Wikipedia Nonsense and Project Mogul

 

Well, it’s happened again. Just when I thought I could ignore the Project Mogul nonsense, I get sucked right back in. I was attempting to learn something else, when I came upon the Roswell entry in Wikipedia. It showed bias by accepting theory and speculation as if they are established facts. Those alleged facts are simply wrong.

I wouldn’t even bother with this, but the new first sentence in the discussion of Mogul is now filled with errors. It said, “By 1947, the United States had launched thousands of top-secret Project Mogul balloons carrying devices to listen for Soviet atomic tests.”

I suppose I need to point out here that in the past, that first sentence actually claimed, “In 1947, a Project Mogul balloon NYU Flight 4, launched June 4, crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico.”

Why the change? Because someone noticed that NYU Flight 4 had been cancelled at dawn. It did not fly and if it didn’t fly, well, it couldn’t drop anything on the Brazel (Foster) ranch, which is not all that close to Roswell.

The second problem is that the statement was too specific. It gives us information that can be checked through documentation on the Internet, the Air Force report The Roswell Report: Fact vs Fiction in the New Mexican Desert, in Karl Pflock’s book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe and in my book, Roswell in the 21^st Century. In other words, a little research calls the Flight No. 4 explanation into serious question and I have cited both skeptical and positive sources.

So, now we have a more generic opening sentence filled with those fictions I mentioned earlier. In June 1947, the first of the New Mexico balloon arrays were launched from the Alamogordo Army Air Field. Not thousands by 1947, and by September, 1947, there had been only seventeen launches, three of those on the east coast and two that were cancelled.

There were no top-secret Project Mogul balloons in New Mexico in 1947 because there was no such thing and never was a top-secret Mogul balloon. Charles Moore, who was an engineer on the balloon project in New Mexico, made it clear to me that their equipment was off-the-shelf weather balloons, just like those launched several times a day from weather observations stations all over the United States. There was nothing classified about their research. Although he claimed that he didn’t know the name of the project in 1947, the Mogul name appears in Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes and diary showing that the name was known to members of the research team.

The official record of balloon flights in New Mexico in June 1947.

There is another point that is rather subtle but one that is important. What was happening in New Mexico with the NYU balloon flights was not classified. The ultimate purpose, to spy on the Soviets, was classified. We know this because on July 10, the Alamogordo News carried a story about the research going on at Alamogordo Army Air Field complete with pictures of one of the long arrays displayed. Moore told me that the ladder in one of the pictures was a ladder he had bought with petty cash which ties all this together.

Newspaper story about NYU balloon launches in July 1947. A very fully
way to deal with "top-secret" material.

The True Story of Flight #4

The Wikipedia entry told us, “On June 4, researchers at Alamogordo Army Air Field in New Mexico launched a long train of these balloons; they lost contact with the balloons and balloon-borne equipment within 17 miles (27 km) of the ranch managed by W. W. "Mac" [sic] Brazel near Corona, New Mexico, where a balloon array subsequently crashed.”

According to Crary’s notes, the June 4 launch, which is listed as the culprit here, was cancelled at dawn that morning because of cloudy weather. Those in Alamogordo operated under strict government rules because the array trains could be a hazard to aerial navigation. They were required to post a NOTAM warning pilots about that hazard, which underscores the danger of these long arrays.

Crary wrote in his field notes, later transcribed to his diary, “June 4 Wed. Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 [midnight] and 06 this am. No balloon flight again on account of clouds [emphasis added].” For some reason, those of the skeptical bias seem to ignore that statement, inventing alternative meanings behind it. I believe it is destructive to the Mogul explanation because, there was no launch of a full array on June 4.

To be fair, because I think of this as an investigation and not a debate, I note that, according to Crary’s notes, “Flew a regular sono buoy up in a cluster of balloons and had good luck with receiver on the ground but poor on the plane.”

This is the “real” Flight #4 according to those skeptics including Karl Pflock. Charles Moore claimed that this cluster of balloons was a full array which he claimed was the first successful flight in New Mexico. He said that it had been configured the same as Flight #5 but there was no data recorded from it. You have to wonder how it was launched before it was cancelled and why the documentation tells us the balloon cluster was launched later in the day. But mostly you must wonder if Flight #4 was so successful, why no data was recorded from it.

