Friday, September 18, 2026

I Explain Mogul one LAST Time

I’m going to go through this just one more time so that when this stupid question resurfaces, I can point to this post. Project Mogul is NOT the solution to the Roswell crash. The documentation argues against it; the testimony argues against it and the constant level balloon experiments conducted in Alamogordo in June and July 1947 were NOT classified. Those statements alone should be sufficient to eliminate Mogul, but as I have been told, because this is my claim, I must present the evidence.

Okay. I get it.

The documentation, according to both the field notes and the diary kept by Dr. Albert Crary, the man leading the testing, proves it. According to him, Flight No. 4, the alleged culprit in all this, was cancelled at dawn because of clouds.

List of the New York University balloon flights showing Flight No. 5 as the 
first flight in New Mexico. Table from Air Force report. 


A quick explanation here. These flights were made up of arrays of neoprene rubber balloons. These were off the shelf balloons. The newer, polyethylene balloon didn’t arrive until later. There was nothing about these balloons that would not be easily identified by those who found them whether they were farmers, ranchers or military officers. In fact, one such balloon that included a rawin radar target was found near Circleville, Ohio in July 1947 and everyone knew what it was.

Sherman Campbell's daughter with the rawin
target found on his farm in July 1947. Even the 
daughter recognized it as terrestrial.


We know the construction of Flight No. 4 because, Charles Moore, an engineer on the project, told me that it was configured just like Flight No. 5, which had no rawin targets attached. How do I know? Because in the big Air Force report contained schematics and there were no rawin targets on Flight No. 5. That does mean that the material displayed in General Roger Ramey’s office of the alleged wreckage brought from Roswell was faked because it showed the degraded remains of a rawin target.

The fallback position is that the field notes say they launched a cluster of ballons. However, we do have a schematic for the cluster of balloons, shown on the page next to that for Flight No. 5 and it shows no rawin targets.

Schematic of Flight No. 5 as shown in the Air Force report.


In other words, the documentation provides us with the make-up of Flight No. 4 and the balloon clusters. We find NO rawin targets. This, again, underscores the deceptive nature of the photographs taken in General Ramey’s office.

Here’s another fact. According to the documentation, the rules under which they operated in New Mexico prohibited flights at night or in cloudy weather. The long arrays, approaching 600 feet in length, were considered a hazard to aerial navigation. Crary’s June 4 entry tells us that the flight was cancelled at dawn because of cloudy weather, which means it NEVER flew. The diary entry also tells us they flew a cluster of balloons, which, given the sequence, would have been launched later in the day. Charles Moore, however, tells us, in direct contradiction of this, that Flight No. 4 was launched around 2:30 a.m., in violation of the rules under which they operated.

Why would he say this?

Because, according to the winds aloft data, a launch at dawn, (data which I originally provided to Moore) would NOT have taken the balloons to within 17 miles of the Foster (Brazel) ranch. According to Moore, in winds aloft data he received from a weather station in Orogrande, NM, a front had passed through Alamogordo about dawn (which explains the clouds). He needed data from hours earlier to project a path that would have taken the balloons in the northeastern direction toward the ranch.

Here’s a point that some of the skeptics miss in all this. I had obtained the microfilmed winds aloft data (up to 20,000) from the National Weather Service. Looking at them, I realized any conclusions I drew from them would be ignored. I was in contact with Moore. I sent him copies of the relevant charts. After several days, he asked for additional charts which I sent along. See, I was looking for expert opinions and analysis of those charts. I was in search of the truth rather than a confirmation of my opinion, which, had not been solidified until the Air Force published their report and we had the listing of the balloon flights in New Mexico.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data I had provided him. 
Photo by Kevin Randle.


I will also note here that both Brad Sparks and David Rudiak, whose backgrounds provided them with the necessary expertise to analyze the data, independently came to the same conclusion. Moore had fudged the numbers to show that Flight No. 4 would have gotten close to the Foster ranch. Their analysis did not support Moore’s projected flight path. This was an analysis of the winds aloft data gathered prior to the front moving through Alamogordo, which caused the cancellation of Flight No. 4.

