cause is hopelessly lost. With this scenario it is still alive (just) but is in an 'embattled' state.
And he, and Kevin, have to back this up by preposterous claims that because the military can keep certain necessary national secrets for several decades they could easily keep this, very different, secret for 65 years from the scientific world and the general public.
And still, I keep reminding these guys, NO hard evidence. None whatever.
Dream on!
- March 17, 2012 at 4:11 AM
- Don said...
CDA wrote: "DR tries desperately to disprove the Mogul explanation (and bolster the ET one) by various means: the absence of string, no flight 4..."
How devious of him to note the evidence or the absence of it. You should try doing so yourself sometime. There is no need to "disprove" Mogul because it was never proven. It is just another theory of no particular authority.
Get a grip, Chris.
This dispute, shouldn't be about Mogul or ET, but whether the material described and displayed in 1947 was what Brazel found. The evidence is so far on the side of it not being what he found.
If so, the skeptics take a flesh-wound, but nothing serious. They've still got Mogul.
Chris, not being convinced the "debris" displayed to be from the Brazel ranch is not the same thing as saying what he found was not Mogul.
Both sides of the argument forget that sometimes.
- March 17, 2012 at 8:15 AM
- cda said...
You say you are not an ETHer and you are not a skeptic. I therefore put these to you:
1. Do you think Marcel/Cavitt more or less identified the debris at the ranch when they recovered it?
2. If they did not, did Blanchard later on?
3. Whether they did or didn'y, why was it necessary to make any kind of public statement (i.e. the press release)?
The reason I ask no. 3 is that nobody knew of the discovery except one rancher & two kids, and it was made 3 weeks before. There was no likelihood of the story getting out. Brazel had brought it into town but so what? The AF were called in but, again, so what? The public had no need to know about it. The people he spoke to in Corona had never seen the stuff.
Therefore why was there any press release at all? Was it a gigantic PR cock-up?
I'd like your response as this Haut PR thing is your field of interest.
Sorry Don, but the Mogul theory IS officially proven (or established to USAF and government satisfaction anyway). Therefore DR does have to disprove it before he can begin to strengthen the ET theory. He has to destroy each and every possible terrestrial answer to establish ET, since neither ETs nor ET craft are known to science, either then or now.
And yes, the stuff in the photos IS what Brazel found (whether Mogul or not) because the scenario DR proposes to counter this is just too preposterous to be credible.
By all means, defend the embattled fort to the death.
- March 17, 2012 at 8:59 AM
- Don said...
CDA wrote:
"1. Do you think Marcel/Cavitt more or less identified the debris at the ranch when they recovered it?
2. If they did not, did Blanchard later on?
3. Whether they did or didn'y, why was it necessary to make any kind of public statement (i.e. the press release)?"
1. No
2. No
3. Concerns about espionage. To disinform.
"The reason I ask no. 3 is that nobody knew of the discovery except one rancher & two kids"
Well, there was Hollis Wilson. We don't know who he talked to about it. We don't know who the kids talked to about it (or had taken some debris to show). The press also says Mrs Brazel was there. Then there is the Chavez county sheriffs department. According to the Roswell Morning Dispatch, Wilcox was not the first sheriff Brazel talked to (his name is in the paper). We don't know who overheard Brazel's account there. Brazel had some contact with KGFL as well.
Popping to post-1978, according to Bill Brazel, his mother wasn't at the ranch, but in Tularosa, and Mack drove the kids there before reporting to Wilcox. So, it is possible the story was known in Tularosa (a few miles north of Alamogordo). Bill also said Mack went to the weather bureau in Roswell...so whoever was there may have heard the story.
Hypothesis: Brazel at least attempted to interest the Lincoln county sheriffs (it was their jurisdiction and were close by) in the matter.
About 1 and 2. All I have is their behavior to go on. What it looks like to me is that everyone involved passed the buck to a higher authority, beginning with Brazel. Wilcox, Marcel, Blanchard, and possibly even Ramey. One does that when the matter is beyond one's ability to deal with or is outside of one's...let's say, one's job description, or area of expertise.
- March 17, 2012 at 9:44 AM
- David Rudiak said...
cda wrote:
Sorry Don, but the Mogul theory IS officially proven (or established to USAF and government satisfaction anyway).
