The
Internet has been circling pictures that are supposed to be from the Roswell
UFO crash site. (Okay, I know it is a human behind in and not the Internet). There
are very few people who have been on both sites. Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and me
are among that rather small group. This means that I can say, with little fear
of contradiction, those pictures are not from the Roswell site. The terrain is
wrong.
Both
real sites are more open. This is high desert so that isn’t a lot of sand as
many people believe. I’m not sure where those pictures were taken, but
certainly not on either the debris field or the impact site.
Following
are pictures taken on both sites… Long after the events of 1947. I took some of
them myself, and others, using my camera took some of them. I mention that only
because I’m in some of the pictures.
 |
| Tom Carey, center, on the Debris Field as identified by by Bill Brazel in the early 1990s. |
 |
| Don Schmitt on the right, Tim Saunders, center and me on the other end, standing on the Impact Site. This gives a somewhat limited view of the site. |
 |
| Don and me on the Impact Site. You can see the open nature of the ground behind us. |
You can see for yourselves the wide-open nature of those areas. For those interested, they are either on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land or private property.
As I say, there is so much circulating on the Internet that is inaccurate, I thought I should correct that one small segment.
19 comments:
Hi Kevin. I came here to see if you had commented on this recently released (by the National Archives) files that include moving video shot of still photographs of an alleged crash site associated with the famous Roswell incident. Are the images in the video at these links (at the very end of the video after photos of presumed Mogul etc balloon / sensor arrays) the ones to which you are reacting in your post? Thank you.
"Record Group 341: Records of Headquarters U.S. Air Force (Air Staff)Series: Moving Images Relating to "The Roswell Reports" Source Data Research Files Item The Roswell Incident NAID: 326996858 Local ID: 341-ROSWELL-41"
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/326996858
"Record Group 341: Records of Headquarters U.S. Air Force (Air Staff)
Series
Partially Available Online
Moving Images Relating to "The Roswell Reports" Source Data Research Files, 1946–1996
Creator:
Department of Defense. Department of the Air Force. Office of the Secretary. Office of the Administrative Assistant. Office of the Deputy for Security and Special Investigative Programs. Research Declassification Team. (1987 - ) (Most Recent)
NAID: 566658
Local ID: 341-ROSWELL
Moving Images"
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/566658
Regrettably I've never been to either crash site, but still when I saw this alleged crash site photo the other day, it seemed bogus to me. Never heard of a witness describing an actual crater associated with the crash. A furrow yes, but not a crater.
ELFIS -
I was reacting to post that were of alleged Roswell crash site photos because, having been to both sites, I knew the photographs did not show the site. The records groups, to which you refer were the result of the Air Force investigation in the mid-1990s. Many of the documents and records are not relevant to the case and as the records do show, Mogul Flight #4, never flew and therefore was not the culprit.
David --
You are right that there was never a discussion of a crater. Bill Brazel described a gouge that suggested the object, whatever it was, skipped off the ground, regained some altitude and came down closer to Roswell.
Kevin: There is a painted mural of policeman Lonnie Zamora near the landing site in Socorro. There is a mock-up of the craft upon a raised platform at Kecksburg. There is a model of the first-night craft in Rendlesham Forest. I am witness to these.
As for Roswell, to my knowledge, there is a small marker at or near the Foster Ranch debris field and there is NOTHING WHATSOEVER other than the rural scrubland and perhaps some decaying mammal crap at the Roswell UFO impact site ... !
Now perhaps Lance and his ilk would find that altogether fitting, but I believe this is a continuing disgrace and a lost opportunity ... at least so far. But the problem is that the actual location of the impact site is largely undefined ... more than 75 years after the crash (!)
For starters, does anyone have or ever bothered to pinpoint its GPS coordinates?
Is the impact site in Chaves County, NM or Lincoln County, NM -- which side of the county line is it on?
In one of his recent (and WONDERFUL !) books, Don Schmitt references the "old Martin Ranch" as being related to the impact site. Some time ago, I tried to research this and the only Martin Ranch I could locate was to the RIGHT meaning EAST side of US 285 and north of Roswell, and yet my understanding has been that the military cordon on 285 was stationed to guard a road or roads to the LEFT meaning WEST side of 285 north of Roswell?
