The Roswell Controversy.

[BIAD]

Sometimes, the internet can bring a smile to one's face.

By Jeff Spry published July 07, 2022

'The story goes like this: On July 7, 1947, a rancher in Corona, New Mexico named William Ware "Mack" Brazel
phoned the local sheriff with an odd tale of strange metallic pieces found on his property roughly 80 miles
(130 kilometers) northwest of Roswell, New Mexico.

Today is the 75th anniversary of that notorious event, known around the globe as the Roswell Incident, in which a
supposed alien craft crash-landed in New Mexico with a crew of extraterrestrials aboard.

After Brazel reported the alleged wreckage, officers from the nearby Roswell Army Air Field were dispatched and
officially announced via a press release that they'd found a "flying disc," a report that was later amended to identify
the foil-like debris as a high-altitude spy balloon instead. Nevertheless, America's fascination with UFOs erupted!..'

Space.com
.............................................................

The Roswell Encyclopedia. Randle, Kevin D.

'On July 6, 1947, rancher Mack Brazel walked into the sheriffs office in Rosewell, New Mexico, to report some strange
debris in one of his fields. The incident was the culmination of several reports of strange lights, sounds, and shapes in
the sky; the beginning of a series of government statements, retractions, and denials; and the subject of a thousand
conflicting stories...'

Chicago Public Library:

............................................................

'...On June 14th, 1947, farmer Mack Brazel noticed a strange wreckage in one of his fields, 30 miles to the north of
Roswell Air Base. He didn’t  think much of it and drove home. Two weeks later, on July 4th, he returned with his
family to look at the wreckage again. He hid it under a bush and went back home. Two days after this he finally decided
to report it to the police.

Castleford Academy:

14th June + two weeks (fourteen days) doesn't get you to the fourth of July!
'Farmer'?!
.............................................................

'It was June 14, 1947, when William “Mack” Brazel rode out on the J.B. Foster Ranch, which Brazel operated to check
the stock. His neighbor, Floyd, and Loretta Proctor’s son rode along with him. The pair soon found a large amount of
strange debris spread throughout about 200 yards...'

Legends Of America:
..........................................................

Poor Mack, they mix it all up and the truth gets lost!

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Comms all fouled up. Fail, again & again. Reminds me of that game "pass the message" from grammar school.

[GeauxHomeLittleD]

Two years ago today Kdog and I wee actually in Roswell, New Mexico. My pics showed up on my memories for today on Facebook.

[BIAD]

Comms all fouled up. Fail, again & again. Reminds me of that game "pass the message" from grammar school.

Legends of America are the closest along with Kevin Randle... that's not my opinion, it's the simple original
account told by Bill Brazel and the neighbours of the Foster ranch.

It will always make me chuckle that -whether you believe it was a downed unknown craft or a crashed device
used in the surveillance of Soviet nuclear testing, the sheep-herder reported the debris had laid on the desert
floor for over 22 days before he took some to Sheriff Wilcox in Roswell.

It doesn't matter whether -some suggest, Brazel was trying to jump on the new 'flying saucer' craze he'd allegedly
heard discussed in a Corona bar (Wade's), what matters is the assumed importance put on the classified Mogul
experiment and the lack of concern to retrieve the equipment attached to the balloon.

Why make it a secret mission, if -after supposedly receiving the radio-transmitted data from the floating device,
the actual equipment is then forgotten about? Surely the dangling array couldn't broadcast all of its findings as
many of the parts were just foil-wrapped aerofoils that were there to slow the balloon's ascent. Remember, these
balloons were devised to maintain a certain height in the lower area of the stratosphere and not 'whizz' around
like the object seen the night before the crash by the Wilmots.

Nobody asks how heavy the radio device was that transmitted the information from the stratosphere or why
such a piece of machinery (and parts) were never recognised by army personnel or even Sheriff Wilcox.
(With battery BA-70: 38.23 lb)

Weren't downed weather balloons a regular occurrence in that region of the US...? This one was certainly
treated in the same fashion as those experimental devices. No secrets, not 'arrests' for those who find them!

[F2d5thCav]

Donald Keyhoe's books are worth reading, because he was seriously looking at the phenomena when it was happening.