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

Moore told me that Flight #4 was as successful as Flight #5. He told others the same lie. This claim is an obvious contradiction to the documentation that is available because, if it had collected data, it would be listed.

Added to that question is why Flight #5, which did fly the next day, has the notation “First successful flight carrying a heavy load.”?

The next entry, for June 5, clarifies the situation. Crary wrote, “Up at 4 to shoot two charges for balloon flight. Whole assembly of constant altitude balloons set up at 0500.” This underscores that Flight #5 was the first full array launched in New Mexico.

The New York Times endorsed the idea that there was something extremely unusual about the Mogul arrays. According to that story, “"...squadrons of big balloons ... It was like having an elephant in your backyard and hoping that no one would notice it. ... To the untrained eye, the reflectors looked extremely odd, a geometrical hash of lightweight sticks and sharp angles made of metal foil. ... photographs of it, taken in 1947 and published in newspapers, show bits and pieces of what are obviously collapsed balloons and radar reflectors.”

This is a reference to the photographs taken in Brigadier General Roger Ramey’s office on July 8. Ramey was the commanding officer of the 8^th Air Force in 1947 and had ordered, according to various sources, samples of the debris brought to his office. Major Jesse Marcel, who had collected some of the debris on July 7, was the man who brought it forward. Those photographs do show the remains of a neoprene weather balloon and the remnants of a rawin radar target. However, both Marcel and Colonel Thomas Dubose, who are in those pictures, have testified that the material in the pictures was not the material recovered on the debris field. Both said that the real material was switched with that of the weather balloon and radar reflector before being shown to J. Bond Johnson from the Fort Worth Star Telegram who took the pictures.

Jesse Marcel with the wreckage of a rawin radar
reflector. The balloon envelope is the black
mass behind him. July 8, 1947

What we now know is there weren’t squadrons of big balloons as reported in The New York Times, but an array of standard weather balloons, recognizable, even when arranged in a long array. There was nothing about the balloons that would render them unrecognizable. The daughter of Sherman Campbell was pictured in newspapers around the country displaying the remains of a rawin target her father had found on his farm near Circleville, Ohio around the same time. It seems that farmers who had no experience with weather balloons or radar targets was able to identify the remains as such when a trained intelligence officer and the chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force was not.

Newspaper photo of Sherman Campbell's
daughter with a rawin target her
father had found in 1947.

Here's another problem for the Mogul explanation. According to what Moore told me when I visited with him in Socorro, New Mexico, the mythical Flight #4 was configured exactly like Flight #5. The problem then is that the schematic for Flight #5 contains no rawin targets, which The New York Times described as “the reflectors looked extremely odd, a geometrical hash of lightweight sticks and sharp angles made of metal foil.”

All of this should render the Mogul balloons as a non-answer. It is, however, the only terrestrial explanation left to explain the debris. The Air Force proved that in their report when they wrote the other alternative explanations had been eliminated. Take it off the table and there is no other culprit.

Mack Brazel, the Rancher Who Found the Debris

One of the facts that is rarely mentioned by the skeptical side of the argument is that Mack Brazel, who took the samples to the Chaves County Sheriff, George Wilcox, knew what weather balloons looked like. In the Roswell Daily Record article published on July 9, Brazel said that he had found weather balloons on other occasions, but this was not like those.

The second problem here is that Flight #4 was allegedly launched on June 4, but Brazel didn’t take samples of the debris to the sheriff until more than a month later. Descriptions of the debris scattered in the pasture suggest that it was so some much debris that the sheep refused to cross the field for water. According to Bill Brazel, son of Mack, and Tommy Tyree, a sometimes ranch hand, Mack was in the field at least every other day, meaning that he would have found the debris on June 5 or 6, if we believe the newspaper story. Given the location of the debris and the water source, Brazel would have reported it with in a day or two. He wanted those responsible for scattering the debris to clean it up because, according to Tommy Tyree, the Proctors, Bill Brazel and Bessie Brazel Schreiber, the debris so densely packed or blowing around that the sheep refused to cross it. Brazel wanted to know who was going to clean up the mess. The neighbors suggested the Army. This tidbit of information is just another reason to reject the Mogul explanation.

