Did the Balloon Debris Ever Reach Wright-Patterson AFB?

 

David Rudiak

Every once in a while, something new about the Roswell case pops up. David Rudiak was making a somewhat routine search of the newspapers from July 1947 and found the following from the Dayton Hearld for July 9. You might say that it provides a different perspective on our ongoing search for evidence about the Roswell events.

According to the newspaper, under the headline, “Field Test ‘Out’ On ‘Flying Disc.’”

Wright Field will not receive the weather device which for a while yesterday was believed to be a flying disc.

Plans to send the object here for study were changed when the identification was made.

The office of technical intelligence received the following message from headquarters of the Army Air Forces this morning:

“In view of positive identification of this object as a Rawin high altitude sounding device (radar target) it appears unnecessary to forward it to you.”

The FBI telex that went out from Fort Worth on the evening of July 8, was based on an interview of Major Curtan (who, in reality, was Major Kirton) who told the FBI agent that the object was “hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a ballon (sic) by cable, which ballon (sic) was approximately twenty feet in diameter… Disc and balloon being transported to Wright Field by special plane for examin[ation].”

To me, the news article suggests that the material was not sent on to Wright Field because it was identified in Fort Worth as a common weather balloon and not an alien space craft. There was no reason to send it to Wright Field with the identification and photographs made in Fort Worth. That would suggest that the interviews conducted by the Air Force in 1994 reflected poor memory about the event but were important because they underscored the Mogul explanation.

The article says the balloon and the rawin
target were not sent on to Wright-Pat.

And, I suppose the skeptics will say that it was just one more way to cover up the super-secret Mogul project. Why bother with follow up interviews or ask to see the balloon and rawin target at Wright Field because it was identified as just a common balloon and radar target?

But looking at the interviews conducted by the Air Force, several of the retired officers were asked, specifically, about a cover up. Albert Trakowski, told Colonel Jeffrey L. Butler and First Lieutenant James McAndrew, “Concerning a cover story for the project Mogul, there was no planned cover story. I do not recall any documentation nor any efforts develop a cover story even though security for Mogul was of great concern.”

And, Trakowski said, “I became aware of this only after Colonel [Marcellus] Duffy called me from Wright Field from his home. This was just an informational call, he just wanted to let me know that someone had come to him with some debris from New Mexico and he said, ‘this sure looked like some of the stuff that you launched from Alamogordo.’ Duffy was very familiar with the various apparatus and materials for the project, so if he said that it was debris from the project, I’m sure that’s what it was. He was not concerned with a breach of security for the project.”

What we have here, then, are Trakowski and Athelstan F. Spilhaus, relating what Colonel Duffy might have done. Spilhaus wrote, “All the NYU personnel had left Alomogordo [sic] when the ‘material’ was brought in – someone stated that it may have been Col Duffy’s and therefore was sent to him at Wright-Patterson – not because it was extraterrestrial. It is a logical reason to send it (the debris from the desert) there – not because it was special – Col Duffy was a fine officer and I’m sure he’d recognize it.”

Trakowski and Spilhaus, as second-hand witnesses, were providing information about the debris being forwarded to Wright Field, but suggesting it was just a few samples. Yet we have first-hand testimony from eyewitnesses suggesting more than just a few scraps of the material hand carried to Wright Pat. In fact, crates had been constructed to house the debris for the trip out of Roswell.

There were already pictures of Jesse Marcel, Roger Ramey and Thomas Dubose published in the newspapers with that balloon and target. Sort of a “Nothing to see here. Move along,” ploy. I mean, who, really thought it was an alien spacecraft in those pictures until Jesse Marcel began talking about it in those terms in 1978, so long after the event.

But since the balloon experiments being conducted in New Mexico weren’t classified, though there seemed to be a great deal of concern about possible security breaches of the ultimate purpose. The next day, that is July 10, more pictures of the balloons and rawin targets were published in newspapers around the country. You must wonder what those officers interviewed in 1994 were talking about given the documentation from 1947.

What we do have is the newspaper article that David found, telling us that the flight to Wright Field was cancelled, and the second-hand memories of two of those involved in some fashion with Mogul, telling us that Duffy had identified it. This really boils down to which of the witnesses to you care to believe. But I will note that if General Ramey and his weather officer, Warrant Officer Irving Newton, had already identified the material and given that identification to the press, what purpose would be served by sending it on to Duffy at Wright Field?