The End of Project Mogul

 

In Understanding Roswell, I looked again, at the Air Force’s ultimate answer for the UFO crash, which had written off as a balloon array from the “highly classified” Project Mogul. The Air Force, in their investigation, had eliminated all possible terrestrial answers, as civilian UFO researchers had done in the years before the Air Force entered the arena. We knew, based on our research, that there had been no aircraft accidents, civilian, military or experimental. There were no stray rockets or missiles from the White Sands Proving Ground and nothing associated with the 509^th Bomb Group that would account for the debris. There was no sort of nuclear accident that would have accounted for the high level of security testified to by the witnesses, both military and civilian. Had there been some sort of highly classified project in play, that would have explained the security, but since all that happened seventy-five years ago, there would be no legitimate reason for the secret to be kept in today’s environment.

This means that all of us, military, civilian, interested and uninterested, reached the same basic conclusion about what had fallen near tiny Corona, New Mexico, in July 1947. We all agreed that something had fallen. It was the identify of object that had left the debris scattered over about three quarters of a mile of pasture land in the high desert that was the question.

The lone exception to this was the classified balloon project code named “Mogul.” According to the Air Force investigation, this program, designed to place a constant level balloon in the upper atmosphere allowing American scientists and intelligence officers to listen for atomic detonations in the Soviet Union, left the debris. This was the reason for the high-level of security because no one in Washington, D.C., or the Pentagon for that matter, wanted the Soviets to know that we were listening for their atomic bomb testing.

While this would explain the classification of the ultimate purpose, that did not cover the experiments in Alamogordo, New Mexico, that began in June, 1947. The activities there, known to those who participated in them as the New York University balloon project, were not classified, and, in fact, information about those activities was printed in newspapers around the United States on July 10, 1947. This negates the claim of high security in New Mexico and the reason for the secrecy there.

Phyllis McGuire

There are other aspects to this. According to the testimony of Phyllis McGuire, the teenaged daughter of Chaves County, New Mexico, Sheriff George Wilcox, when rancher Mack Brazel appeared in the Roswell office, she was there. The Wilcox family lived above the sheriff’s office. She reported that Brazel told the sheriff about the strange metal debris that he had found in one of the fields on the ranch he managed. More importantly, she mentioned that Brazel had brought samples of the debris with him.

While there are those who would suggest that the teenaged daughter revealing this decades later might not be the most reliable of sources, there is corroboration for this. General Thomas DuBose, the Chief of Staff for the Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth in 1947, interview by Don Schmitt and others, said that strange metallic debris discovered by Brazel, was sent by special flight to Fort Worth.

According to DuBose, the debris was taken to Fort Worth “two or three days earlier,” meaning, of course two or three days prior to the July 8 announcement that a “flying saucer” had been captured. It was DuBose who had alerted those in Washington that something had been found and it was DuBose who received orders from Major General Clements McMullen to bring a sample of that debris to Washington, sometime on Sunday, July 6.

BG Thomas Dubose

In a recorded interview, DuBose said, “He [McMullen] called me and said that I was, there was some talk of some elements that had been found on the ground outside Roswell, New Mexico. That the debris or elements were to be placed in a suitable container, and Blanchard was to see that they were delivered… and [Colonel] Al Clark… would pick them up and hand deliver them to McMullen in Washington. Nobody, and I must stress this, no one was to discuss it with their wives, me with Ramey, with anyone.”

DuBose then called Blanchard and relayed the instructions to him. At that moment, the samples of the debris that Brazel had taken to the Chaves County Sheriff’s Office, and mentioned by Phyllis McGuire, were taken, under orders from Blanchard to the Roswell Army Air Field and eventually on to Fort Worth.

All this suggests that the officers at the Roswell Army Air Field were unable to identify the material as the remains of a weather balloon and a rawin radar target. There was nothing special about the weather balloon that would have fooled anyone who had seen it.

Wilcox thought enough of Brazel’s tale that he dispatched two deputies to the area of the crash. Brazel gave them directions, but given the nature of the terrain, and the distance from Roswell, the deputies failed to find the field, though they did find a large, circular burned area to the north of town.