And what private party owns this land anyway? AND why oh why can't some responsible party come up with sufficient funding to purchase this oasis of scrubland and construct a proper memorial -- if not immediately, then hopefully in time for the 100th Anniversary ... can we not agree?
Hi Kevin.
This comment isn’t really related to the subject of this post, but it’s still related to Roswell, so I hope you’ll approve it.
I was wondering if you’ve ever thought about writing a full, generalized review of Karl Pflock’s book "Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe." I know you’ve dealt with various aspects of the book in several posts over the years, but you’ve never done a single, detailed review of the whole book.
Even though the book was published more than 20 years ago, it still gives many readers, especially those approaching the Roswell case for the first time, the impression that it dismantles everything and eloquently proves that Roswell was nothing more than a Mogul balloon crash. A comprehensive review from you could be really useful for those readers who, in good faith, might take Pflock’s arguments at face value and think the book has closed the case once and for all.
Have you ever considered putting together such a review?
"the records do show, Mogul Flight #4, never flew and therefore was not the culprit"
That's because as pointed out by Charles Moore in his affidavit "I can think of no other explanation for Roswell than one of our early June service flight balloons"
Not a full Mogul array, but a SERVICE flight which were launched with research, and experimental flights in between full Mogul arrays. That is what crashed. That's why both Brazel and Marcel mention this huge debris field of bright wreckage. Moore was still trying out 3, 4, 5 radar targets for the on ground radar reciever reception. He was still experimenting for Mogul with strengthened materials. Mogul was not a fully formed project. They were still experimenting when it moved to New Mexico from NYU.
https://youtu.be/PQ0UWU4uT5w?si=C4v2G15vPkhR9C3W
E8
Except Moore said that Flight #4 was launched at 2:30 in the morning. He reported that it performed as well as Flight #5 but offers no reason that no data were recorded. He told me, more than once, that Flight #4 was configured the same as Flight #5, which, BTW, had no rawin targets on it.
Moore was also clear that was going on in Alamogordo was not Mogul, but the New York University balloon project.
The link you provide does not deal with the number of witnesses who handled debris including Marcel down to some low-ranking enlisted men.
Bill Brazel described for Don Schmitt and me about the debris, that included something that sounds like fiber optics and metal foil that when folded and release will return to its original shape.
And finally because I don't want to go through all this again, I suggest you look at the Appendix in Roswell in the 21st Century, which provides a complete analysis of the situation rather than one that ignores witness testimony because it was gather 35 years after the fact (ignoring that he embraces the testimony of Moore gathered more than 35 years after the fact), and contradicts much of what he said earlier...
And let's not forget that he mispronounces Brazel's name and misspells his first name (Well, his first name was William but everyone called him Mack).
Anyway, you need to review all the data and not just that provided by someone who has a bias (and, yes, I have a bias, but it's based on interviews with dozens of witnesses which are ignored in the video).
I now complete this rant and hope you will access the Mogul discussions on the blog, read the Appendix in Roswell in the 21st Century. Let me know what your discover by reading additional information.
Meant to say, "David, care to comment?"
I have no clue why Moore wrongly focused on Mogul flight #4, when he clearly said (at least according to his affidavit) he could only think of one of his SERVICE flights for Roswell, not a full Mogul flight. That makes sense for what crashed too. A simple in between service flight with a number of radar targets attached as opposed to the small single radar target/reflector weather balloon flights that had crashed previously that Brazel said he had found. Comparatively, it indeed first would have been strange and also would have left "a large area of bright wreckage" or "it was spread over such a vast area" as mentioned by Brazel and Marcel. Then both describing mundane human made MATERIALS(not properties) too. It also explain Brazels quote of what I found wasn't any weather balloon. Because it wouldn't have been by a number of ways. One would be the size of the debris field.
Service and research flights were being launched with Mogul flights and probably not recorded. Technical drawings are on pages 775 & 776 (figure. 16,17) and page 777 (figure 18) in The Roswell Report. Mogul wasn't a fully developed program when it left NYU and moved to Alamogordo. That's why those were being launched too, through 1947 and the end of the program in 1948. Therefore, still experimenting with balloon material strength and radar target/reflector materials and reception for the on ground V-2, they were using, radar reception.
