Soviet Aerial Reconnaissance and Roswell

Although I have hoped to avoid revisiting this suggestion, something that I looked into in the early 1990s, it has suddenly taken hold in several arenas. I suspect that part of the reason is that some of those who clung to Project Mogul now realize that it was not the culprit. The documentation for that conclusion is overwhelming. But this does not lead to the extraterrestrial (for some of you, please note this qualification) and if there is no alien visitation, then there must be a terrestrial explanation somewhere.

As a preamble, let me note that I have done a great deal of research into these other explanations. Although accused of not taking some of this research deep enough, I’m not sure what that means. Few are interested in reading about research that led nowhere. Once something has been eliminated as the culprit, just how much further are we required to go.  I have, for example, a record of every missile and rocket launch from White Sands from its creation into the 1950s. There are no gaps, though the numeric sequence of the launches was sometimes juggled, which means that the experiment kept its number even of the launch had been postponed. But there were no launches that would count for the debris found by Mack Brazel. Should I, at that point, continue the research?

And let me say here, so there is no mistake, that I never took the idea that Nazis had escaped to the Antarctic where they were using flying saucers. Maybe that was a personal bias, but it made no sense, and if they were hiding there, other evidence would have been available… especially in these days of all sorts of satellites flying all over the place.

Oh, and it’s not time travelers because they could return and pick up everything so the event never happened. They could easily manipulate the system to change the history and therefore it is out of our perception of it.

And forget about interdimensional beings, but only because I can’t think of a way to get to that point. I don’t know what sort of evidence you would look for… or how you take it out of our realm of reality to shove it into another. Even if the debris was there and not something mundane, it just seems the better solution is extraterrestrial rather than interdimensional, but as I say, I don’t know how to prove this aspect of it. I guess my bias rears its head, but notice I didn’t say it was completely impossible, only that I can’t think of a way of proving it.

I looked through various archives and listings of aircraft accidents including enquiries to the FAA, NTSB and the Air Force but located nothing that would have left debris. I know that there might have been some gaps in my knowledge, but the Air Force took care of that in their massive report removing all military aircraft and experimental aircraft from the mix. There was simply nothing that fit the time frame and the location.

Karl Pflock

Karl Pflock suggested that it had been the N-9M two engine version of the flying wing, but they had stopped flying those in 1946. I also checked the XB-35, which is the four engine propeller-driven version, but they had been grounded in June 1947 because of a gearbox problem. All were accounted for anyway. The YB-35, the jet version flew sometime after July 1947 and therefore couldn’t have been the cause of the debris found. There was a YB-49 which was designed as a long-range reconnaissance aircraft but only one was built before the program was cancelled. It too flew after July 1947, and therefore did not leave debris on the Foster ranch.

Taking this a step further, there was the XF-95A, which was delta-wing fighter, but the records show that it did not fly until September 1948, or too late to account for the Roswell debris. When I learned that, I lost interest in it.

Nick Redfern Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

There is Nick Redfern’s idea that what crashed in New Mexico used captured Japanese soldiers in a high altitude experiment. They were lifted in a huge balloon array. It explained the secrecy, the balloon remains, and even the alien bodies. But there is no record of anything like that happening, though given some of the “scientific” research conducted by the United States, it certainly could have happened. Without evidence for this experiment, though Nick liked it, I thought it could be eliminated from the roster of explanations.

John Keel had suggested a Fugo Balloon, but those were Japanese weapons launched against the United States during the Second World War. Although he used the same argument we hear today, that because the government was embarrassed by these attacks they kept it a secret. Of course, by 1947, there had been newspaper and magazine articles about the Balloon Bombs, and had it been one of those, you needed to explain where it had been for two years. I think Keel was attracted by the claim of Chinese or Japanese writing on some of the debris found though the records showed that the Japanese were careful not to use their writing on any portion of the balloons or their apparatus. This was so they couldn’t be traced back to Japan.

There has been the great Mogul debate which, I think, originated with Robert Todd. But the documentation available, as I mentioned, has eliminated it. Other balloon projects, including those by the Navy and General Mills did not provide information that would account for the debris. There was no records to support the idea of one of these projects, though classified in 1947 (or that didn’t begin until after 1947) could have left the debris for Brazel to find. The Soviet Union, because of its location and the lack of allies surrounding the United States, never used balloons as aerial platforms to spy on the US. I could develop no information to suggest any balloon project created by the Soviets was responsible for what had fallen.

Now we’re stuck with this idea that a Soviet copy of a B-29, called the TU-4 by the Soviets and code named “Bull” by NATO, might have been responsible. It is quite true that the Soviets, during the Second World War captured three B-29s. These aircraft had been damaged during raids on Japan or encountered some other emergency and were unable to return to their home bases. They made their way to Vladivostok to land.  (The need to use Vladivostok ended with the capture of Iwo Jima in March 1945, and yes I know the battle started in February). Those three planes were named, Ramp Tramp, Ding Hoa and the General H. H. Arnold Special.

The Soviet TU-4 "Bull."

At that time, the Soviet Union did not have a long-range bomber. After all, the main Soviet enemy was Nazi Germany and they didn’t need long-range bombers to engage the Germans. But Stalin realized the importance of the gift he had been given, and contrary to treaties and agreements refused to return either the crews or the aircraft. The crews were eventually allowed to “escape” through Iran and were returned to US control. The aircraft remained in the Soviet Union.