Wilcox, who was unable to identify the debris, then called out to the Roswell Army Air Field to report what the rancher had found. The call eventually reached Major Jesse A. Marcel, Sr., the Air Intelligence Officer. He drove from the base to the sheriff’s office where he met with Brazel and was shown the debris that Brazel had brought with him.

Apparently, Marcel was unable to identify the material and thought it strange enough that he should investigate further. In consultation with the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, it was decided that Marcel should accompany Brazel back to the ranch. Blanchard mentioned the base had just acquired a counterintelligence office. He thought Marcel should take Captain Sheridan Cavitt, the officer in charge of that office, out to the ranch.

Marcel, had returned to the base, picked up Cavitt and then drove to the sheriff’s office. With Brazel leading the way, the small convoy, Brazel in his pickup, Marcel in his Buick, and Cavitt in a Jeep Carryall, arrived too late in the day to do much. They spent the night in a small house, and according to Marcel, had a later supper of beans.

The next morning, Brazel, Marcel and Cavitt made their way to the Debris Field. Marcel said that it was about three-quarters of a mile long, and two to three hundred yards wide. Cavitt would tell Air Force investigator, Colonel Richard Weaver in 1994, that it was much smaller, no bigger than a large room in a house. More importantly, Cavitt would tell Weaver that the moment he saw the material, he recognized it as the remains of balloons. Weaver didn’t ask, and Cavitt didn’t explain, why he had not told Marcel this, nor why he didn’t mention to Blanchard when he returned to the base.

The misleadingly captioned claim that this array, including the rawin radar targets was launched by New
York University scientists on June 4, 1947. This was actually Flight No. 2, flown on the east coast.
The arrays launched in New Mexico were a third shorter and carried no rawin targets.

The actual make up of the array trains flown in New Mexico. Flight No. 4 had been cancelled, but 

Flight No. 5, designated as the first successful flight, was launched on June 5, 1947. There is no 

evidence that any rawin targets were used on it or most subsequent flights.

There is the other, important problem. Cavitt didn’t explain why he had been fooled by the debris in Roswell, but recognized it once he arrived on the ranch. Had the debris been part of Project Mogul, which was made up of off-the-shelf weather balloons and rawin radar targets, there is no reason for it to have fooled Brazel, Wilcox, and Marcel. Had it been part of Project Mogul, and recognized as balloon debris, there is no reason for the trip to the ranch and clean up wouldn’t have been all that difficult.

There is still another, important aspect to all this. The Project Mogul balloons were launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field. Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the experiments in New Mexico, kept records of the launches, and that record of his field notes, diary entries and final report are all available both online and in the massive Air Force report on the Roswell case. Based on all that data, we know that all Mogul flights prior to July 6, which is the date that Brazel drove into Roswell, were accounted for with the exception of Flight No. 4, which had been scheduled for launch on June 3, but postponed until June 4. Another attempt was made on the following morning. Crary's entry for this attempt said:

June 4 Wed

Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 and 06 this am. No balloon flight again on account of clouds. Flew regular sonobuoy mike up in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver on ground but poor on plane. Out with Thompson pm. Shot charges 1800 to 2400.

This provided the timing of the events in Alamogordo, and because of the regulations under which they operated, they were forced to cancel the flight. There is nothing ambiguous in the documentation. Flight No. 4 was cancelled. Later that morning, they flew a cluster of balloons with a sonobuoy, but this wasn’t a full Mogul array and no evidence that the balloon cluster ever left the Alamogordo area.

To take this one step further, an examination of the documentation available in Crary’s notes, showed they weren’t using the rawin radar targets at this stage of their research. Flight No. 5, which flew the next day, June 5, did not have any radar targets on it, according to the illustrations available in the final reports. If there were no rawin targets attached to the flight, then where did the rawin originate that was displayed in General Ramey’s office. And, if there were no rawin targets, then isn’t that photograph taken in Ramey’s office evidence of a coverup?