Listen to what the man who found this debris said IN 1947 from his newpaper interview, Mac Brazel. Not 3 decade-long told stories. Wouldn't you think with him giving his account, he would have told of exotic materials if he found some? The man that found the debris. Doesn't that seem logical? Small sticks, tinfoil, tough paper, eyelets, scotch tape, rubber strips, etc. are very Earthly, mighty mundane objects. Of course if his written account in the article is excused away(and it would have to be) as "coersion" to try get people away from listening to his description, which undoubtedly describes balloon and radar targets, this is a useless argument.
You're aware there's a path to be followed as to the discovery of fiber optics, right? It didn't just appear out of nowhere overnight. Like it must have been technology from an advanced race. It began with experiments in the 1840s with an experiment with a stream of water and light following that path of water. Showing how light can travel and be transported. That moved up to light traveling through thin glass/plastic tubes and later into smaller fiber optics carrying information today. Any claim of "fiber optic" would have probably been the line used to connect the radar targets to the balloons. Who knows, maybe they used monofilament(1939) fishing line to connect them.
But if you want to believe in the coincidence of small bamboo-like sticks, tinfoil, tough paper, eyelets, and rubber strips being the materials of what BOTH an alien piloted UFO and a balloon flight that happened to be launched 80 miles away in the exact time period and exact place, so be it. You're more of a hands-on person than me in this subject. I can only use armchair research and simple logical deductive reasoning.
E8 -
Here's where your armchair research and logical deductive reasoning fails you. Moore, in the book he wrote with Saler and Zeigler, on page 105, Moore wrote, "I think that Flight #4 used our best equipment and probably performed about as well as or better than Flight #5." (Page 105).
Moore told me that Flight #4 was configured like Flight #5 but #5 had no rawin targets on it, so where did they come from.
Flight #4 was launched two and a half hours before dawn on June 4, but according to Dr. Crary's field notes, the flight was cancelled at dawn. How is that possible... Moore said this because the wind shifted at dawn and he needed them to remain as they were earlier so that the project path would be to the north to drop the debris on the Foster ranch.
In fact, Moore offered several different launch times for Flight #4 to make it conform to the winds aloft patterns.
And when you quote Barzel from the July 9 newspaper article, don't forget to mention that he also said that he had found weather balloons on two other occasions and this was nothing like that... except, other than multiple balloons, there wasn't anything unusual about the array train, if that was what fell.
And it is clear that those who handled the debris in 1947, described it in terms available to them in 1947... Bill Brazel mentioned monofilament fishing line that you could shine a light in one end and it come out the other. Clearly, he was talking about fiber optics and I do hope you are not suggesting that they were using fiber optics in 1947 to connect the balloons. Bill also told me (on tape) that he found small bits of wood that was light like balsa but so strong that he couldn't get a shaving from it.
ANd if you're going to quote the man in 1947, at least bet his name right. And compare that one paragraph description with the one later in the newspaper. If it had been made up of thost mundane items, you have to wonder why they flew them on to Fort Worth rather than just calling Ramey and telling him what they had... Not to mention that samples of the debris had been sent from Roswell to Fort Worth BEFORE Marcel traveled to the debris field.
Oh, and what was going on in Alamogordo was the New York University balloon project... You have one short paragraph from the newspaper about the debris, overlook the second comment by Brazel, and any facts that do not fit your narrative. And you do grab onto Moore's 3 decades old memories to strengthen your points but reject those of others because they don't fit.
David, feel free to jump in here at any point.
Part 1
It was flown to Fort Worth to get an officials recording of what this "flying disc" really was because it was assumed to be just a weather balloon by the service man/men in Roswell, but they wanted an official statement by a knowledgeable weather employee. Just a statement by serviceman would have been written off as believers in this tale have. However, a weather service employee could give a professional opinion. Even with the military professionals opinion, it's still made to be a coverup and woo woo secret alien spaceship.
MaC or MaCK is irrelevant to my points. Trivial nothingness. Like misspelling a last name. It's like me pointing out you misspelled Brazel in your 5th paragraph. I don't care. That's not the meat of this discussion. Again, I wasn't there to see how his name was spelled. I was going off how the general recording of it, i.e. newspaper article, The Roswell Report, etc. They got it wrong I guess.
No, I said he said he found two other weather observation balloons previously and he was sure this wasn't like any weather balloon he had found. Because it wouldn't have been. Strengthened materials of both balloons and radar materials would have seemed foreign to him. Weather balloons would have been launched with a single radar target/reflector, right? If one was used having no radar tracking device installed on it.