Let’s recap. Flight No. 4, the culprit in all this was cancelled at dawn, it was not launched hours earlier as claimed by Moore. According to Moore, Flight No. 4 was configured the same as Flight No. 5, which contained no rawin targets. The cluster flight, for which we do have some schematics, do not show rawin targets as part of those earlier flights.

There is one other annoying point here. I keep hearing that Project Mogul was highly classified and that is the reason that the Army worked so hard to cover up the recovery of the material found by Mack (when will these people learn to spell his first name?) Brazel. But what was going on in New Mexico was NOT highly classified. In fact, two days after the Roswell Daily Record announced the Army had captured a flying saucer, newspapers around the country published pictures of these arrays and an explanation of what was going on in Alamogordo. True, the ultimate purpose of Mogul was classified but that classification did not apply to the experiments in Alamogordo as proven by the newspaper.

Alamogordo News on July 10, 1947 showing photos of
the equipment used in the balloon launches. The ladder
in the photo is one that Moore bought in NM for that
purpose. This shows that the experiments in NM were
NOT classified.


I’m going to leave it here. I believe the documentation, the testimonies of some of the participants, and other information rules out Flight No. 4 as the culprit. If it didn’t fly, it left no debris and that explanation for what fell near Corona on the July day in 1947, is rejected. There is other evidence, but this should be sufficient to prove the case.

So, you ask me what I think. I believe that among those of us who have investigated this in depth, that is Stan Friedman, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, the Air Force and me, we have eliminated all the terrestrial explanations. Does that mean what fell was part of an alien craft? No, it means there is no terrestrial explanation currently available. That suggests something off world, but only suggests it. There might be some super classified file gathering dust in one of those warehouses full of old documentation, but no one has found it. I believe that if something like that existed, when the Air Force investigated the crash back in the mid-1990s, they would have trotted it out. That they didn’t suggests there is no such alternative explanation.

We are left with the literal definition of an “unidentified.” We don’t know what it was, but it was NOT a Project Mogul balloon.


13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Exactly.

David Rudiak said...

There is absolutely no record anywhere of a Mogul Flight #4 from June 4, 1947, in any Mogul records or multiple official histories of flight. Instead, absolutely EVERY official history lists Flight #5 from June 5 as the FIRST N.M. Mogul flight.

"Flight #4" was simply lied into existence in 1994 by a Pentagon AFOSI counterintelligence team, with the seeming eager assistance of Mogul engineer Charles Moore. Among the lies they told were alterations of the original Mogul data to make it seem like a Flight #4 existed. Thus, the main flight summary table had Flights #2, #3, and #4 all missing. Based on various Mogul records, all three flights were cancelled because of bad weather.

But this didn't deter AFOSI and Moore. Instead of publishing the REAL flight table, they created their own tables, inserting all 3 flights back into the table. This was simply flagrant lying.

The other main thing they did was conflate the small, short-lived, generally unrecorded test or service flights. These were designed to NOT fly off the White Sands test range, controlled by the military, thus NOT requiring the issuances of NOTAMs for balloon flights that drifted into civilian airspace and were under the control of the CAA.

Thus they proposed a Schroedinger's cat balloon paradigm. What caused Roswell was SIMULTANEOUSLY a large, constant-altitude, generally long-lived Mogul flight, which were ALL recorded and documented in Mogul records. But it was also a small, short-lived service flight, to try to get around the complete absence of records for "Flight #4". It's little like saying Flight #4 was simultaneously a piper cub and a Boeing 747….

This is also reflected in how skeptic-promoted witnesses can't remotely agree on the quantity of debris. General Ramey showed and said it was nothing but a singular weather balloon and radar target. Sheridan Cavitt said they found an area of balloon debris no bigger than his living room (or basically Ramey's singular balloon story). Against this Marcel's 1947 quote that debris was scattered over a square mile. Mack Brazel's newspaper story, while Brazel was in military custody, was debris scattered over 200 yards, but only 5 pounds of rubber strips, sticks, foil, paper, and tape.

But the best part was Brazel denying that he found any balloon rigging, which would be quite impossible if he really had found the remains of a Mogul balloon flight. And how did 2+ dozen weather balloons and multiple radar targets (AFOSI and Moore's story) plus payload (sonobuoy), control equipment, and parachutes, somehow condense down into just one balloon (no rubber strips) and one radar target in Ramey's office with no equipment recovered (Ramey’s story)?