The bit that struck me is that of all the reports he mentioned, Roswell was not one of them.

But:

He did mention a 1947 hoax of a crashed UFO in Colorado that was investigated.

I've always wondered if that somehow got transformed into the Roswell legend.

Cheers

[BIAD]

Donald Keyhoe's books are worth reading, because he was seriously looking at the phenomena when it was happening.

The bit that struck me is that of all the reports he mentioned, Roswell was not one of them.

But:

He did mention a 1947 hoax of a crashed UFO in Colorado that was investigated.

I've always wondered if that somehow got transformed into the Roswell legend.

Cheers

I'll take a look at the Colorado one you mentioned, thanks.

Sometimes, the internet can bring a smile to one's face.

By Jeff Spry published July 07, 2022

'The story goes like this: On July 7, 1947, a rancher in Corona, New Mexico named William Ware "Mack" Brazel
phoned the local sheriff with an odd tale of strange metallic pieces found on his property roughly 80 miles
(130 kilometers) northwest of Roswell, New Mexico.

Today is the 75th anniversary of that notorious event, known around the globe as the Roswell Incident, in which a
supposed alien craft crash-landed in New Mexico with a crew of extraterrestrials aboard.

After Brazel reported the alleged wreckage, officers from the nearby Roswell Army Air Field were dispatched and
officially announced via a press release that they'd found a "flying disc," a report that was later amended to identify
the foil-like debris as a high-altitude spy balloon instead. Nevertheless, America's fascination with UFOs erupted!..'

Space.com
.............................................................

The Roswell Encyclopedia. Randle, Kevin D.

'On July 6, 1947, rancher Mack Brazel walked into the sheriffs office in Rosewell, New Mexico, to report some strange
debris in one of his fields. The incident was the culmination of several reports of strange lights, sounds, and shapes in
the sky; the beginning of a series of government statements, retractions, and denials; and the subject of a thousand
conflicting stories...'

Chicago Public Library:

............................................................

'...On June 14th, 1947, farmer Mack Brazel noticed a strange wreckage in one of his fields, 30 miles to the north of
Roswell Air Base. He didn’t  think much of it and drove home. Two weeks later, on July 4th, he returned with his
family to look at the wreckage again. He hid it under a bush and went back home. Two days after this he finally decided
to report it to the police.

Castleford Academy:

14th June + two weeks (fourteen days) doesn't get you to the fourth of July!
'Farmer'?!
.............................................................

'It was June 14, 1947, when William “Mack” Brazel rode out on the J.B. Foster Ranch, which Brazel operated to check
the stock. His neighbor, Floyd, and Loretta Proctor’s son rode along with him. The pair soon found a large amount of
strange debris spread throughout about 200 yards...'

Legends Of America:
..........................................................

Poor Mack, they mix it all up and the truth gets lost!

People need to remember it was a different time then, back then 2 weeks is the same as 3 weeks in our time 

[Ninurta]

Legends of America are the closest along with Kevin Randle... that's not my opinion, it's the simple original
account told by Bill Brazel and the neighbours of the Foster ranch.

It will always make me chuckle that -whether you believe it was a downed unknown craft or a crashed device
used in the surveillance of Soviet nuclear testing, the sheep-herder reported the debris had laid on the desert
floor for over 22 days before he took some to Sheriff Wilcox in Roswell.

It doesn't matter whether -some suggest, Brazel was trying to jump on the new 'flying saucer' craze he'd allegedly
heard discussed in a Corona bar (Wade's), what matters is the assumed importance put on the classified Mogul
experiment and the lack of concern to retrieve the equipment attached to the balloon.

Why make it a secret mission, if -after supposedly receiving the radio-transmitted data from the floating device,
the actual equipment is then forgotten about? Surely the dangling array couldn't broadcast all of its findings as
many of the parts were just foil-wrapped aerofoils that were there to slow the balloon's ascent. Remember, these
balloons were devised to maintain a certain height in the lower area of the stratosphere and not 'whizz' around
like the object seen the night before the crash by the Wilmots.

