Aidan McGeath

The Roswell Incident

    Since man first looked up to the stars, he has wondered what lies beyond his simple Earth. From myths and legends to modern-day science fiction, beings in the sky have long lived in the myths and legends of Earth’s peoples. It was not until the twentieth century that these tales became accepted as something more than myth. Skeptics and theorists began to watch the skies for UFOs swooping down from distant stars. To most, UFOs are simply part of science fiction.  Despite this notion, there is a very real aspect to these UFO stories that lie roiling beneath the surface. The modern UFO craze began one fateful day in June of 1947. A farmer named W.W. Brazel discovered the wreckage of a saucer-shaped object on a ranch outside of Roswell, New Mexico and reported it to the local Air Force base. The United States military claimed that the saucer was a crashed weather balloon. This, naturally, lead to a minor uproar as Americans started spouting theories that ranged from alien spacecraft to experimental planes to top-secret spying devices. But what truly happened at Roswell? To dive deep into the very dawn of the UFO craze, one must look at the facts and then come to their own conclusions. From the start, the Roswell Incident was shrouded in secrecy and conspiracy. No matter how many times the United States’ government releases an excuse or a conspiracy theory is disproved, Roswell will live on as the true beginning of the UFO age. In the end, one must realize that the United States Military used a fabricated story of a weather balloon to cover up a military spying operation. Because of this falsified information, skeptics were able to poke holes in the cover story, question its validity, and come to the wrongful conclusion that the crashed object had been an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

    The events surrounding Roswell are muddled and confusing but in order to discover the truth behind the Roswell incident, one must investigate the events of - and leading up to - the crash. By far, the most informative sources are the newspaper articles published mere days after the incident. W. W. Brazel’s experiences are detailed in a series of articles published in the Roswell Daily Record in July of 1947. In these articles, Brazel discusses the crashed saucer and the military’s reaction to it. Brazel was not particularly pleased to find that his discovery made him a nationwide anomaly. The New Mexican rancher’s story was devoured by skeptics hell-bent on discovering exactly what landed in Roswell. In his book Conspiracy Theories in America: An Encyclopedia, Peter Knight discusses UFO sightings before the Roswell Incident. “At the time leading up to the alleged incident, Americans had already started reporting flying objects at an increasing rate. In early June 1947 a private pilot flying west from Boise, Idaho radioed that he had spotted dish - or saucer - shaped aircraft, and a rash of UFO sightings ensued. But the events at Roswell added an entirely new perspective to the sightings-evidence of a crash.” (Knight, 627). Knight provides evidence that something fishy was going on around Roswell. Whether this was extraterrestrial activity or some secret government project, it certainly perked a lot of ears across the nation. This is significant because it shows that something conspiratorial was happening before the Roswell Incident, and the crash was almost certainly related to these mysterious objects. When the crash was eventually detailed in the Roswell Daily Record, conspiracy theorists finally had some meat to back up their paper-thin ideas. The officers at the Roswell Air Force Base confiscated the crash materials and the Roswellians never saw the crashed saucer again. To many, this was a blatant coverup made even more infuriating when the United States’ military claimed that the crashed vessel was a standard weather balloon that had fallen from the sky. This is a decent enough explanation, and it was enough to placate the conspiracy theorists for over two decades. The seeds of conspiracy had been sown - all that remained was to wait until the schemes grew strong; strangling the truth like parasitic vines of ivy.

    The initial explanation for the Roswell Incident was that a the crashed saucer was nothing more than a simple weather balloon. Weather balloons are essentially massive balloons that carry meteorological devices into the atmosphere to measure and track the weather. These balloons are used to investigate humidity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure. If a meteorologist is looking to check the wind speed at a given point in time, he or she may use radar, GPS, or another type of navigation system to track the balloon’s movement over time. While most recreational balloons are filled with helium, this element can run rather expensive and weather balloons are more typically filled with hydrogen, which is significantly cheaper. The unit that does the actual meteorological work is known as a radiosonde and hangs below the actual balloon to measure weather patterns. The balloons themselves are constructed of flexible latex. The description that W. W. Brazel gave the Roswell Daily Record matches the materials typically found on a weather balloon to an extent. “Brazel related that on June 14 he and an 8-year old son, Vernon, were about 7 or 8 miles from the ranch house of the J. B. Foster ranch, which he operates, when they came upon a large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.” (Roswell Daily Record). This description seems to suggest that the crashed saucer was indeed man-made. It doesn’t take much effort to realize that the materials described by Brazel would not hold up in outer space, and thus it would seem that the vessel was made by human hands. Being in close proximity to an Air Force base meant that a lot of odd airborne craft were launched. In an article in the newspaper The Day, William Broad discusses the frequency of crashes in the Roswell area. ¨Just as sightings of squids and whales spawned tales of sea monsters, so too, the Air Force says, the shadowy doings of brave fliers, high-altitude balloons, crash dummies and saucerlike craft in the southeastern New Mexico desert at the dawn of the space age were glimpsed and embellished over the decades into false evidence of aliens.” (Broad, The Day). In this quote, Broad provides evidence that the Roswell crash was bloated into clearly exaggerated theories. Man-made objects were frequently discovered in the Roswell area. This quote strongly supports the idea that a crashed weather balloon was blown way out of proportion and was turned by skeptics into wild tales of extraterrestrial landings. A weather balloon is a fairly obvious answer but is it the correct one? There are plenty of holes to poke in the Air Force’s initial excuse and skeptics took full advantage of this. The United States’ Military released an initial burst of information that W. W. Brazel discovered a crashed weather balloon on the ranch but their false explanation had some critical flaws and conspiracy theorists began to poke holes in their government’s excuses, determined to find the truth.