Thanks for rewriting history again Christopher. If by the "government" you mean the GAO, which did the 1994/95 inquiry for Congressman Schiff, they never took any "official" position on what happened. They were tasked with finding any pertinent government documentation related to Roswell and basically drew a blank, except for the FBI telegram that was already well known in the UFO community.
They printed the USAF OSI peoples opinion, but did NOT say that they agreed with it.
About the only thing we ever got on the unofficial opinion of the GAO was an article by columnist Jack Anderson about 3 weeks before the GAO came out with their report. Anderson said the GAO told him the Air Force had been uncooperative and deceptive with them and seemed to be hiding "something big" that was still secret. They didn't think ET crash, but maybe a nuclear accident of some sort.
As for the Air Force, head debunker Col. Richard Weaver (ret.) responded in a recent interview that they never said they had "proven" the Ramey photo debris came from Mogul, only that it was "consistent":
Q: Would you agree that this Affidavit [by Gen. Dubose] calls into question the use of the 'Ramey Office photos' as evidence?
RW--No--That's a trick question. I don't think anybody ever said these photos were "evidence" of anything--other than what Ramey claimed was material recovered from the area near Roswell. The only thing you can say about the photos is that they depict damaged material that is consistent with a Rawin reflector of the type which was used on Mogul flights--as well as weather flights, and also for other purposes. Nobody I know claimed these definitively came from a Mogul flight, only that they were consistent with materials we learned were used on such flights that were known to have been in the area.
Of course, this is a bunch of doubletalk from Weaver, an Air Force OSI counterintelligence agent, self-described to fellow counterintel agent Sheridan Cavitt as one of those people who kept the secrets, and a trained propagandist, but that is what he said.
We all know the reality is they were very definitely claiming that the nonexistent, canceled Mogul Flight #4 accounted for the Roswell crash. So cda is right about that, even though Weaver in the present-day is disingenuously denying it.
Weaver is right, as I myself keep pointing out, that a simple radar target and balloon by themselves cannot possibly prove Ramey's debris came from Mogul, because as he himself said, the exact same stuff was standard meteorological equipment. They were used on daily weather balloon flights at various places around he country. White Sands weather station used them before V-2 flights to chart upper atmospheric winds.
So again, cda, point me to the debris that "proves" Ramey's photo debris came from Mogul, or anything in Brazel's descriptions as well. And I don't mean just a radar target and balloon that could indeed come from anywhere.
What I see is the total absence of any debris in the descriptions or photos that would definitively point to a Mogul balloon, such as those hundreds of yards of missing balloon twine or a sonobuoy. As Ramey's weather officer then and in the present has said, that debris could have come from anywhere because it was just a typical rawin meteorological balloon (and personally he DOESN'T think what he saw did come from Mogul).
Bottom line, there has NEVER been any "official" "government" acceptance that the Mogul "explanation" was "proven".
- March 17, 2012 at 11:24 AM
- David Rudiak said...
For those wanting to read the June 1995 Jack Anderson/Michael Binstein article on the GAO's opinion of what the Air Force "investigators" were doing, it can be found at various newspapers on Google News, e.g., Norwalk CT "The Hour":
Sample quotes:
"[The Air Force] issued a short report last September [1994] claiming the debris was part of Project Mogul... Though the GAO is not satisfied with the Air Force's explanation, it has confirmed the existence of Project Mogul. GAO officials add emphatically that no one involved in the audit believes the Air Force is covering up a UFO incident."
"'But we do believe that something did happen at Roswell,' said one source close to the investigation. 'Something big. We don't know if it was a plane that crashed with a nuclear device on it... or if it was some other experimental situation. But everything we've seen so far points to attempts on the part of the Air Force to lead anybody that looks at this down another track...'"
"'What we have found so far is that the Air Force has not told Schiff the whole truth. But we aren't pursuing the truth, either. All our auditors have done is verify that some of the information given to Mr. Schiff was very wrong. But we may not call it that way in the end, depending on the way you look at it.'"
"While our sources say the Air Force has been less than forthcoming, the GAO may not make the case in its upcoming report especially since it might imply that the GAO believes a UFO landed at Roswell. 'We will tend to err on the side of not fueling UFO theories,' one GAO official explained."