Moore said at the time when he heard of Roswell(I don't remember what year) he only could think of the early June service flight. He was repeating what he said back then in his affidavit, years later. I'd have to search what time he heard it, not 3 decade long memories of what he thought recently, to his affidavit. Plus, that's a rational, realistic Earth-based explanation.
Of course I wasn't suggesting fiber optics were used in 1947 to connect the targets. That's a silly assumption. As far as the balsawood type of material that was found, it wasn't like any balsawood because as explained in The Roswell Report, the balsawood members had an Elmer's Glue type of coating on it as described by Moore and probably couldn't be whittled because of the hardness of the coating comparing it to the easily pared off wood splinters of a bare piece of wood. Use a pocket knife and try to easily carve off a piece of wood on childs wooden toy with a protective coating (using this as an example only to prove a point) compared to a bare piece of wood. They needed to be strengthened to withstand the higher winds that may break apart a weather balloon flimsy target. Who knows what Alox toy company used as a coating. But I'm sure it was updated per the Army Air Force Signal Corps defence contract and request of needing strengthened materials for model ML307C/AP balloon born radar targets. That along with foil, would have been one of the weakest points of the balloon flight flying high into the atmosphere.
Sorry, but I can't seriously say this was an alien spacecraft. Especially, even having nearly 8 decades today from 1947 to give even the remotest possibility of it being real through a different scientific discovery of intelligent life in that time to present itself.
Part 2
Billions of lifeforms over Billions of years and only 1 highly intelligent creature on Earth? If that's not a fluke happening, I dont know what is. I fully believe, and it would be foolish not to, life is out there. In forms of basic bacteria, maybe animal lifeforms, flora or fauna. But then again, anything is possible and I leave that possibility open, just not likely. But even on Earth within great and lesser apes- gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, or to a lesser extent primates like monkeys, it still didn't happen. Even with the similar carrier body (opposable thumbs, manual dexterity, etc.) There was an opportunity with the perfect host in Earth for intelligent life to arise in Billions of years and it didnt happen. Each went to an end point in evolution of survival intelligence. If there's a blueprint to life, it's clearly one to basic survival intelligence, not to high intelligence. Way to gather food, protection, procreate to continue that species, mobility and so on. Every single lifeform, including humans, have these inherent traits.
I have a grounded foundation to my belief. Not just a sweeping of my hand "oh there's no intelligent beings out there just because I think so."
E8 -
This conversation is not going anywhere. I will note that just last night, on Coast-to-Coast AM, I mentioned that we (Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I) had eliminated all the terrestrial explanations. The Air Force agreed with us with the exception of the NYU balloons... which BTW, were off the shelf weather balloons. I said that we were left no no terrestrial explanation which leads to the extraterrestrial but it doesn't quite get us there.
Here's my problem and that is the reliance on Charles Moore, who changed his data as the mood moved him. For example, he wrote, in a white paper dated March 27, 1995, "One interpretation of the June 4 entry is that the launch scheduled for making the airborne measurements of Crary's surface explosions after midnight was canceled because clouds but, after the sky cleared around dawn, the cluster of already inflated balloons was released, later than planned. The initial cancellation and the later launch were recorded sequentially, as they occurred, in hi (sic) field notes which he later transcribed into his permanent diary, without elaboration."
But this was not his interpretation in the Smithsonian book he wrote with Saler and Zeigler. It's no longer a service flight launched after dawn, but a full array that performed as well as Flight #5... He told me that Flight #4 was configured the same way, and there were no rawin targets on it. So, where did the degraded rawin target on display in Ramey's office originate?
Unless you have reviewed all the available literature on this (and remember, I talked to Moore, visited him in his house), I communicated with the weather expert in Fort Worth (Irving Newton), and have seen the evolution of Moore's claims about this. He wanted to be the man who launched the Roswell spacecraft.
I will also note that the material in General Ramey's office was not that found in Roswell. Colonel Thomas Dubose, who is in two of the pictures taken of the weather balloon and rawin target, said that this was not what had been brought from Roswell. It had been switched. Jesse Marcel, who is also in two of the pictures, when shown them is on the record as saying that was not what he brought from Roswell.
