Sunday, August 26, 2007

There Was No Flight No. 4

As many of you know, I have been arguing against the Project Mogul explanation for what fell at Roswell from the moment that it was first proposed. I have never believed that it adequately explained the debris, descriptions of the field where it allegedly fell, or all of the witness testimony. When we cherry-pick what we want, then Mogul can be viewed as acceptable but, when we remember the words of Charles Moore, one of those associated with the project, we see its failure. Moore said that the balloons would not have gouged the terrain, and if there was a gouge, then Mogul is not the answer (and no, I’m not going to go through the eyewitnesses who talked of a gouge here).

We know what Sheridan Cavitt had to say about it because it is repeated as gospel. Those who champion his testimony have forgotten that Cavitt lied about his whereabouts in 1947, lied about his assignment, said that he never went on any balloon recovery and then, in 1995, changed all that. He was there and recognized the material as balloon remnants immediately. He could not explain why he hadn’t mentioned this to either Major Jesse Marcel or to Colonel William Blanchard.

And even after he had told the Air Force investigators that he recognized it as a balloon, he still told me that he hadn’t gone out to the site. He was at a loss as to why both Marcel, and Cavitt’s own NCOIC, Master Sergeant Lewis Rickett would say that he had.

But the balloon explanation has held because of those who wish to believe that Roswell is easily explainable. It may be many things, but it is not so easily dismissed.

So, why bring this up now... and again. Well, I think an examination of Dr. Albert Crary’s (seen here) diary, which provides us with the only record for Mogul Flight No. 4, the culprit identified by so many, needs to be examined carefully. By doing so, I believe that Mogul is eliminated from the list of candidates.

First, let me point out that Charles Moore prepared detailed report on Project Mogul Flight No. 4 using his expertise and winds aloft data that I supplied to him. As I have mentioned before, that data only went to 20,000 feet and it was often incomplete with several stations either not reporting or reporting only partial data. Even the layman, looking at these data see that the winds are wildly variable and often blowing in nearly opposite directions from one altitude to the next.

Second, let’s look at what Crary wrote about those early June, 1947, launches that included Fight No. 4. He said, "June 4, 1947. Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 and 06 this am. No balloon flight again on account of clouds. Flew regular sonobuoy 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."

So we have contradictory accounts here in the only documented source. Charles Moore, wrote:


"Crary’s diary entries for June 4 are puzzling because they are contradictory.My examination of his original handwritten entries suggests that he copied from other notes; the entries from June 2 through the first half of June 5 appear to have been written in one sitting with the same pencil and without any corrections or false starts. During the hectic operations in June, he apparently used field notes to record events as they occurred and then transcribed them later into his diary. This is evident in some later entries where the events of an entire week were lumped together. ...One interpretation of the June 4 entry is that the launch scheduled for making airborne measurements on Crary’s surface explosions after midnight was canceled because of clouds but, after the sky cleared around dawn, the cluster of already-inflated balloons was released, later than planned. The initial cancellation and later launch were recorded sequentially, as they occurred, in his field notes which he later transcribed into his permanent diary without elaboration."


And another interpretation, based on earlier entries is that there was no flight No. 4. Crary’s diary for the trip to New Mexico notes on June 3, "Up at 2:30 AM ready to fly balloons but finally abandoned due to cloudy skies. I went out to Tularosa Range and fired charges from 6 on to 12. (Mogul detonation seen here). Missed 5:30 shot - trouble getting ordnance men."

On June 4, "He wrote that there was no balloon flight..."

That seems to eliminate Flight No. 4. It is not recorded in the final documents associated with Project Mogul. Remember, Moore himself noted that Crary had copied over his field notes in one sitting so there is the distinct possibility that he copied them incorrectly so that we have an impression that there was a later flight of balloons on June 4 which would have been Flight No. 4. But we have no real record of it. Instead we have Flight No. 5 the next morning, the first of the recorded New Mexican flights. Something else the skeptics fail to mention.

Instead, we’re treated to Moore’s (at the time of the report) fifty-year-old memories. We are cautioned by the skeptics to be dubious of these long ago memories but, of course, they accept Moore’s as reliable. Moore wrote:


I have a memory of J. R. Smith watching the June 4th cluster through a theodolite on a clear, sunny morning and that Capt. Dyvad reported that the Watson Lab radar had lost the targets while Smith had then in view. It is also my recollection that the cluster was tracked about 75 miles from Alamogordo by the crew in the B-17. As I remember this flight, the B-17 crew terminated their chase, while the balloons were still airborne (and J.R. was still watching them), in the vicinity of Capitan Peak, Arabela and Bluewater, NM. I, as an Easterner, had never heard of these exotically-named places but their names have forever been stuck in my memory. This flight provided the only connection that I have ever had with these places. From the note in Crary’s diary, the reason for termination of the chase was due to poor reception of the telemetered acoustic information by the received aboard the plane. We never recovered this flight and, because of the sonobouy, the flight gear and the balloons were all expendable equipment, we had no further concern about them but began
preparations for the next flight.


