The Project Mogul Conspiracy Destroyed by One Question... Well, Two

 

Here’s another conspiracy that can be destroyed by a single question. This conspiracy has been pushed by most in the media, by the military and the skeptics who are supposed to question everything but only that which suggests alien visitation.

“How can balloon Flight #4, which was cancelled, leave any sort of debris on the ranch managed by Mack Brazel?”

As I wrote that, I thought of another question. “How can a flight that was cancelled at dawn according to the documentation, actually been launched two or three hours earlier?”

Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the New York University balloon project based in Alamogordo, kept comprehensive notes on the balloon flights. The first of those flights, which some have labeled as Project Mogul, was supposed to be Flight #4, but according to Crary’s field notes and diary entries, was cancelled at dawn because of clouds.

Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the
balloon flights in New Mexico.

The rules under which they operated in New Mexico prohibited flights at night or in cloudy weather. The balloon arrays, which could reach 600 feet in length were a hazard to aerial navigation and would be invisible to air commerce at night or in cloudy weather. As dawn on June 4, 1947 broke, it was cloudy and the flight was cancelled. The next day, Flight #5 was launched and according to Crary’s records, was the first successful flight in New Mexico.

Yes, I know that Crary’s notes also mentioned a cluster of balloons that were flown on June 4 later in the day. But according to the records and reports, this was nothing like the full array. It was small, was not expected to leave the White Sands Missile Range and was not a hazard to aerial navigation. The winds aloft data suggested that it would not have flown anywhere near the ranch Brazel managed.

How do I know?

Charles Moore, an engine with the project in New Mexico and who provided the analysis of the winds aloft data told us that. Oh, not directly, but in his excuses for Flight #4.

Moore told us, and wrote, that his examination of the winds aloft data, including the records that I gave him, took the balloons in a different direction if they had been launched at dawn. The winds aloft data I received from the National Weather Service was good only to 20,000 feet and was sometimes incomplete. Moore found records from a station in Orogrande, New Mexico (on the highway between Alamogordo and El Paso), that had records that went up to 50,000 feet. According to those records and those I supplied, a front went through the area around Alamogordo about dawn. It changed the atmospheric dynamics which met that the balloon would not have flown to the northeast to fall on the Brazel ranch. Well, that’s not quite true. Moore said that his calculations put the balloon about 17 miles south of the ranch. Still close enough to suggest a legitimate culprit, if those calculations were accurate.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data that I
supplied to him.
Photo by Kevin Randle

However, that front that passed through the Alamogordo area, meant the balloons wouldn’t even have come that close to the ranch. However, if the balloons were launched early in the morning, at 2:30 or 3:30, the winds would have driven the balloons in the right direction. The solution, well, the balloons were launched before dawn, in violation of the regulations.

There is nothing in Crary’s documents to suggest that happened and you have to wonder how a balloon array launched hours earlier could be cancelled at dawn. This little problem is ignored by those who just can’t wrap their heads around the fact that Flight #4 never flew. And if it never flew, it left no wreckage on the ranch.

I could have mentioned that the pasture where the wreckage was found was one Brazel was in, if not every day, then every other day. That means he would have found the debris on June 5 or 6, and since there was quite a bit of it, that wreckage was a hazard to the operation of the ranch. The sheep refused to cross it to get at water. Brazel wanted to know who was going to clean up the mess, which was his motivation for driving into Roswell.

And here’s another little tidbit. Charles Moore told me that Flight #4 had been configured just like Flight #5. Since #4 was cancelled, we don’t have any schematic of it. However, #5, which was described as the first successful flight in New Mexico, contained no rawin targets. That raises the question of where did the metallic debris originate? Where did the rawin target displayed in General Ramey’s office originate? Certainly not with the mythical Flight #4.

The schematic for Flight # 5. 

I could ask additional questions such as if the debris fell on June 4, why did Brazel wait until July 6 to take samples into Roswell? Why couldn’t the officers of the 509^th Bomb Group recognize the debris taken to the sheriff? Why did they arrange a special flight to Fort Worth Army Air Field and then send that material onto Washington, D.C.?