Bill Brazel in 1989. Photo by Kevin Randle

Bessie Brazel Schreiber was fourteen years old in 1947 and in an affidavit signed on September 9, 1993, provided her perspective about the events. She said that she and her younger brother, along with her father were on the ranch in July 1947. She said that right around the fourth, her dad had “found a lot of debris scattered over a pasture some distance from the house… None of us was riding with him when he found the material…”

Please note the date. The Roswell Daily Record reported that Brazel had found the debris in the middle of June. Here, Schreiber said that her father found the debris much later than claimed in the newspaper which would eliminate the Mogul explanation.

She said, “there was a lot of debris scattered sparsely over an area that seem to me now to have been about the size of a football field. There may been additional material spread out more widely by the wind, which was blowing quite strongly.”

For those interested, a football field is about the size of an acre. That’s much larger than Cavitt’s claim of about 200 feet and smaller than Marcel’s three quarters of a mile given for the size of the debris field.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the weasel words used by her. She said that the area seemed to have been and there may have been… both statements don’t suggest a strong memory of the event but are probably based on information she heard later, picked up from family and various articles, documentaries and books.

The important point is that she said her father located the debris during the July 4 weekend, which refutes the Daily Record article claiming a mid-June date. The truth here is that I’m reluctant to quote from her affidavit because later, in conversations with her brother, Bill, she reputed it all, suggesting that she might be remembering some other event. I feel obligated to mention her affidavit because it is part of the research and provides information that supports both sides of the argument. To ignore it is to reject part of the story with which I disagree.

Debris Arrives in Roswell

When Brazel went to Roswell to find that assistance for cleaning up the mess, he stopped first at the sheriff’s office. According to Phyllis McGuire, daughter of the sheriff and who was there when Brazel came in, he carried samples of the debris. While McGuire being in the office might seem strange, the sheriff’s family lived in an apartment above the jail. It was early Sunday afternoon when Brazel arrived. She saw the bundle of material.

After Marcel arrived, that debris was taken to the base and then flown to Fort Worth. Colonel Dubose said that, on orders by General Clements McMullen, that debris was flown to SAC Headquarters. Colonel Al Clark, who was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Supply (G4) in Fort Worth, flew the material on to SAC HQ. It is impossible to believe that this debris would pass through so many hands and not be recognized as balloon and rawin debris, if it was that. Remember, Sheridan Cavitt told Colonel Richard Weaver in the mid-1990s, that he recognized it as balloon debris when he first saw it out in the field.

Sheridan Cavitt in 1990. Photo by Kevin Randle

Of course, Cavitt told Don and me that in July 1947, he was too busy to be involved in any balloon retrieval. He denied he had gone out to the impact site, despite Bill Rickett telling us otherwise. Rickett said that the site was less than an hour from Roswell and that several of the senior officers were there.

But Cavitt changed the story and told Weaver he had been on the debris field. He didn’t remember if Marcel was there or not, but that he, Cavitt, knew it was a balloon. He didn’t explain why he didn’t mention that to Marcel nor did he explain why he had withheld this important intelligence from Blanchard or the other staff officers in Roswell.

All this is to provide some perspective for my suggestion that Wikipedia’s bias is showing. Nearly every source cited in the footnotes is from a skeptical publication or a writer with a skeptical point of view. Looking at some of the source material used, I can point to repeated errors. Donovan Webster provides us with many examples of this from suggesting the Mac [sic] Brazel was 80 miles from Roswell to reporting, “Seeking answers, he contacted Colonel “Butch” Blanchard, commander of the Roswell Army Airfield’s 509th Composite Group, located just outside of town. Blanchard was stymied. Working his way up the chain of command, he decided to contact his superior, General Roger W. Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas.”

Colonel William Butch Blanchard.