I will also point out there are articles from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of July 9, 1947, in which the size of the debris is discussed, and there was a lot more of it than that which could be swept up and tossed under a bush. There was nothing unrecognizable there. In fact, the arrays contained a card telling anyone who found the remains to contact them in Alamogordo. And I should point out that the field where the debris was located was one that Brazel was in every other day if not everyday.
I suggest, once again, you crank up you armchair and take a deeper dive into this. Read the affidavits of many of the witnesses found in Karl Pflock's book. I will also point you that your speculation about the strength of Bill Brazel's pocket knife is incorrect. In describing the "balsa" like material, Bill told Don and me, on tape, that he often used it to cut barb wire... it was sharp enough to cut through those alleged bamboo members so that he could get a look at the internal structure.
Come back when you've made a good survey of all of Moore's writings on this and how the story changed and evolved and explain again why you reject the testimonies of a couple of dozen witnesses to various aspects of the case. If you reject their memories because of age and the length of time between the events and the interviews, then you are throwing out a lot of history that is based on the same things. Think Walter Lord's book on the sinking of Titantic, writen forty years after the fact.
(Part 1 of 3)
Kevin,
The whole point about Marcel's flight time that I was raising was that you were questioning whether he could compile that many hours while he was in the Air Force, leaving out completely his many years as an aerial cartographer prewar, in which he could very plausibly have racked up thousands of hours of flight time as part of his job. I also pointed out that you acknowledged this about 25 years ago, but now leave it out.
I have seen Marcel comment on his flight experience only twice. Once was in his Bob Pratt interview, and then very briefly, with Pratt's sometimes cryptic transcript leaving ambiguities as to what was really said. Your point about Marcel didn’t document? It’s unreasonable to expect Marcel to just happen to have documentation available on him during an interview. If there was no follow-up (and there wasn't) about the question, how exactly was Marcel going to document it, or why would he bother?
The thrust of Marcel's terse remarks in the Pratt interview was that he had been in planes since 1928, was very familiar at the time of Roswell with just about everything flying, including in foreign countries. The wreckage he investigated at Roswell wasn't from any flying craft he was familiar with, therefore concluded it wasn't made on Earth. He wasn't bragging about his flight experience, just saying his conclusion about non-human origins for the debris was based in part on lengthy experience in aviation.
20+ years ago I did try to document something about Marcel's job with Shell Oil from about 1936-1942. A confederate of mine in Houston contacted Shell and was told they tossed out files after 30 years, so they had nothing on Marcel's work. Thus if Marcel failed to retain documentation of his Shell work, by the time he was interviewed he wouldn't have been able to document it anyway. That's the problem with trying to document something 50 or more years after the fact. If there were records, many of them have disappeared, either destroyed or lost. Missing documentation doesn't somehow prove the person is lying about what they said.
The same situation exists with an even briefer commentary by Marcel in a just-released interview by Lee Spiegel on Youtube. In that, Marcel briefly said he “earned his wings” in 1928 in an Eaglerock biplane, meaning presumably that’s when he learned to fly and maybe actually got a license. I’m assuming he meant he got a license because in his Pratt interview, he also said he had been flying since 1928 and stated he was a “private pilot”. I had to look up all this stuff using Google AI. Federal pilot licensing didn’t begin until 1927. You could be licensed either as a “commercial pilot” or a “private pilot”. Being a “private pilot” required only 10 hours of flight time. Back then, Eaglerock was the largest manufacturer of planes in the world. Their relatively inexpensive and easy-to-fly biplane had 3 seats and was commonly used to train people as pilots, particularly by “barnstormers” picking up extra income. Marcel was also in the Louisiana Nat’l Guard and NG units back then often had planes used for surveillance. The Eaglerock plane was considered a very stable plane for aerial photography and surveillance. So maybe Marcel learned flying in the NG.
A “private pilot” license looks like something that could be documented, or not. Problem is, the Google AI also said the FAA destroyed all the old paper records from back then after first copying to microfilm, then also destroyed all the microfilm after 60 years. So it is not likely that there are surviving official records of Marcel having a pilot license. If that’s the case, then we can neither prove nor disprove Marcel having a private pilot license. That again is not evidence that Marcel lied about this, just that records no longer exist.