There are pictures of an array being prepared that do show the rawin radar targets as part of the assembly but that photograph was taken on July 22, 1948, more than a year after the crash in Roswell. Another photograph, published on July 10, 1947, shows the launch of the two balloons, with but a single rawin target attached.

Here is where we are. The June 4, 1947, launch of Flight No. 4, was cancelled according to the documentation. Later in the day, there was the launch of a cluster of balloons, but this was not a full array. It was made up of the already inflated balloons and a sonobuoy to test the radio reception. There is no evidence that it left the Alamogordo area and no evidence that it contained a rawin radar target. Without Flight No. 4, the explanation of a Mogul balloon array accounting for the debris found by Mack Brazel, fails.

An alleged Mogul array being prepared for flight. This one was launched more than a year after the
cancelled June 4, Mogul Flight No. 4.

The date the photograph was taken, July 22, 1948.

The documentation, provided in the various field notes, diary entries, and other evidence, shows that rawin targets were not part of the arrays being launched in New Mexico, and if there were no such targets, then the balloon explanation fails at that point as well.

Although the Air Force claimed that Project Mogul was highly classified and that would account for those in Roswell being unable to identify the balloon is misleading. The ultimate purpose was classified, but the work being done in New Mexico was not. The newspaper articles published on July 10, 1947, proves this claim to be false.

With the elimination of the Mogul explanation, based on the overwhelming evidence that Flight No. 4 was cancelled, there is no terrestrial explanation for what fell on the Brazel managed ranch. Remember, the Air Force eliminated all other mundane explanations before settling on Mogul. There could be, somewhere, a super-secret project that would account for the debris, but no one has identified it yet, and it is difficult to believe that revelation of such a program would adversely affect national security in the world today. Had there been such an explanation, the Air Force would have used it years ago and the Roswell case would have been solved.

Until and unless, such a program or project is revealed and it can be shown to have scattered the debris in New Mexico, the only conclusion to be drawn is that whatever fell that day is unknown. To many, that leads directly to the extraterrestrial. The lack of evidence for the terrestrial does suggest something alien. Is sufficient to prove the case? That’s left up to the individual but it the most logical explanation at the moment.

Truth about Mogul

Over on Rich Reynolds UFO Conjectures we’ve just had a lesson in some of the skeptical thought processes. In a conversation that was tangential to the main point, one of the commentators

Dr. Albert Crary

 wrote, “The only plausible explanation is Flight #4 did fly and there were many, many errors in how it was recorded (incorrectly) giving the impression it never did fly at all.”

My first thought was, “Seriously?”

The leader of Project Mogul in New Mexico was Dr. Albert Crary and it is his field notes and his documentation that apparently, according to some in the skeptical community, contained “many, many errors.”

And what were those errors?

He wrote, of Flight No. 4, scheduled to be launched at dawn on June 4, 1947, “Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 [midnight] and 06 this am. No balloon flights again on account of clouds. Flew regular sono buoy up in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver on ground but poor on plane. Out with Thompson pm. Shot charges from 1800 to 2400.”

Nothing really confusing here when you understand the New York University balloon project in New Mexico. They were attempting to create a constant level balloon, one that would remain at a specific altitude for a long period carrying a microphone to be used to detect explosions on the ground, or more specifically, atomic detonations by the Soviet Union. The ultimate purpose was to spy on the

Mogul test detonation.

Soviets, though I suspect that none of those in New Mexico knew that.

The note about “No balloon flights again,” referred to the attempt on June 3. And here is where Charles Moore, who would later claim he launched the Roswell saucer, got the idea of flights in the dark. The diary said, “Up at 0230 am ready to fly balloon but abandoned due to cloudy skies.” We know, based on the other reports and documentation that the CAA, forerunner to the FAA, that “Restrictions on the project is the Civil Aeronautics Authority requirement that balloon flights be made only on days that are cloudless to 20,000 feet.”

We know that a sonobuoy is in reality a microphone and it would be used to detect the explosions and transmit that information. According to the notes, that worked fine with the ground receiver but not as well for that in the aircraft, which we know was a B-17 according to other information in the notes.