Although it is unclear who the “he” is, but the information was relayed to Marcel and not Blanchard. It was Marcel who was stymied and accompanied Brazel back to the ranch with Cavitt of the Counterintelligence Corps. Marcel was not accompanied by Sheriff Wilcox.

It’s here where we run into another aspect of this and that’s the size of the debris field. Marcel told researchers that it was about three quarters of a mile long and two hundred feet wide. Marcel said that it looked as if something had exploded in the air and didn’t mention a gouge. He said that he saw no evidence that anything hit the ground.

Cavitt, however, said the debris field was only about two hundred feet square, which suggests the remains of a Mogul flight. To him there was nothing unusual about the debris field, yet he spent a couple of hours out there. Marcel suggested that Cavitt head on back to the base, while he, Marcel, gathered some of that debris to take back to Roswell.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the debris field in 1989. 
Photo by Kevin Randle

Although Marcel didn’t mention a gouge, Bill Brazel did. He said that it ran down what would have been the center of the debris field. According to what he told Don and me, it was narrow at the beginning, widened out to about ten feet and then narrowed at the far end. It suggested that something had bounced and then gaining flight for another fifteen or twenty miles. I’ll speculate here that Marcel was looking for an impact crater where the object had hit. Seeing the debris field, it was his memory that the object had exploded in the air.

Brigadier General Arthur Exon and the Roswell Case

In one of the more outrageous examples of misinformation, Wikipedia claimed “The book [UFO Crash at Roswell] claimed that General Arthur Exon had been aware of debris and bodies, but Exon disputed his depiction.”

Brigadier General Arthur Exon.

Karl Pflock is probably the source of this information, but Pflock doesn’t actually write that. He wrote, “As we will see, General Exon has quite a different take on what he actually said and intended to convey.”

But what actually happened was the Stanton Friedman made the original allegation against Don and me because Exon talked about an oversight group he identified as “The Unholy Thirteen.” That information, from an actual living source who was there, was in conflict with Friedman’s defense of MJ-12 documents. If the group, as described by Exon existed, that undercut the validity of MJ-12. Friedman said that Exon had told him that we, or more accurately in this case I, had misquoted him.

But that’s not what Exon said originally. In a handwritten letter dated November 24, 1991, Exon set the record on this straight. He wrote:

I’m sorry that a portion of my interview has given you trouble. I will acknowledge that the “quick” quotes does have me saying that my flights later much later [emphasis in the original], varified [sic] the direction of possible flight of the object…

Further, you both likely recall on many occasions during my visits with you in person and on the phone when you wanted me to meet others – that I did not know anything first Hand. Although I believe you did quote me accurately, [emphasis added], I do believe that your writings gave me more credence and impression of personal & direct knowledge that my recordings would indication [sic] on their own! [Emphasis in original]. I felt that throughout the portions where my name was used, the quotes were O,K. but the authoritative emphasis was yours. I want to say that so far your use of my name and discussions have not given me any problem. So let’s leave it at that. I did enjoy your and Donald’s efforts in digging into who knows what!

I’m returning the copy of your books. I’ll be glad to pay for it but would appreciate it being autographed.

For those interested in a more comprehensive analysis of this whole situation, you can find it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-general-exon-quotes-again.html

And here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-havent-wanted-to-turn-this-blog-into.html

And here, you can see a copy of Exon’s letter to me and Greg Sandow’s analysis of the importance of the Exon testimony here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-general-exon-quotes-are-accurate.html

Karl Pflock, in his book, later followed up with that weak sentence in an earlier chapter, with a paragraph. He wrote:

…However, what of the recollections attributed by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt to retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon?

When first made public in 1991, it seemed Exon’s memories of the possibility that bodies had been flown from Roswell to Wright Field in 1947 might be based upon firsthand information. If so, this would be highly significant, especially since Exon also seemed to have firsthand knowledge of the debris field and crash site, as well as a shadowy high-level group established to keep the truth about Roswell under wraps. However, in a lengthy September 1992 telephone conversation, Exon told me [Pflock] his comments about bodies and debris at Wright Field were based solely upon rumors he heard from colleagues at Wright Field and nothing more. As for the “control group,” he said he merely was making educated guesses as to who likely would have been selected for such a group. Finally, with respect to his alleged knowledge of the debris field and crash sites, he told me he remembered flying over several sites in New Mexico quite some time after July 1947, on missions that had nothing to do with the Roswell incident. One such location might have fit what he had been told about the crash site by ufologists because it had vehicle tracks running to it.