(Part 2 of 3)
Loss of records after decades might also be involved in other questions, such as Marcel's college education claims. I dealt with this at great length on your blog 12 years ago.
kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/jesse-marcel-sr-bob-pratt-and-interview.html
As I wrote then:
”As to his background in atomic energy, which would be relevant as to whether he might have gotten a degree in nuclear physics, Marcel was involved from the beginning of the atomic age. He was one of the “old-men” of the 509th Bomb Group, created at the end of WWII specifically for the task of dropping the A-bomb. Marcel helped plan the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Marcel's commendations indicate he handled security, complex intelligence reports, and briefings for the Eighth Air Force during Operation Crossroads, the A-bomb tests in the South Pacific in 1946. Marcel's top secret job with the Special Weapons Program from 1948-1950 also required familiarity with nuclear physics, since he was in charge of preparing briefings and special reports for the brass on Soviet nuclear capabilities. He was listed as an "Assistant for Atomic Energy." His evaluation officer of this period also made special note of Marcel's personal intelligence and unusually broad technical-intelligence background, and stated that he was self-motivated, reading and studying regularly in his fields of interest.”
A great point raised in discussion by "Larry" (our then resident NASA engineer) was that since Marcel was one of the original members of the 509th Composite Group (fact), tasked with dropping the A-bomb, such an assignment would have been like a modern Special Access Program, top secret, highly restricted access. It wouldn't show up in his service file, which is unclassified material. Marcel Sr. certainly didn’t brag about it when interviewed. We only know about this aspect of Marcel’s career because his son Marcel Jr. mentioned it in his book. This is a good example of something totally undocumented, yet likely true, but can’t be proven for lack of public records.
Larry also made the very interesting point that because of the A-bomb, Marcel would have needed a Q-clearance to be part of the original 509th. This meant a very thorough background check would have been made on Marcel by the FBI to see if he could be trusted. If he lied about ANYTHING in his service record, including his extremely modest claims about college education, that likely would have turned up and been a red flag as to his trustworthiness.
So what did Marcel say about his education in his service record? In his application, he wrote he had 1-1/2 years of "noncredit" courses in physics at LSU as a "special student". That’s about it. If he was lying, why didn’t he claim to have an actual degree? When I contacted the registrar at LSU about this, she said it was the Depression and they had special programs for students that couldn't attend regular classes, and likely this meant Marcel audited the courses.
Now if Marcel had lied and the FBI discovered it, that would have been the end of his career. They also presumably would have checked his claims of being in the Louisiana and Texas Nat’l Guards, also working as an aerial cartographer for the Army Corp of Engineers and Shell Oil. The very fact that Marcel was one of the original members of the 509th strongly suggests he passed a thorough background check and was granted a Q-clearance. No mention of a Q-clearance appears in his record either, though he must have had one to have done all his A-bomb related military work (in the 509th planning the A-bomb attacks 1945, intelligence/briefing officer for the 509th at Operation Crossroads 1946, head intel officer at Roswell 1946-48, and then officer-in-charge of the war room and primary briefing officer for the Special Weapons Project (SWP) in Washington 1948-1950, whose job it was to determine whether the Russians had the A-bomb).
(part 3 or 3)
Does anyone notice a common nuclear weapons theme running through Marcel's career 1945-1950? Again, it was noted in his service evaluations for the SWP that he was an “assistant for atomic energy” and an intelligence officer with an unusually broad technical/intelligence background, devoting a lot of time to reading and studying regularly in his fields of interest. As a guy assigned the task of providing briefings to the brass on changes of intelligence in Soviet nuclear capabilities, what might be a least one “field of interest” for Marcel to study? Maybe atomic/nuclear physics to help him properly interpret the intelligence coming in.
Furthermore the SWP was located only about 3 blocks from the physics building at George Washington University. The head of the department was George Gamow, who taught an evening class in nuclear physics (I went to the library at GWU and looked up the course catalog), just the sort of thing Marcel could have easily walked to after work and attended. It is also noted in some Gamow biographies that he taught a special class in nuclear physics to Naval officers prior to Operation Crossroads, including Admiral Nimitz. In addition, when I spoke to a GWU physics professor (Eamon Harper), he said he was working on a biography of Gamow and had been going through his files. He discovered that Gamow also taught military personnel off-campus if they were unable to attend regular classes or their jobs were too sensitive. Marcel’s job at the SWP certainly checked off the latter box. I asked him if Marcel’s name showed up, and he said Gamow usually did not write down whom he taught off-campus for security reasons. However, he knew that some of them earned degrees in physics this way.