Notes elsewhere show that a “cluster of balloons” is not a full array. According to the documentation, “This cluster method is of use and interest only as a stop-gap method of lifting the Army equipment to altitude now, and has been the method used while awaiting delivery of the non-extensible plastic balloons…. A flight was made on 3 April 1947 using this method. A cluster of 12 balloons meteorological [yes, that was the wording in the report] carrying a radiosonde, a 15 lb. dummy load and a series of ballast dropping devices was released from the football field at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.” This is from “Special Report #1, May, 1947.”

So, where is the evidence that Flight No. 4 flew? The field notes said expressly that it did not. We know that their fallback position, when the full array was cancelled, was to fly a cluster of balloons to perform other experiments, and we have a definition of what is meant by a cluster of balloons.

Charles Moore in New Mexico.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

For those who wish to invoke Charles Moore’s statement that Flight No. 4 was launched at sometime around 0300, in the dark and apparently in cloudy weather, we have the documentation to show that this is, to be generous, an error on his part and not from the notes in Crary’s diary. They arrived on the morning of June 3 at 0230 to prepare for the dawn launch, and in fact the June 5 launch was made just after dawn as required by the CAA instructions which are documented.

But never let the documentation get in the way of an explanation when you can confound the issue. Another comment over at UFO Conjectures was, “… missing data on the Mogul flight is a wrinkle, but you’re [the above comment] surely correct some sort of ‘admin’ error is to blame.”

But there is no missing data because the flight had been cancelled. The cluster of balloons was not a full array and the first launch of a Mogul flight in New Mexico was on June 5 and it is accounted for in the records. There was no admin error but a precise record of what happened until Charles Moore changed his story and complicated the issue to keep the myth of Mogul alive for his own, personal reasons.

Here’s something else. The Mogul array displayed in the Air Force report was Flight No. 2 and contained rawin targets which are necessary to explain the metallic debris reported by so many of those stationed in Roswell in 1947. But Flight No. 5, the first flight in New Mexico, and the one used by Karl Pflock to demonstrate the size of the arrays has no rawin targets. In fact, none of the illustrations of the make-up of the arrays in New Mexico show any rawins as part of the package. The only exception seems to be the demonstration array launched from Alamogordo on July 10 which needed rawins to explain the debris. All the flights were launched in the daylight, most in early morning until November when some were launched in the afternoon.

Further, the idea that the soldiers at Roswell were unaware of what these arrays were is false. First, Dr. Crary, on May 20, wrote that he had been over at the RAAF to fill with gas. Later, Moore would claim that he was turned back at the front gate even though he was driving a weapons carrier drawn from and with the markings of the Alamogordo Army Air Field on it while carrying the remains of a Mogul flight. On June 5, Flight No. 5 landed some 25 miles east of Roswell, which means that whole array would have been visible from the airfield which means tower crews and others on the airfield would have seen one in flight. The CAA required NOTAMs, which meant that the operations staff would have been aware of them as well, and such information would have been passed not only to flight crews but to the group commander.

All this documentation is available in various sources including Pflock’s book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe and the massive Air Force report which provides details about the balloon project in New Mexico, which Charles Moore made clear was the New York University balloon project and not Mogul. Mogul, a name that was clearly known to those in New Mexico in 1947, as demonstrated by Crary’s field notes and diary, was the code name for spying on the Soviets and it was the mission that was classified, not the name nor the experiments in New Mexico which negates the idea that Mogul was so highly classified that very few knew the name or what the arrays looked like.

The conclusion borne out by all the documentation is that it is not filled with “many, many errors” nor the idea that the “missing data on the Mogul flight is a wrinkle,” but that Flight No. 4 was cancelled, first on June 3 and then on June 4. Had it flown as Moore claimed, had it produced results as good as if not better than Flight No. 5 as Moore claimed, it would have been listed in the documentation.