Nobody asks how heavy the radio device was that transmitted the information from the stratosphere or why
such a piece of machinery (and parts) were never recognised by army personnel or even Sheriff Wilcox.
(With battery BA-70: 38.23 lb)

Weren't downed weather balloons a regular occurrence in that region of the US...? This one was certainly
treated in the same fashion as those experimental devices. No secrets, not 'arrests' for those who find them!

My main question is why would you wrap a "secret" or "spy" balloon in tinfoil, which is bound to increase it's radar signature and light reflection qualities, and make it much more highly visible?

Seems a little counter-productive to me, and more than a little fishy as stories go.

.

[A51Watcher2]

[A51Watcher2]

I tend to side with the goldfish most times on this one.

[BIAD]

Here's an article from The El Paso Times from 2017 that is indicative of how the strange event in New Mexico has
been morphed into a jumble of journalistic spaghetti that shrouds the entire incident and forces a reader to arrive at
the writer's preferred conclusion.

Notice the title, it already relates that the main character in this misleading piece has dismissed the unusual factors
of what is surmised from the story of what he discovered on a ranch. 'A ranch' -not his ranch. Bill Brazel managed the
vacant J.B Foster Ranch where he herded sheep, but the reader won't find that in this article.

By Trish Long
Rancher surprised at excitement over his debris discovery near Roswell

'In early July 1947, William Ware “Mack” Brazel reported finding debris on a ranch near Corona, N.M., about 80 miles
northwest of Roswell. On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record reported that the intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment
group at Roswell Army Air Field announced that they had come into possession of a flying saucer...'

We're off to a great start, the reader is required to adhere to the newspaper reports due to the author only having access to
newspaper-clippings. There's no research done into what happened near Corona, just a jigsaw created from pieces written
by the Press. In regards of William Brazel's name, 'Ware' was his middle title, but only became a journalistic commonplace
when 'Ancestry.com' became a thing.

'...The story made worldwide headlines, but less than 24 hours later, the military changed its story.
In a July 9, 1947, Associated Press article, it was reported that the debris found by Brazel was actually from a weather
balloon: An examination by the Army revealed Tuesday night that mysterious object found on a lonely New Mexico ranch
was a harmless high-altitude weather balloon, not a grounded flying disc...'

As a stand-alone paragraph, an average person's rationality would accept this explanation. A mistake was made over
some debris found in the desert of a State where scientific experiments are conducted regularly and the regular rural
Joe-schmo outside of the wide-ranging world of meteorology would be unable to distinguish between a downed and
damaged weather balloon and the remains of a crashed craft of unknown origin.

It puts the main character in his place for the reader, a simple blue-collar man who works with his hands and not his brain.
Military people and scientists are smart, civilians are dumb... got it?! Anyway, let's continue with this formulaic assembly of words.

'Excitement was high until Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters here, cleared
up the mystery. The bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beam and rubber remnants of a balloon were sent here Tuesday by
Army Air Transport in the wake of reports that it was a flying disc. But the general said the objects were the crushed
remains of a wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitude...'

So forget that Bill Brazel used-up gas to travel 80 miles to trick the Chaves County Sheriff with material that would
undoubtedly be discredited at some point by people from such academic disciplines and put Brazel in Sheriff Wilcox's
bad-books.

Forget that Brazel would leave the sheep he was tending in July temperatures that could easily effect his income, visit
the Proctors on horseback (and dropping off their son) and show them a piece of the material, then drive to Roswell in
order to be called an idiot for not recognising one of the regular falls from the sky in that area of New Mexico...

Ignore all that waste of time, energy and money and accept that Brigadier General Ramey agreed for a moment with
the alleged simple-minded rancher?! How does this make sense?

Brazel thought something didn't add-up and went to seek someone deemed responsible in a community.
Sheriff Wilcox agreed the debris was unusual and sought a higher qualified opinion via the local military base.
A Brigadier General obtained some of the material and announced what he, Brazel and Wilcox had been disturbed
by, a strange discovery that didn't conform with what was usually found around the scrubland of Chaves and nearby
counties.

You'll also notice that the official description of the material found by Brazel is front-and-centre under Ramey's name,
that isn't an accident.

'...Warrant Officer Irving Newton, forecaster at the Army Air Forces weather station here, said, “We use them because
they go much higher than the eye can see.”...'