So the GAO never accepted the Project Mogul theory, thought the Air Force was being less than candid and trying to mislead them and Schiff about what really happened, hiding something, "something big," but not a UFO crash, also not Project Mogul, but something else. But they weren't going to on-the-record accuse the Air Force of doing this in their final report lest they fuel UFO theories.
This does not exactly sound like a ringing endorsement of the Project Mogul theory, much less cda's claim that the "government" accepted it as "proven." The GAO never endorsed anything, and even admitted to Anderson that they weren't trying to get at the truth either. But they did know that the Air Force was deceiving them and Congressman Schiff about what really happened.
- March 17, 2012 at 12:15 PM
- Don said...
David, Anderson's GAO sources' comments comes close to my perspective on Roswell. Thanks for posting it. Unlike them, I have no reason to be touchy about ET, and don't exclude it might have been something Mogul-like (domestic, experimental).
That a CIC special agent (possibly two) accompanied Marcel to the site would indicate something out of the ordinary, most often a crash. Basically, the intelligence officer is there to identify things, and the CIC agents are there to look for signs of espionage or sabotage.
What set this rolling -- a guess -- was something Brazel said to Marcel at the Sheriff's office.
- March 17, 2012 at 1:18 PM
- cda said...
I accept that the Mogul explanation was never officially regarded as "proven". It was merely regarded as, shall we say, established to a reasonable degree of certainty.
On looking at the GAO report again, I notice that in an addendum on the Majestic-12 papers they do not explicitly say that these papers are forgeries either. The GAO merely indicate they have "found nothing in our work that contradicts the conclusions by these agencies". Several such agencies are named.
But wait a minute: these agencies never explicitly say the documents are forgeries either. They merely say "there is no evidence...etc"
But by a well-known theorem, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Time to shut up.
- March 17, 2012 at 3:41 PM
- Don said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- March 17, 2012 at 5:11 PM
- Don said...
CDA, About 15 years ago, Twitch was kind enough to offer me some advice on how to read that kind of rhetoric. Since he appears to be of importance to some skeptics, I wonder why they haven't taken his advice. It was pretty good.
I've got some bits of Twitch on language archived:
[discussion about the RDR news story]
Me "I can't conclude anything about what may or may not have really really objectively happened and who did or said what about it."
Twitch: "I can clearly agree with that last sentence! What is the
most interesting thing about the press release is the lack
of passive voice, apparently, in parts of it. I cannot
imagine that Blanchard would let that get out. Yet it did.
But all communications until recently, and most of them,
were in passive voice. Anyone writing active was in for a
stern lecture."
Twitch: "I still have trouble sometimes when writing fiction
remembering to avoid passive voice since I had to write that
way for so many years."
I argued with him about passive voice, but he was right and I was wrong.
Maybe I'll gather up all the quotes I can as a little Twitch Style Guide to Bureaucratese.
I suggest, at least understanding the rhetoric of cya.
- March 17, 2012 at 5:11 PM
- David Rudiak said...
I accept that the Mogul explanation was never officially regarded as "proven". It was merely regarded as, shall we say, established to a reasonable degree of certainty.
The lord giveth and then the lord taketh away, ehh cda?
No, other than the AFOSI debunking "investigators" led by Col. Weaver who, shall we say, insinuated very strongly that Mogul was the conclusive explanation, no other government agency ever stated it was "established to a reasonable degree of certainty."
Kneejerk civilian skeptics latched onto Mogul very strongly and uncritically (seem to love those military authority figures), along with most of the mainstream media (like the N.Y. Times), but never the "government" in general, certainly not the GAO which was charged by Congressman Schiff with digging up whatever documents they could on it. As far as they were concerned, Mogul was bunk, the A.F. was deliberately misleading them and Schiff, but something important did happen, they were sure of that.
And then we get Weaver himself in his recent interview talking out of both sides of his mouth, claiming they never said they had proved Mogul, or that what was shown in Fort Worth was from Mogul or came from Roswell. He's right that they never came close to proving any of this, but, shall we say again, when he was writing the report 17 years ago insinuated most strongly they had proven it by carefully cherry picking the evidence, along with some deliberate lying. Remember, Weaver himself said it in the report: they were counterintelligence agents charged with keeping the nation's big military secrets.