The point here is that I’m at a loss to understand the tenacious way that debunkers cling to the Mogul explanation in the face of the evidence that has been mounted against it. I fail to understand how they can be so dismissive of that documentation by saying things like “The only plausible explanation is Flight #4 did fly and there were many, many errors in how it was recorded (incorrectly) giving the impression it never did fly at all,” and “…missing data on the Mogul flight is a wrinkle, but you’re [the above comment] surely some sort of ‘admin’ error is to blame.” The data are not missing and the evidence is quite clear.

And yes, I know that the documentation for a crash of an alien spacecraft is based almost solely on witness testimony gathered decades after the fact and there is some documentation that what was found was not alien, but there are some areas where it is not as clear cut as it is with Flight No. 4. I also realize that the elimination of Flight No. 4 as the culprit does not translate into evidence that what fell outside of Roswell was alien. It only means that this particular explanation, when you examine all the evidence, has failed. 

People Still Believe in Mogul

Yes, I know we’ve talked about this before but I’m still surprised when there are uncritical statements published about the nonsensical Mogul balloon explanation for the debris found by Mack Brazel. And, while I know it is beating the dead horse because we’ve gone over this multiple times, I just wish to respond to some of those who, without knowing all the details, spout the Mogul line.

The documentation is quite clear. Mogul Flight No. 4, the culprit in all this, was scheduled to be launched about dawn on June 4, 1947. According to the records it was cancelled. It was never launched.

That same record, created by the project leader, Dr. Albert Crary, said that they did fly a cluster of balloons with a sonobuoy attached. A sonobuoy is basically a radio transmitter and microphone. Its job, in this context, was to pick up the sound of high explosives detonated to test that capability. That was all it was. It had nothing to do with radar which some seem to believe it did.

We know, based on the documentation published by the New York University balloon project (which launched these balloons) that in June 1947, they were not allowed to fly them at night or into clouds. The huge arrays, six hundred feet long, could pose a threat to aerial navigation if hidden by the darkness or in clouds. The June launches were made at dawn or shortly thereafter.

There is no record of any data recovered from a Flight No. 4 and it is missing from the records. The next day, June 5, Flight No. 5 was launched and it is recorded as the first successful flight in New Mexico.

Charles Moore, who claimed the title of the man who launched the “Roswell” balloon, using winds aloft data, calculated the flight path of the mythical Flight No. 4, if it had been launched at about dawn. His calculations, based on that incomplete data, showed the balloon would have moved, more or less, toward the site of the Brazel debris field.

Here are the problems. First, a weather front moved through Alamogordo about dawn, changing the winds aloft data and suggesting a different direction for the mythical flight. To fix that problem, and using data obtained from a weather station near Orogrande, New Mexico that had better winds aloft data because of the proximity of the White Sands Missile Range (or Proving Ground in 1947, which I mention so that the nitpickers won’t harp on this), Moore changed the launch time to three in the morning… even though full arrays were forbidden to be flown in the dark by the rules under which they operated. It was the only way he could force the flight path into something that would move in the proper direction.

What this means is that Flight No. 4 was launched before it was cancelled… and if that was the case, then Crary’s diary and field notes would have mentioned it. Instead the sequence was the flight was cancelled and later in the day a cluster of balloons was flown.

Second, we know what the cluster of balloons was. It was not a full array, but three or four balloons carrying a sonobouy which means that this balloon cluster was relatively short and did not pose a hazard to aerial navigation. It fact, according to a letter written by Moore, they didn’t expect it to get out of the restricted area around Alamogordo. There would be no aircraft flying into it.

Third, we know, based on Flight No. 5, that there had been no rawin radar targets on Flight No. 4 because there were no radar facilities to track it, and a diagram of that array was published in the New York University reports. There was no diagram for Flight No. 4 because there was no Flight No. 4.

Finally, we know that the nonsense about these flights being highly classified is wrong. The name, Mogul, was used by Crary in a number of entries in his diaries and field notes. The ultimate purpose was classified, but the experiments conducted in New Mexico were not. In fact, there were newspaper articles showing the balloons and reporting on the location of the launches published in early July.

It really is time to retire this explanation. It doesn’t fit the facts, it doesn’t explain anything, and it is just a red herring, thrown out to convince people that something mundane fell on the ranch. Say what you will, this is not a viable explanation.