I find the use of the term “rumor,” to be somewhat reductive. One definition of rumor is, “information or a story that is passed from person to person but has not been proven to be true.”

I can argue that there are elements of what Exon said that are true based on other testimony and documentation. Exon was the source for us, but he was not the only source talking about what he had learned from those who had seen the bodies and who had studied the strange metal that had been delivered to Wright Field.

It is true, that the information was second hand from Exon but it strains the term rumor as it was applied here. Exon made it clear that he knew those who told him about the bodies and about the metal. It wasn’t gossip he’d overheard in the Officers Club or tales told out of school. These were men he trusted telling him, specifically about the strange metal recovered on the debris field and later from a photographer who told him about the bodies.

The real problem here is that I have published, in several places, the transcripts of what Exon told me and later told Don. I shared those transcripts with both Pflock and Philip Klass. Pflock knew about the letter that Exon had sent to me, but that didn’t stop him from suggesting that we misrepresented Exon. Both the letter and the tone of our book, suggested that Exon was telling us what he had learned from his colleagues and that his first-hand observations were from a flight over the debris field and the impact site. Both Friedman and Pflock knew the truth about the source of the information and both distorted that information for their own purposes.

I will note that Pflock did not supply transcripts of his interview with Exon. He put his spin on it but Exon told me, in his letter what he meant. As I say, this takes it from rumor to  a higher level of information.

I made it clear, in UFO Crash at Roswell, the information was not from direct observation by Exon, but came from discussions with those directly involved. The information rises above the definition of rumor but it is still second hand.

But Exon also talked about two distinct sites, which we have thought of as the debris field near Corona, New Mexico and the impact site much closer to Roswell. As mentioned earlier, Rickett described in detail his trip to the impact site with Cavitt. Contrary to Pflock’s reporting, Exon flew over those sites which makes that first hand testimony with corroborating statements by others. And, importantly, he mentioned two sites and not several different sites. Exon was telling Don and me about two distinct sites.

There is one other interesting fact that has not been mentioned. While we were attacked about what Exon had said and done, the final statement in that segment of the book, Exon said, “Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space.” There is nothing in the notes or interviews by others that this statement is in dispute.

An interesting side note that has some relevance to the discussion is that Exon had a copy of the book. He had read the segments about him and he didn’t challenge any of the statements as inaccurate. He challenged the importance of the quotes he had made, but he wrote that the quotes were accurate and that includes the last one attributed to him. “Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space.”

A Final Word

This has grown much longer than I intended. The original point was to show the bias in Wikipedia about the Roswell crash/retrieval. Nearly every source they quoted was from the skeptical side of the argument. I believe that by correcting some of the mistakes made, I have shown the bias. Even a quarter of a century after we updated the spelling of Mack Brazel’s name, they can’t get it right. Even after thirty years of explaining that the operation in Alamogordo was not highly classified and showing pictures that appeared in the newspapers of the time, we are still told it was highly classified. And in this latest version of the article in Wikipedia, they have printed “facts” that are easily checked but no one bothered with that.

I could even point out that the three thousand dollars offered for proof of a flying disk, some of that information was not widely available until after Brazel had gone into Roswell. A thousand dollars was only available during the July 4^th weekend and the announcement of a thousand from another source wasn’t reported until Monday after Brazel had returned from Roswell.

I don’t suppose that Wikipedia will correct the errors and provide information from the other side of the argument. But I will note one other fact. Much of the information reported in Wikipedia is from published sources that have quoted other sources. The information that Don, Tom Carey and I reported on was gathered in interviews with the participants. We didn’t read a bunch of books and articles; we talked to the people who were there and involved. That should count for something.