Well what this article omits is that Irving Newton wasn't there when Ramey and others first looked at the material in New
Mexico. He was ordered by Ramey -himself and after initially refusing to leave his station, to urgently come over to Roswell Army Base from the Fort Worth (Texas) base weather and flight service centre. Ramey told Newton to: "get your ass over
here. If you don't have a car take the first one with a key". A distance of 460 miles and an almost 7 hour drive, a fact that
would certainly damage a narrative about calm decision-making in the military and the perception of authority!

'...The weather balloon was found several days ago near the center of New Mexico by rancher W.W. Brazel.
He said he didn’t think much about it until he went into Corona, N.M., last Saturday and heard the flying disc reports.
He returned to his ranch, 85 miles northwest of Roswell, and recovered the wreckage of the balloon, which he had 
placed under some brush.

Then Brazel hurried back to Roswell, where he reported his find to the Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff called the Roswell
Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel, 509th bomb group intelligence officer, was assigned to the case...'

See...? As a couple of paragraphs, the above is fairly accurate. But within the first portion Trish Long felt the need to use
the official description of the material and aligned it with William Brazel. This implies a belief that -though not easily
recognisable, the debris was a balloon and Brazel's apathetic opinion on what he'd found was causing his sheep to
avoid the watering-hole was the reason why no urgency to notify the 'higher-ups' was justified.
Then why waste gas to travel the 80 miles to Roswell in order to dupe a law-enforcement officer?

'...Col. William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the bomb group, reported the find to General Ramey and the object
was flown immediately to the Army field here. Ramey went on the air here Tuesday night to announce the New Mexico
discovery was not a flying disc. Newton said that when rigged up the instrument “looks like a six-pointed star, is silvery
in appearance and rises in the air like a kite.”...'

A little use of sleight-of-hand here. This is the El Paso Times, so whenever the word 'here' is used to indicate a location,
a reader should believe the writer means -either El Paso or Texas. Not mentioning that Newton was assigned to the Fort
Worth Base and had to travel to Roswell Army Base implies the Warrant Officer of seven years was already on the scene,
recognised the debris and helped Ramey/Blanchard to dismiss the story.
A little but naughty of the writer in my opinion!

'...In Roswell, the discovery set off a flurry of excitement. Sheriff George Wilcox’s telephone lines were jammed.
Three calls came from England, one of them from the London Daily Mail, he said.  A public relations officer here said
the balloon was in his office “and it’ll probably stay right there.” Newton, who made the examination, said some 80
weather stations in the U.S. were using that type of balloon and that it could have come from any of them.
He said he had sent up identical balloons during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistic information for heavy
guns...'

Apparently, this filler is relevant to the story of how Roswell became famous. Brazel and Wilcox have now departed
stage-left with their opinions on what they'd seen, Ramey initial error is all forgotten about and Warrant Officer Irving
Newton is the man of the hour.
"It's a weather balloon, boys, because I haven't been told about the next excuse called Mogul"!

'...The following day an Associated Press article in the Las Cruces Sun-News said Brazel was sorry he said anything about
his find: “If I find anything else short of a bomb it’s going to be hard to get me to talk,” he told the Associated Press
yesterday. Brazel’s discovery was reported Tuesday by Lt. Warren Haught, Roswell Army Air Field public relations officer,
as definitely being one of the “flying discs” that have puzzled and worried citizens of 43 states during the past several
weeks...'

Aw for Gawd's sake... get the names right, will yer'?!! 1st Lt. Walter Haut -not 'Warren Haught' was the chap ordered by
Blanchard to write the Press release and later state he witnessed the body of what he believed was a dead alien on the
Base. Was Blanchard not telling the truth because of the true hidden agenda of Project Mogul...? Did a US Army Base in
New Mexico really utilise crazy alien-believers as Public Information Officers?

Wow! What are the odds on a military servant to the media who thinks little green men from Mars are real, works in close to
where a rancher happens upon some stuff that looks like it's from a vehicle of these space travellers?! I will never understand
how titles of rank and position are supposed to reflect seriousness and maturity in one instance and then be cast as benighted
cigar-chewing blockheads in the next. It seems using 'Brigadier' and capital-lettered abridgements to signify an organisation
somehow lends power and authenticity to a situation written about in the media. It's like a trick, I guess.