Moore was also guilty of other funny business. In 1997 he published his balloon trajectory theory, where he stated he thought "Flight #4" performed even better than the real Flight #5 and that he had shown that the winds were "exactly" right to take Flight #4 "exactly" to the Foster Ranch crash site. (Not "approximately"--EXACTLY) But in reality he had to cook the books to make it happen. He also altered Mogul maps. See:

www.roswellproof.com/flight4_trajectory.html
www.roswellproof.com/Flight4_Addendums.html
www.roswellproof.com/Flight4and5_changes.html

Brad Sparks and I in 2002 proved that Moore was engaged in hoaxing, apparently trying to bolster the AFOSI Mogul hypothesis. You don't need to create fake trajectories and alter tables and maps if you're on solid ground.

Some Guy on the Innernets said...

It is beyond silly for anyone to pretend Kevin has not presented the evidence. I mean holy crap, how many times does he have to post the facts? People cling to the balloon explanation because it's the only thing anyone has come up with that can be stretched and beaten into something resembling plausibility, providing of course that one ignores whole categories of other evidence, and does not look to closely in any event.

Everyone has to sleep at night, and for some people, Roswell can't be anything but a hoax or misunderstanding, in order for them to carry on with ignoring other things that they can't deal with. It's incredibly tiresome.

David Rudiak said...

The original balloon theory from 1947 was based on Gen. Ramey displaying a singular rubber weather balloon and torn-up radar target and saying that was what was recovered. He brought in his weather officer, Irving Newton, to make the ID official. A few hours later, rancher Mack Brazel was taken to the Roswell Daily Record for an interview. Those there, said he was accompanied by military officers, and was also being detained at the base. In other words he wasn't a free agent. Brazel described finding material which would fit a weather balloon/radar target description, but then at the end of his interview denied it, saying it didn't resemble "in any way" two previous weather balloons he had found. This was followed up in the next few days by multiple weather balloon/radar target demonstrations trying to sell the idea that these were causing all the flying saucer reports.

Then in 1994, NM Congressman Steven Schiff, launched a Congressional investigation into what happened. To derail Schiff's inquiry, an AFOSI counterintelligence team came up with Project Mogul "Flight #4", which in reality had been cancelled. But a ghost flight in some ways was even better, because with zero documentation they could make it into anything they wanted. Suddenly Ramey's singular weather balloon became a giant Mogul balloon made up of 2 dozen+ weather balloons and multiple radar targets. Never mind that this disagreed totally with Ramey's singular balloon/target, or Brazel's 5 pounds of rubber strips and foil/sticks. It was a balloon project that could be documented as being in the area, so that is what it was, to hell with the contradictory evidence, such as no documented balloon flight.

This also leaves out a very important aspect of the Roswell case, namely the highly anomalous material described by many witnesses: extremely strong but very light in weight, couldn't be cut, couldn't be burned, and the infamous "memory foil" that when wadded up immediately returned to its original shape without leaving any creases, quite unlike real aluminum foil that real radar targets were made of. Hardly weather balloon material. So debunkers have proposed other things, like aluminized mylar or other plastics, which simply did NOT exist in 1947.

It was the descriptions of anomalous debris and the large debris field that got me interested in the case over 30 years ago. I compiled as much testimony as I could find about the various materials described and made a large file out of it. The results have been on my website from the last 25 years:

www.roswellproof.com/debris_main.html

Specifically, check out the testimony of multiple witnesses on the so-called memory foil, something that humans did not have in 1947:

www.roswellproof.com/debris_main.html

Multiple military and civilian witnesses to "memory foil":

www.roswellproof.com/debris2_memory_foil.html

Nitram said...

Does Crary’s diary disprove Flight No. 4?