    In 1994 the theories of mysterious government conspiracies and cover-ups were confirmed when the United States government released the truth behind Roswell: Project Mogul. A military reconnaissance operation, Project Mogul was a top-secret balloon used to spy on Soviet atomic bomb tests. In his article in The Day, William Broad discussed this highly classified information roughly three decades after the Roswell Incident. ¨A 23-page report made public in September 1994 said the silvery wreckage had been part of a top-secret system of atomic espionage. Carried high into the atmosphere by balloon, the spy sensors listened for reverberations from Soviet nuclear blasts half a world away.¨ (Broad, The Day). One must assume that, as the project was conceived at the dawn of the Cold War, it remained in secrecy until the war ended and threats from the Soviets were no longer as intense. The Project Mogul report presented a sufficient explanation for many conspiracy theorists. It explains the military’s swift response to the event as well as their flawed weather balloon excuse. The balloons used in Project Mogul were similar to standard weather balloons but instead of meteorological equipment they were equipped with devices used for the sole purpose of the long-distance detection of sound waves. The early Mogul balloons were constructed of the same latex rubber as standard weather balloons, but as time went on the latex was replaced with a more efficient and leak-resistant polyethylene plastic. A statement from Brazel in the Roswell Daily Record seems to support the idea that what he found was not simply an ordinary weather balloon. “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.” (Roswell Daily Record). In this, the newspaper details that the crashed object was decidedly not a normal weather balloon. With both the combined evidence of this statement and Brazel’s earlier information regarding the materials used in the balloon, one can deduce that the downed vessel was not a weather balloon, was definitely not a spacecraft, and could resemble the Project Mogul balloon. When this conclusion is added to the government’s blatant release of information regarding Project Mogul and all its secrets, it is clear that what landed in Roswell was a spy balloon from the covert government spying enterprise known as Project Mogul.

    Despite the evidence pointing towards Project Mogul, conspiracy theorists have clung to the clearly wrong theory that aliens landed in Roswell. These skeptics use weak and falsified data to support their conspiratorial ideas. To truly understand the rationale behind a conspiracy theorist, all outside bias must be banished and replaced with an open, accepting mind. After the Roswell Incident in 1947, interest in UFOs sparked among American conspiracy theorists but it was not until the 1970s that theories of extraterrestrial visitors began to float freely. In his ever-useful article in The Day, William Broad discusses the rebirth of UFO theories surrounding the Roswell Incident. “...the matter was largely forgotten until the late 1970s with the birth of what eventually became a small industry of experts, books, and conspiracy theories.” (Broad, The Day). As Broad has stated, Roswell faded into nothing more than a legend, a mystery long-ago solved. It was through the exaggeration and mythologization of the crash story that the initial UFO theories came to fruition. As stated in Peter Knight’s book Conspiracy Theories in America: An Encyclopedia, strange UFO-like craft had been seen in the sky in days prior to the Roswell crash. While these were most likely other weather balloons, Project Mogul arrays, or aircraft traveling to and from the Roswell Air Force base, conspiracy theorists were notoriously swift to latch onto flimsy evidence and use it to support their claims. In an article about famous UFO sightings, authors Joe Nickell and James McGaha discuss this tendency towards unreliable information. “It appears that UFOlogists are always looking for a Holy Grail case to verify their belief in extraterrestrial visitation, and when that does not pan out (most UFO reports prove little more than misidentifications, ambiguous sightings, fake photos, and the like) they seek out the old cases and are rewarded with much more sensational testimony.” (Nickell/McGaha). Sightings, abductions, and reported contacts with extraterrestrial beings follow this penchant for weak evidence. Perhaps no case exemplifies such a mindset more than the “abduction” of Betty and Barney Hill. This couple claimed to be abducted by aliens outside of the Indian Head resort in New Hampshire. During a hypnosis session intended to reveal long-forgotten memories, Betty Hill revealed a story of abduction and alien horror. Her husband Barney also related a story of abduction, but the details of his tale differed slightly from those of his wife. It is thought that Betty Hill’s story came from a dream she had repeatedly and told to her husband until it was ground into his memory. The Hill incident is an example of two people blowing something tiny way out of proportion and crafting a bloated, floundering whale of a tale. This is essentially what happened in Roswell. Despite serious evidence to support the Project Mogul theory, skeptics latched onto weak data and sent a real event into the halls of legend and forever linked the small town of Roswell to UFOs and extraterrestrial beings.