The point here, is that there is no current terrestrial explanation for what Brazel found and the soldiers in the 509^th recovered in that field. I am astonished that the news media insists on telling us that a Project Mogul balloon was responsible for the debris, yet all the documentation tells us otherwise. We can point to the pictures taken in Fort Worth of a weather balloon and rawin radar target in General Ramey’s off and ask where that material originated. Two of the officers in those pictures, Colonel Thomas DuBose, then the chief of staff at the Eighth Air Force Headquarters and Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. said that what was photographed was NOT the material recovered in New Mexico.

Jesse Marcel with the fake debris in
General Ramey's office.

I’ll let this go here. There are several other points that rule out Flight #4 but I believe the case is made. There was no Flight #4, and without it, the last of the terrestrial explanations is eliminated. You decide for yourselves what the answer to that question is.

Coast-to-Coast AM Sightings for December 5, 2025

 

While there have been many discussions about the Age of Disclosure, which opened to somewhat mixed reviews, not much has happened in the hunt for Disclosure. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been other sightings that are of interest. I made a survey of cases on the National UFO Reporting Center website, and here are a couple of the more interesting sightings.

I noticed an uptick in triangular objects and while this one was in sight for only a few seconds, there is a photograph of it. The witnesses, three of them, were near New Bern, North Carolina on November 13 of this year. They reported they saw the triangle and that it took off in a matter of two or three seconds. They said that there were lights on the craft, and the photograph does show a triangular formation of lights. You see the photograph here:

The New Bern Triangle.

You can also access the case at:

https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=194088

The other aspect of the case, which is somewhat problematic is that they reported a possible abduction. There are no details about that and I’ll try to follow up on it.

On October 31 of this year, a pair of witnesses in Prospect, CT, said they were on the deck in the backyard. The first witness said she saw something glowing in the dark woods behind her parent’s house.

She wondered, “Is that someone up there having a fire? However, it was 1:09 am and it didn't look like a fire. We then noticed it started to move. With our naked eye it looked as if it was flickering, it went from a cluster of lights into a straight line and then we saw it disperse into 4-5 separate orbs/balls of light in opposite directions and then it was completely gone. It only lasted about 4 mins total. There was no sound. I was very scared at what we witnessed.”

There is a short video on the National UFO Reporting Center website that is interesting. The lights didn’t look like those on an aircraft and the motion of the object might be more the result of the witness moving the camera rather than motion of the craft.

She said that the lights were white, purple and green on the object and it moved slowly until it dispersed into orbs. The lights were about fifty yards away. The other interesting aspect of the case was that she reported that the animals reacted to the lights suggesting an electromagnetic component to the report. You can see the video here:

https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=193777

And finally, again proving the international aspect to the phenomenon, the two observers in Edmonton, Canada, watched a flat black triangle and an Arrowhead shaped craft for about a minute on October 26 of this year.

The witness said that as he was stargazing when he spotted a dark, slow-moving triangle. He said there were no lights, no reflection, and it was at about 2000 feet. They heard no sound, but it did have aura around it that made him think it was hot. He thought it was about the size of two 747s stacked up.

About two minutes later as he stood in his driveway, he said that he looked up hoping to see something else. He said this was a different craft but flying along the same flight path as the first UFO. Rather than the flat black of the first craft, this one seemed to be silver and had five or six lights on the underside.

He said, “As it drifted past the lights became hard to see as they must have been recessed in the hull. I think this one was about 3000 feet up, it was more directly above me.”

He said that he thought the craft were about 300 feet long and moving about 300 miles an hour. I’ll note that it is very difficult to accurately estimate distance, speed and size at night without the sort of references found during the day.

You can see the illustrations of the UFOs on the NUFORC website. Click on the Tier 1 reports and scroll down to the Edmonton case.

Why the Roswell Press Release

 

I’m going to have to stop looking at the Internet because there is always something there that pisses me off. The latest was a video about five conspiracies that can be destroyed by asking a single question. Naturally, I clicked on it because I was sure that Roswell would show up. It was the fourth of five. I was surprised by the question that supposedly unravels the Roswell conspiracy.