Not decisively. It exposes an ambiguity in the Air Force’s precise flight-number reconstruction.
The Air Force synopsis acknowledges that the ordinary NYU flight table was incomplete: it omitted classified “service” Flights 2, 3 and 4.
Consequently, Flight 5 appearing as the first New Mexico flight in that table does not prove that no earlier New Mexico service flight occurred.
The synopsis identifies Flight 3 as launched on 29 May and Flight 4 on 4 June from Alamogordo.
The contested 4 June entry is commonly understood as recording cancellation of a planned full balloon train because of cloud; but a later launch involving a cluster of meteorological balloons and a sonobuoy.
The Air Force treated that later cluster as Flight 4. Your opposing interpretation, my friend, is that cancellation meant “Flight 4” never flew and that the subsequent cluster was a separate, unnumbered experiment. Because the original diary wording and complete operational records do not unambiguously resolve that nomenclature, “Flight 4” should not be presented as established beyond dispute.
Nevertheless, even if yours and David’s interpretation were accepted, it proves only that the debris has been assigned the wrong flight number.

I can agree the argument based on Flight 5’s schematic is weak because Flight 5 was not necessarily configured like the earlier classified service flights.
Moore’s recollections were retrospective and therefore cannot settle the matter alone. But the absence of a target from a different flight’s schematic likewise cannot prove fabrication.

The Circleville recovery and Sherman Campbell photograph show only that an intact radar target could be recognised under other circumstances.
The Roswell material had allegedly “weathered on a ranch and was found fragmented” - recognition by one farmer or child does not determine what Brazel, Marcel or other personnel should have recognised.

Wind reconstruction

Moore’s reconstructed trajectory is not conclusive of course!
The competing analyses attributed to Brad Sparks and David Rudiak challenge his choice and adjustment of wind data.
Without a reproducible comparison of the original observations, launch time, altitude profile and balloon dynamics, neither trajectory should be treated as proof.
More importantly, failure to route Flight 4 within 17 miles of the ranch would weaken that particular identification, not the balloon-equipment conclusion supplied by the physical descriptions and contemporary records.

An unidentified terrestrial balloon launch or cluster, ridiculous as it may seem, still seems the best answer.

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

There is nothing exact about what fell at Roswell :)

Dan Morrow said...

To Nitram:

What I have found shows Flight 3 being launched on May 29th, with its disposition unknown. Is that flight a possible candidate here for the found debris? Has anyone done a projected trajectory of Flight 3 launched on May 29th?

KRandle said...

Dan -

The problem with Flight No. 3, is that it was launched on the east coast. It was nowhere close to New Mexico.

David Rudiak said...

Flight 3 would have indeed been launched back east on May 3, according to Mogul records, but like Flight 2 & 4, it too was canceled by bad weather.

Flights 2-4 were all invented by AFOSI propagandists in 1994 to make a case for a Flight 4 explaining Roswell. In the REAL Mogul documents, they are left out because they never went up, there was no flight data to record, hence omitted from permanent records, including the main flight summary table.

No problem. Just create your own flight summary table, stick them back in, and proclaim them real flights. Really, that's what they did. In the McAndrew synopsis, e.g., he claims Flight 2 from April 18 in Penn. "was flown" to coincide with the explosive demolition of the Helgoland Nazi fortress. Well, yes, that was the probable INTENT, but it never went up. McAndrew provides a footnote referring to the first Mogul progress report to supposedly back up his claim that Flight 2 "was flown", but when you check out the referenced primary source (and we seem to be talking about primary sources here), what it REALLY says is: ”Release was attempted… Due to the high wind… and due to malfunctioning of the Army receiver in the plane that was to follow the balloons, RELEASE WAS NOT MADE. THE ALREADY-INFLATED BALLOONS WERE CUT FREE AND THE EQUIPMENT BROUGHT BACK TO NYU. It is expected that this equipment will be flown about 8 May."

The progress reports don't mention what happened to the planned May 8 attempt, but Crary's field notes describe it too being canceled by high winds: "...trouble with winds and instruments did not go up."

Like AFOSI, Mogul engineer Charles Moore created his own flight summary table, putting Flights 2, 3, 4 back in. Instead, AFOSI used a small "test" or "service" flight from May 29, and called it "Flight 3", whereas Moore said "Flight 3" was the May 8 attempt using recycled April 18 canceled Flight 2 equipment. (Moore adds a comment that "Balloons broke free.")