    The Roswell Incident will forever be swathed in conspiracy. When W. W. Brazel discovered the infamous crashed saucer in June 1947, he sparked the dawn of the UFO age. The United States’ Government dropped an initial explanation about a downed weather balloon but this did little to deter the skeptics, who tore holes in the falsehood and formulated their own theories involving alien visitors and off-world spacecraft. Even after the truth was revealed - that the mysterious object was actually a crashed array from the espionage mission known as Project Mogul - , conspiracy theorists would not back down. The truth behind Roswell lies in the 23-page report on Project Mogul. As boring as it may seem, no aliens ever landed in New Mexico. The fact of the matter is that a balloon carrying an array of instruments meant to spy on Soviet atomic bomb tests crashed in Roswell. A rancher found the wreckage and returned it to the military, who released a statement detailing a weather balloon as the object in question. The case died down for a couple decades before a resurgence of UFO lore brought Roswell blaring to the front lines yet again. Despite the 1994 public release of information on Project Mogul, stories of UFO landings continue to circulate among the skeptic community. In the end, stories about alien landings belong in the annals of science fiction - not in reality. One cannot truly know if other beings wait out there in the stars but it is certain without a doubt that what landed outside of Roswell was made by men of Earth and not by beings from the stars.

Sources Cited

Broad, William J. ¨Air Force debunks Roswell UFO story¨. The Day. June 25, 1997. This newspaper article details the release of a report from the United States military debunking the UFO theories. The report talks about how crash-test dummies dropped to perfect the parachutes used in the X-15 could easily be confused for mangled alien bodies. The original crashed vehicle was reported to be a top-secret balloon used to spy on Soviet nuclear tests half a world away. Essentially, this article restates the military’s explanations for each UFO conspiracy theory in Roswell.

Dunning, Brian. ¨Betty and Barney Hill: The Original UFO Abduction.¨ Skeptiod.com. 21 October 2008. This article is a transcript of a podcast in which the author investigates the claims made by Betty and Barney Hill that they were abducted by aliens on September 19, 1961 in New Hampshire. Dunning looks at the three pieces of evidence that are seen as undeniable proof of an alien abduction and disproves them. This is an interesting look into one of the most popular stories of American UFO culture, and can be quite handy for those looking into this subject.

Knight, Peter. ¨Conspiracy Theories in America: An Encyclopedia¨. ABC-CILO. 2003. Book. This illustrious tome is a veritable treasure hoard of information on conspiracy theories from American culture. With over three hundred entries from A-Z, this book sheds light on the details of various theories, people, and events connected to conspiratorial events in American history. The book contains primary documents relating to conspiracy theories and the organizations that investigate them. For those looking to get a better overall understanding of a specific conspiracy theory or of the conspiracy theorist community as a whole, this book is a good choice.

Nickell, Joe and McGaha, James. Csicop.org. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. May/June 2014. Article. 27 January 2015. In this article, authors Joe Nickell and James McGaha discuss the ¨Roswellian Syndrome¨, a term used by conspiracy theorists to describe a particular phenomenon related to conspiracy theories. Essentially, the Roswellian Syndrome refers to the tendency for conspiracy theories to be debunked and then resurface years later with a fresh following. Several theories are discussed in this article. The authors are fairly unbiased, as they provide both the theories and explanations behind each UFO incident. This article gives an introduction to several UFO-related incidents that can be used as additional research topics.

"Harassed Rancher Who Located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About It", Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947. This article discusses one W. W. Brazel, a man who discovered the wreckage of what he believed to be a flying saucer. He and his son supposedly came across a crash site of tin foil, smoke-gray rubber, scotch tape, and strong sticks. After reporting the incident to the police, Brazel lead a pair of military officials from Roswell to the crash site. They attempted to reconstruct the device, but couldn’t manage to and took the wreckage back to Walker Air Force Base. Brazel stated that the event attracted too much attention and he wouldn’t be bringing any more crashes to the attention of the military unless he found something to the magnitude of a bomb.