This doesn’t prove Marcel did coursework at GWU in physics, but he certainly had the motivation and the opportunity, and it wouldn’t necessarily show up in standard public records given Harper’s remarks to me. (GWU doesn’t have a public record of Marcel attending or getting a degree there during that time period--1948-50. But I didn’t check other periods and registrars are not eager to go on wide-ranging fishing expeditions for you.)
The only other thing Marcel said about this in the Pratt interview is that he eventually got a degree in nuclear physics at GWU after coursework at 6 different schools, including LSU and Houston (where he had also lived). What about correspondence courses? Physical attendance is not necessary to earn credits. Just before Marcel’s service record ended, it showed him applying for some in 1957 while he was in the AF Reserve through the USAF Extension Course Institute. It doesn’t say what he applied for, but it is an indication that maybe he took other coursework through correspondence school. It is also very conceivable he could get credits for his extensive military intelligence background with nuclear weapons from 1945-1950. Credits are often given by colleges for work experience. And maybe he was finally given credit for those “noncredit” physics courses he said he took at LSU pre-war (and perhaps verified in a background check).
I had an AF colonel uncle who spent 25 years in the service and picked up 2 PhD’s along the way with coursework from multiple schools during his multiple assignments. The point is, service people might earn degrees in other than the usual ways. And if they are in super-sensitive positions, as Marcel was at times, some of it might be hidden from public sight.
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(Part 1 of 2)
(Part 1 of 2)
Again, I'm certainly no WWII aviation historian expert, but according to my Google AI queries, the air medal criteria kept changing during the war, according to the theater of operation, and after the war.
Based on the AI, there was no separate air medal for valor during the war. This was added post-war, when a "V" valor attachment to the air medal ribbon was created, to distinguish it from one awarded for "meritorious achievement". But during the war, if the award was for valor, it might be, but often was not, detailed in the citation. The citation were commonly NOT personalized, because there were so bloody many air medals handed out (over a million says the AI). It would have been a bureaucratic nightmare to detail all the medals that were awarded, certainly not a priority during the war. So instead, the awards were usually said to be for "meritorious achievement" which covered everything that might get you an air medal, including singular acts of heroism. The vast majority were awarded for number of missions or hours of combat flight, a practice called “score-carding”. Even if awarded for valor, it was not at the same level as for the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Another change post-war, says the AI, was a review of the air medal situation, which acknowledged what was already known, that kill claims of bomber gunner crews were greatly inflated, and usually impossible to confirm. Thus said the AI: “Following the war, a review board largely dismissed aerial victory claims made by bomber crews, stating that the confusion of combat made it nearly impossible to award definitive victories. Awards received during the war were not rescinded, but bomber crew victories were left off the official U.S. Air Force aerial victory lists.”
This raises several issues, including whether claims of planes shot down would even make it into such things as unit histories or whether gunners would even receive an air medal if they thought they scored a kill. A commander might decide not to award it. The fact that Marcel was not a certified gunner but only claimed to step in during an emergency, could also account why there might be no record of Marcel shooting down any planes, if he indeed did. There are also the problems of thorough and accurate record-keeping in the middle of a war zone, or survival of all written records.
His 201 file (I'm assuming the same one you kindly copied and sent me 20 years ago) has very little on his South Pacific service. He was 22 months there yet there are only about a dozen, maybe 15 pages of documents out of about 200 in his full file. This is a reconstructed file after the original one was destroyed in the 1973 St. Louis archive fire. There were 2 pages of performance reviews, 2 pages for the 2 air medals, a page for the Bronze Star (which also didn't specify what it was for, only for "meritorious achievement"). I think there was one page for his promotion to Major, but not to Captain. There was a note in one performance review that he had received favorable comment from higher command, seemingly to be detailed elsewhere, but that is missing as well.
His son Marcel Jr., said he was involved in the planning of the A-bomb attacks on Japan, but absolutely nothing about this in his file, or of being assigned to the 509th Composite Group toward war’s end that carried out the bombings. The only thing I know of in the public record that supports this was the 1947 Roswell yearbook listing him as one of the "old men," or original members, of the 509th. Well, planning bombing missions was one of the things Marcel did as a squadron/group combat intelligence officer and the 509th was created specifically for dropping the bomb, so the claim is perfectly plausible. But it is undocumented. Undocumented is not the same as being proved false, just as being plausible doesn't prove it's true.