Moore, as have so many other skeptics, quotes the Brazel description of the debris he found that appeared in the newspaper. "When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches think, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 to 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds."

But Moore, as like all the other skeptics before him, fails to report that Brazel said that he had found weather observation devices before but this was nothing like them. But if it was Mogul, then it would have been recognizable as a weather observation device because Mogul was made up of regular weather observation devices. So what was so strange about it that it induced Brazel to drive into Roswell to report it? Why did the military then wish to accompany him back out to the ranch to see where it was found? And if it only weighed five pounds, what is all that other stuff that was supposedly scattered in the high desert around the ranch?

And here is something else that the skeptics fail to report. Moore told me that he and a couple of the others on the Mogul team went to Roswell to ask for their help in tracking their balloons. The officers at Roswell didn’t have the time to deal with "college boys." This means, of course, that the officers at Roswell knew about Mogul and what it would be like.

Further, because they were launching balloon arrays that could foul up air traffic in southern New Mexico, they were required to post a notice to airman (NOTAM) about the launches. So, while the purpose of Mogul was a secret, they fact that balloon arrays were being launched in southern New Mexico was not.

The point here is that Mogul just doesn’t make a very good solution for the case. The facts don’t add up and the skeptics tend to forget those parts that point in another direction. They can’t even prove there was a Flight No. 4, and if there wasn’t, then Mogul explains nothing. It merely clouds the issue, as so much else has.

4 comments:

Mac said...

My understanding is that even if there were a Flight #4 it wouldn't have carried radar reflectors ...

Randall said...

I have to say, this posting of yours strikes home with me. I have always been open to the Mogul explanation except for one small item that fouls up the logic of it: quite simply, if the Roswell incident was merely a crashed Mogul balloon, then why did Brazel bother to report it, and moreover, why was he (so the story goes) grilled for something like two days (as some reports put it) by intelligence officers and/or the military? Why the stories about Brazel being threatened, and changing his story as a result?

A balloon, after all, is a balloon. Were it a secret project, all anyone in the know had to say to Brazel was, "what you've got there, Mr. Brazel, is a weather balloon with a radar target attached." Case closed. Brazel would have believed it in an instant. Why wouldn't have he believed it? If it WAS a balloon, then one balloon looks like any other, and one radar target looks like any other. This was also just after WWII, when the public was still very much used to blindly accepting the word of the military in such matters. What possible reason could Brazel or anyone else have had for doubting their word, if they said it was a weather balloon? And yet (say the stories) Brazel was interrogated at length, held for some indeterminate amount of time, and possibly threatened. Why?

Now, maybe you can help me with this---I've never been able to track down where the story of Brazel's lengthy interrogation/debriefing began, and so I have no idea of the veracity of it. Do you have any of this information?

But okay... let's say the story is untrue. Let's say Brazel never was threatened or even interrogated. Still the question remains---why all the fuss over what could be dismissed as a weather ballon? Why did Brazel even bother reporting it, in the first place? (Never mind how someone even mistakes paltry and fragile balloon/radar target debris for a "flying disk," but that's another matter).

These points have always bothered me and continue to bother me. They're really the only things about the Roswell story that do bother me. And logically, they just don't add up. It would have been a much more efficient protection of a secret project to spin it as something else to Brazel immediately and decisively, right on the spot... "It's a weather balloon, Mr. Brazel." Why didn't they simply do that, then?

It seems, somehow, that from the start there was something else going on here... but clearly that depends on what Brazel really did find, and what we can make of the stories told about him and the stories he himself told about what he saw.

Joseph Capp said...

Dear Randell,
Attending my first MUFON conference 38th I notice how Dr. Rudy Schild a long time supporter of the MOGUL theory has changed his mind. I am just amazed how intelligent people bought the explanation that two intelligence officers and the Commander of the base with the A-Bomb didn't know what a few weather balloons and a radar detectors looks like. Not even a stretch for many intelligent scientist. Then I realize throw out some absurd explanations and the human ego will take care of the rest. To be less intelligent than some other species on this planet with us is very scary, the more intelligent you are, the more scary it becomes.
Joseph Capp
UFO Media Matters
WOW

MPG said...

The most simple explanation must be: An UFO collided with Mogul
ballooon, lost control and at last crash landed distant away at Corona. So finding debris of foil and balsa from Mogul below collision point and heavy wounded crashlanded UFO far away from this point is almost selfexplaining.