The Soviets thought it would be simple to disassemble the aircraft and copy it down to its rivets. They took the General H. H. Arnold Special apart ending up with something over 105,000 pieces. It turned out not to be as easy as they though and they had trouble reproducing the Plexiglas, some of the aluminum parts and the fire control systems. They finally produced a prototype which flew on May 19, 1947 and Stalin apparently ordered it into immediate production.

No one in the West knew what the Soviets were up to (or maybe a few did but that knowledge was classified) and when the planes were finally revealed to the world on August 3, 1947, everyone assumed the three B-29-like aircraft were those captured during the war. They were joined by a fourth, which announced that the Soviets had replicated the B-29 and now had a long-range bomber. At least two of those in the formation were TU-4s, though all four might have been.

But the thing is the US military began to make plans to attend Soviet airshows to look for the cloned B-29s. From September 1946 onward they were discussing at the highest levels the possibility, so those officers were aware of what was happening. They also knew that the Soviets did not have, in 1947, a “silverplate” B-29, which were those modified to carry atomic weapons. Such didn’t enter the Soviet inventory until after 1950.

Now we have to look through the history of aerial reconnaissance which it seems those excited by this idea of a TU-4 crash failed to do. The TU-4 had a range that would allow it to reach cities in the United States, but these would be one way flights. They didn’t have the fuel capacity for the return flight. Of course, in a war, the return of the flight crew might not have been one of the overriding conditions. Their mission would have been to drop the bombs and do their best to escape and evade once the aircraft ran out of gas.

But in June 1947, with production just started, after the successful flight of the prototype TU-4, there couldn’t have been very many of them available and it would be a good guess that there might not have been the four flown in August 1947 ready by June 1947. But the project, at that time was shrouded in secrecy and it seems unlikely that they would have flown one of their limited supply of these aircraft deep into the United States knowing that it could not return.

While the United States was developing their aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union, there wasn’t the same thing happening in the Soviet Union. They were, in essence, isolated from the New World. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was surrounded by countries that allowed the United States to either build bases or use their facilities to conduct aerial reconnaissance. Given the secretive nature of the Soviet Union, it was very difficult to deploy spies inside its borders. To gather the necessary intelligence, overflight was about the only option.

Such wasn’t the case in the United States. The open nature of the society allowed for Soviet agents to gather the intelligence without the need of aerial reconnaissance. They could just travel around inside the US and gather the information. The FBI prepared a document in May 1960 that provided a history of the Soviet attempts to gather aerial data on the United States. They didn’t need to use aircraft when they could just buy what the needed in the United States. The FBI wrote:

In a free country such things as aerial photographs are available to the public and can be purchased commercially. The Soviets have been fully aware of this and throughout the years have taken full advantage of this free information, collecting aerial photographs of many areas of the United States.

For example, during October, 1953, two Soviet officials visited Minneapolis where they purchased fifteen aerial photographs of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In October and November, 1953, two Soviets traveled in Missouri and Texas and obtained aerial maps of Dallas, Tulsa, Fort Worth and the surrounding areas covering a Naval air station, an Army airfield, and an Air Force base. In April, 1954, a Soviet official purchased aerial photographs of five Long Island communities. Also, in April, 1954, a Soviet Official purchased three aerial photographs of Boston, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island, areas. In May, 1954, three Soviets traveled to California where they ordered from a Los Angeles photography shop $80 worth of aerial photographs covering the Los Angeles area.

You can read the FBI’s whole assessment about the acquisition of aerial photography here:

http://fas.org/irp/imint/fbi_6005.htm

Although I didn’t have the Internet in the early 1990s to make the search, I did have access to some very good libraries and archives, and I could find nothing about Soviet aerial reconnaissance of the United States until we get sometime after 1950 and at that point lost interest. They later developed their own long-range bomber, which did penetrate US airspace long after 1947. Pictures of it, escorted by American fighters, appeared in news magazines. There was no attempt to hide the penetration of American airspace and not all that long ago Russian aircraft did penetrate the ADIZ a number of times, which was also widely reported by the media.

Given the reaction to these later attempts, it seems reasonable to conclude that had a Soviet clone of a B-29 found its way to southern New Mexico, the remains of the aircraft and the bodies of its crew would have been used for propaganda purposes. There would be no embarrassment because the Army Air Forces could claim that they had foiled the Soviet spying operation and offer the proof of it… and if that wasn’t their attitude in 1947, when Gary Powers was captured by the Soviets in 1960, it would have been the perfect time to trot out the TU-4 and its 1947 fate. This was proof that the Soviets had engaged in aerial reconnaissance and we were merely returning the favor.

There is no record or documentation of a Soviet attempt to penetrate the US using aerial reconnaissance in 1947. I make this bold statement because there will be those who wish to prove it wrong and this is the fastest way I know to get the search started. The only long-range aircraft they had at the time that is in July 1947 was the TU-4 and they didn’t have many of them. Had the wreckage found by Brazel been the remains of such an aircraft, Marcel, Cavitt, and others would have recognized it. The evidence, or the lack of evidence, argues strongly against the idea that what fell was a Soviet spy plane. According to the historical record, which is now quite extensive, the Soviet Union was not engaged in aerial reconnaissance in 1947 and is not responsible for the wreckage near Roswell.