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I understand the skepticism of his claim to have shot down 5 Japanese planes and been awarded 5 air medals as a result. On it's face, it seems improbable, but there are a few documented instances of similar things happening. I don't find it unlikely he might have been pressed into service as a gunner when the regular gunner was killed. Stuff like that happens all the time in war. Perhaps, like a lot of gunners, Marcel honestly thought he was responsible for shooting down 5 planes, but like the post-war review showed, claims for kills turned out to be greatly exaggerated, not because of lying but because it was often impossible to tell if a kill really happened and who was responsible if a dozen gunners were shooting from multiple planes. That might be cause for denying air medals to gunners who thought they earned them or not writing them up in official records.
Again, it also seemed to vary with theater of operation and command. There was a feeling that with bomber crews it was a group effort and too difficult to sort out which gunner or gunners might be responsible. Point being, there might be various good reasons why a gunner might think they got a kill, thought an air medal was due, but there would be no official surviving record of it.
As for only 2 air medals in Marcel’s file and not more, as you yourself have noted, your file had only 2 air medals in it, but you had really earned 41. Many years later, you corrected it. Another Viet Nam helicopter pilot named Alfred Lehmberg, who posted on the old UFO Updates, likewise said he had only 2 air medals but had earned 35. So the fact that there are only 2 in Marcel's file is not proof that he had not earned more, but maybe they just didn't make it into the file. I remember one page in his file said he had only 1 air medal, when he clearly had at least 2. I guess it depended on what clerk typed up the papers. Records are incomplete. Mistakes in personnel records are common.
According to research by Barry L. Spink, an archivist for the A.F. Historical Research Agency, author of “Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal Criteria in the Army Air Forces in World War II”, the 5th Air Force in the SW Pacific, Marcel’s outfit, awarded air medals for each 100 hours of combat flying. Marcel had 465 hours documented in his file, meaning he was entitled to 4 air medals by flying hours alone. While this doesn’t account for air medals for Marcel’s shoot-down claims, it would mean he indeed should have had more air medals than showed up in his service file. In fact, according to Spink, 200 hours of combat flying should have earned Marcel a DSF, which he certainly didn’t claim.
Skepticism is warranted about the air medal claims, but also warranted as to the absolute accuracy of the records and whether Marcel lied about this. There are known reasons why stuff might not show up in surviving records. As to his character, whether Marcel was the type of person to have made up stuff, he had to have gone through a thorough background check to have gotten the clearances for his 5 years of A-bomb/atomic energy intelligence work while in the AF. Anything he might have claimed that didn’t check out—education, jobs, military background, etc.--would have been reason to deny him clearance.
On his his performance reviews we see comments like: “Superior moral qualities.” “His financial responsibility, trustworthiness, and moral character are unquestioned.” One former colleague described him as a “straight arrow”. This is not the typical profile of a fantasist, making up war stories for self-glorification, as he is sometimes portrayed now. Also, all crucial parts of his Roswell story are supported by testimony of others. I still see no clear-cut lying here.
David -
First, a nit to pick... Marcel had 468 hours. I'm sure this is an irrelevant typo. We all agree that Marcel was credited with combat flight time according to the available documentation.
There is no documentation that Marcel was awarded more than two air medals. There is no documentation that he shot down any enemy aircraft. We have Marcel's unsupported claim. Had he shot down any enemy aircraft, there should be documentation for it and while he might truly believed it, there is nothing to support the claim.
Clearly he had some flight time while in the Pacific, but we don't know his role on those flights . Yes, he could have taken over one of the gun positions of the soldier there had been wounded or killed, but there is no evidence for that.
Here's the difference, I think. I mentioned that when I was discharged from the Army, my DD 214, noted two air medals but I had the documentation for all forty-one. Later copies of various documents noted the correct number. Some of that documentation was in my military record and in a records review, the change was made. Again, we have no documentation for that.
So, the only fair conclusion is that Marcel earned two air medals, not shoot down any enemy aircraft, and he was not awarded the DSF (which I suspect you meant DFC), and that might be simply because he was not rated and not assigned as air crew. But the bottom line, is that we can't prove his claims of shooting down any enemy aircraft (and as I mentioned, the AAF kept records for that in WW II, and his name does not appear in those records).
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