That question was, “Why did the 509^th Bomb Group issue the press release saying that they had captured a flying saucer in the Roswell region?”

It is fine question but one that I have answered several times. The answer is predicated on the timing of the question, meaning that the press release was issued on July 8, 1947, only two weeks after the phenomenon had exploded in the newspapers. Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine strange craft flying in formation was the cause of the interest and the inspiration for the term flying saucer. In those days that followed, there were hundreds of reports of flying saucers. There were almost as many explanations for what they were as there were newspapers and military theories. The idea of an interplanetary craft was one of those but that explanation was not at the top of the list.

Ed Ruppelt, who took over as the chief of Project Grudge which evolved into Project Blue Book said that the Pentagon was in a panic over the reports. There was a certain hysteria about the flying saucers. It was because no one knew what was going on. Army Air Forces fighters had intercepted UFOs, and the UFOs had paced commercial aircraft, not to mention cars on the ground. Part of the hysteria was fed by those inventing their tales of close encounters suggesting an alien invasion. No one knew what was going on.

When Jess Marcel, Sr. returned to the Roswell Army Air Field with a carload of strange metallic debris, no one knew what it was. According to the officers I interviewed who were there at the time and would have been in a position to know what was going on, were aware of the hysteria. After all, World War II had been over for less than two years, the Soviets were throwing up an Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe that suggested that a new war was on the horizon and now there were tales of strange craft flying around the US unimpeded.  

Randle on the Debris Field in the early 1990s.

The debris recovered by Marcel suggested that the flying saucers might not be hostile or threatening. Blanchard’s thoughts were to announce they had a flying saucer, though it was only bits and pieces of one, but it was enough that they could relieve some of that hysteria. His thoughts were to remove that one aspect from the public consciousness. According to the officers I talked to, including Walter Haut, Colonel Butch Blanchard felt an obligation to report what they had found.

Walter Haut, the man who wrote the press release at his home in Roswell.
Photo by Kevin randle

It was only after the debris had been examined carefully that they realized that whatever it was, it represented a technology that surpassed that of the United States. The metal that was extremely light weight but super strong, what we now suspect was fiber optics which had yet to be invented and, of course, the thin metal that when wadded up returned to its original shape.

But the real turning point came after the press release was, well, released. That was when the rest of the craft was discovered much closer to Roswell than the debris field 65 miles away near Corona. It was here that the bodies were recovered. That changed the dynamic. That told those in charge, meaning the civilian and military leadership in Washington that what was recovered was something so extraordinary that they created the cover up to give them time to determine just what was going on. Were the flying saucers hostile? Benign? What would it mean to our civilization?

The events in Roswell were isolated because Roswell was in the middle of the desert and the military could control all the information coming out of the town. They shifted the story to Fort Worth and Brigadier General Roger Ramey. He was able to put out the fire with the display of a weather balloon and a rawin target. The tale died at that point and the press moved onto other stories.

But the answer to the question about the press release is simple. When Blanchard ordered the press release, all they had was the strange metallic debris, which was just strange metallic debris. He thought to end some of the hysteria by telling the public that they had found a flying saucer. It was nothing to worry about. Blanchard, as the commanding officer at the Roswell Army Air Field, had the authority to provide the press with information that he believed was important. He had not seen the true value of the find until the craft and bodies were located but believed it was his duty to suggest that they had the situation under control. They had a flying saucer and it was nothing to worry about.

The trouble was, he issued the press release prematurely. Had he waited twenty-four hours, it is unlikely we would have ever heard about the crash. It was a tactical mistake but not a strategic one. The situation was altered within three hours of the press release hitting the national wires. But the point here is that I know why he issued the press release based on my discussions with some of the senior officers on the base in 1947. Forty-five years after the event, they provided an answer, but the skeptical community is now hung up on Project Mogul, just one more evidence of how important the find was.

Now, can we put that question into a footnote where it belongs and get onto the more important aspects of the case?