On looking at the GAO report again, I notice that in an addendum on the Majestic-12 papers they do not explicitly say that these papers are forgeries either. The GAO merely indicate they have "found nothing in our work that contradicts the conclusions by these agencies". Several such agencies are named.
But wait a minute: these agencies never explicitly say the documents are forgeries either. They merely say "there is no evidence...etc"
Basically the GAO report says the searches by all these various agencies, like the FBI, the CIA, the Army, etc., turned up NO documents related to Roswell (except for the one already well-known FBI telegram of July 8 out of Dallas). This was true even of documents that should have existed, but couldn't be found or were deliberately destroyed, such as the Roswell base outgoing communications of that period.
Another clearly missing document was the follow-up report that the Cincinnati FBI office was supposed to receive from Wright Field once they had examined the debris being sent there. And what happened to any internal documents from Wright Field? They would have written up something, but nothing has ever been found.
And don't you think the Pentagon and Ramey would have wanted some sort of investigation if this really were some sort of colossal PR or base screw-up by key officers like Blanchard and Marcel? What happened with that, other than it never seems to have happened? No, instead, apparently, you leave people with very bad judgment in charge of delivering your A-bomb arsenal.
But by a well-known theorem, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Yep, do you really believe that the Army intelligence, Wright Field, the CIA, etc. really had nothing else on Roswell? There should have been some sort of minimal low-classification paper trail if it really were the nothing incident debunkers claim it to be.
E.g., the FBI got a very detailed report back from Wright Field the next month on an obvious hoax disc they sent there for examination. Where was the promised equivalent for Roswell?
- March 17, 2012 at 5:37 PM
- David Rudiak said...
David, Anderson's GAO sources' comments comes close to my perspective on Roswell. Thanks for posting it. Unlike them, I have no reason to be touchy about ET, and don't exclude it might have been something Mogul-like (domestic, experimental).
Just for the record, Anderson was on the Jeff Rense show about 10 years ago, and stated that Roswell had all the earmarks of a classic government cover-up. Anderson had been covering the Washington scene for about 50 years by then and had seen his fair share of cover-ups, even exposing a few himself, so he would likely know one when he saw one.
His personal opinion was that Roswell was a flying saucer crash, but his mere opinion, of course, is no more valuable than anybody else's.
That a CIC special agent (possibly two) accompanied Marcel to the site would indicate something out of the ordinary, most often a crash. Basically, the intelligence officer is there to identify things, and the CIC agents are there to look for signs of espionage or sabotage.
Blanchard sending out out his top two intelligence officers, one intel, the other counter-intel, would alone indicate something thought to be of considerable importance. Otherwise, you typically send out lower-ranking flunkies to take care of it, if you bother to investigate at all.
Obvously they considered someting had happened definitely worth investigating.
What set this rolling -- a guess -- was something Brazel said to Marcel at the Sheriff's office.
That Marcel and Cavitt went in two separate vehicles likewise indicates they expected to find considerable debris, as Marcel said Brazel described to him at the time, one of the reasons they did investigate, another being the unusual properties of the debris that Brazel either described or showed by bringing samples.
Marcel interviewed later never indicated that Brazel brought debris with him, but the Sheriff's family said he did. If the family is correct, then a little of that seemingly indestructible memory foil would certainly pique Marcel's interest, and then Blanchard's when Marcel reported back to him.
All Marcel said about this is that he and Blanchard agreed that a craft of an unusual kind must have crashed. He told Marcel to take Cavitt with him to help him pick up as much debris as possible, since Brazel had indicated so much out there, hence Cavitt and the two vehicles.
And if Frank Joyce was telling the truth, when he first went to the Sheriff's office, Brazel told him about finding badly decomposed bodies or body parts that weren't human. If that were the case, that would be a super-incentive to investigate with your two top intel people.
Again, Marcel himself never mentioned anything about seeing or being told about bodies, though a few witnesses Carey and Schmitt found said Marcel did allude to them briefly. (They were pasty, rubbery, reminded him of Casper the Ghost)
In his last interview with Linda Corley, Marcel may have hinted at this when he told her there were some things he was holding back and would never talk about "for the sake of my country." But that this meant bodies, of course, is just my speculation.
- March 17, 2012 at 7:44 PM