'...The statement was later discounted by Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, commanding general of the Eighth Air Force of which the
RAAF is a component. Ramsey said Brazel’s discovery was a weather radar target. But Brazel wasn’t making any claims.
He said he didn’t know what it was...'

True, Brazel didn't KNOW what the stuff was that he found. Ramey and Blanchard SAID they knew and told the newspapers
and radio about their conclusion. Just like this article, they never mentioned any classified project to detect Russian nuclear
testing because -certainly in Ramey's case, he was never included in the supposed secret experiment. Which is a bit of a
puzzler in itself.

Wouldn't it be prudent to inform certain military personnel of any wayward covert information-gathering devices possibly
appearing on one's patch and suggest a plan to recover said-machinery with as little fuss as possible? I mean, one wouldn't
want some dumb sheep-herder finding the stuff and a quiet out-of-the-way desert-town newspaper writing about it as a local
feel-good intrigue-piece, would one?!

'...He described his find as consisting of large numbers of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance, and pieced
together with small sticks, much like a kite. Scattered with the materials over an area about 200 yards across were pieces
of gray rubber. All the pieces were small. “At first I thought it was a kite, but we couldn’t put it together like any kite I ever
saw,” he said. “It wasn’t a kite.”

Poor dumb Bill, the great and educated Warrant Officer Irving Newton stated the balloon's trail did have a formation that
resembled a kite. Maybe rancher's aren't very good at recognising shapes...and by the way, isn't it odd that Bill Brazel is
being posed in this position of not being on the inside of this narrative and still -oddly enough, using descriptive terms of
others he's supposed to have never met?!

Irving says 'Kite-yeah", Brazel says 'Kite-nay'... One of them studies the dynamics and chemistry of the layers of gas in
the Earth's atmosphere for the military, the other scrapes sheep-shit off his boots before he enters his shack.
But the material was important enough to be photographed in Blanchard's office before eventually be flown away to
Wright-Patterson Air Base in Ohio, so all of this was just a storm in a tea-cup.

'...Brazel related this story:
While riding the range on his ranch 30 miles southeast of Corona on June 14, he sighted some shiny objects. He picked up
a piece of the stuff and took it to the ranch house seven miles away. On July 4, he returned to the site with his wife and two
of his children, Vernon, 8, and Bessie, 14. They gathered all the pieces they could find. The largest was about three feet
across.

Brazel said he hadn’t heard of the “flying discs” at the time, but several days later his brother-in-law, Hollis Wilson, told
him of the disc reports and suggested it might be one. “When I went to Roswell I told Sheriff George Wilcox about it,” he
continued. “I was a little bit ashamed to mention it, because I didn’t know what it was. “Asked the sheriff to keep kind of
quiet,” he added with a chuckle. “I thought folks would kid me about it.”

Sheriff Wilcox referred the discovery to intelligence officers at the Roswell Army Air Field, and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a
man in civilian clothes whom Brazel was unable to identify went to the ranch and brought the pieces of material to the air
field. “I didn’t hear any more about it until things started popping,” said Brazel. “Lord, how that story has traveled.”
Brazel said he did not see the thing before it fell, and it was badly torn up when he found it...'

El Paso Times:

And that's it as an article. A simple tale about how the unrefined speculation of a lonely shepherd and shiny stuff can capture
the public's imagination for a couple of days. (By the way, the guy Brazel couldn't identify in the closing paragraph was a
Captain Sheridan Cavitt). The final part of this piece adheres fairly-closely to the accepted account from William Brazel,
but then the question might be -then what were all the other words above it for?

It was a flying-saucer... No, it officially was a flying-disk... no it's a balloon... no it's part of a secret operation at the time
that we couldn't reveal because of the Reds. Anyway, it's 2023, we're gonna tell you the truth now about something we've
just changed the name of. 

They're not 'flying-saucers' and they ain't 'Disks' anymore, today we're calling them UAPs and be aware, unlike that dim-witted
sheep-herder out in the desert, we wear ties and suits, so we know what we're talking about.