As for McAndrews supposed May 29 "Mogul flight", this was obviously a small, short-lived "service" flight planned to coincide with a planned missile launch at White Sands. I say "obviously" because Crary's notes also clearly indicate that most of the Mogul flight team and equipment did not arrive for 2 more days, and then he indicates they immediately set about assembling the constant-altitude or numbered Mogul flights. The planned one on June 3 was canceled because of cloud cover, and so was the one on June 4, the alleged "Flight 4". But Mogul was under strict CAA rules not to launch their lengthy balloon trains in cloudy weather because of the potential hazard to civil aviation. Much smaller, short-lived, short-range “service” flights were another matter as long as they stayed over the military-controlled White Sands test range.

On May 29, Crary was overseeing an advance skeleton crew that could send up small "service" flights to test equipment, but lacked the personnel to assemble, wrangle, and track the much larger constant-altitude or numbered Mogul flights. So there was no Mogul Flight 3 on May 29, just another disingenuous invention of AFOSI propagandists. The real Flight 3 attempt was back on May 8.

Another cute propaganda move by McAndrew in his table was to include a column labeled "Landing Site", or where the balloon flight came down. So, e.g., for the real Flight #5 from June 5, 1947, launched from Alamogordo, it has "East of Roswell NM". For "Flights 2, 3, 4" it has "Unknown". In other words, treating all three as real flights whose crash sites were simply unknown. In reality, the Landing Sites were completely known, namely NONEXISTENT since the flights never went up, unless you want to count the absurdity of them trying to recover cut-loose balloons from aborted flights.

Nitram said...

Hi Kevin

You wrote:

"The problem with Flight No. 3, is that it was launched on the east coast."

The Air Force’s detailed Project MOGUL account identifies Flight 3 as an unreported “service” flight launched from Alamogordo on 29 May, followed by Flight 4 on 4 June. Please correct me here if I am in error?

Flight 3 cannot be categorically excluded because:

* Its recorded final disposition is unknown;
* it originated in the relevant region; and
* debris could have remained on the ground until Brazel reportedly noticed it on 14 June—16 days after launch (I know you will find that last point hysterical).

Regards
Nitram




September 22, 2026 at 6:49 PM

Nitram said...

Dan wrote:

"Is that flight a possible candidate here for the found debris? Has anyone done a projected trajectory of Flight 3 launched on May 29th?"

I have not located a documented, technically reproducible trajectory calculation specifically for Flight 3.

The frequently repeated calculation is Charles Moore’s reconstruction for the 4 June launch. Moore reportedly said that Flight 4 travelled east-northeast and was tracked to within 17 miles of the Foster Ranch before contact was lost.

That reconstruction is disputed :). This result depends upon the assumed launch time, altitude profile and selection of wind layers; they produce paths that do not approach the ranch. Importantly, that controversy still concerns the alleged Flight 4 or unnumbered 4 June service launch, not an independently calculated Flight 3 path.

Any new Flight 3 projection would therefore be highly model-dependent: it would require reconstructed 29 May winds, an assumed launch time, ascent rate, balloon altitude history and failure time, none of which, it seems, is securely documented for that flight.

Regards
Nitram

KRandle said...

Nitram -

Now, you're just making stuff up. There was no Flight No. 3. The May 29 flight was a balloon ascension and not even a service flight. We don't have any information that would allow for any sort of plotting of the flight, we don't know how high it flew or for how long. Even the Air Force ignored this.

You have pointed out those problems as well... not to mention that Brazel would have discovered it long before June 14 (the time frame you mentioned) because he was in the field where he found debris every other day if not every day. Or do you just discount this tidbit because it doesn't fit your new but not improved culprit for the debris.

KRandle said...

Nitram -

I think I accidentally deleted your last comment, which was nearly the same you wrote before. I looked at the third entry in the log, which is designated as Flight No. 1, which was launched on the east coast. You have, with no authority, designated the May 29, which has no Mogul designation on it as Flight No. 3 . It mentions a balloon ascension that lifted off about one in the afternoon. You have no reason to assume that it left the confines of the range, no reason to assume that it felt on the Foster ranch, and you ignore the testimony of the rancher, not to mention the timeline of the information to reach the Roswell sheriff's office. This is a nonsensical red herring that doesn't advance the investigation in the least, and seems to assume that neither Don nor I were aware of it. I now withdraw from this conversation because I have better things to do that go around on this again.