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.

Why Jesse A. Marcel Dropped out of the Investigation

People occasionally ask me why Jesse Marcel, Sr. was left out the investigation once he had returned from the Debris Field with samples of the strange, metallic material. They say that you don’t leave your Intelligence Officer out of the investigation.

Good question and interesting point.

Fran Ridge and I were discussing who ran security at the Impact Site, he mentioning Robert T. Darden and me saying it was Major Edwin Easley. The documentation seemed to be on my side in this, but that doesn’t matter here. The point was that it caused me to review the transcripts of the separate interviews with Bill Rickett conducted by Don Schmitt and Mark Rodeghier. Turns out there was a clue about why Marcel disappeared from the event after he had gone out of the Debris Field.

Rickett, in describing his trip to the Impact Site, mentioned that they had expected Marcel to be there, but he wasn’t. Given the time line, the reason was that Marcel had been sent to Fort Worth with samples of the debris. While the investigation was continuing in Roswell, and had shifted to the Impact Site where the craft and bodies were found, Marcel was in Fort Worth meeting, first with General Ramey and later with the press. Although Marcel had been ordered not to say anything to reporter J. Bond Johnson, who took six photographs of the balloon debris, he was later quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegraph about what he had seen.

Don Schmitt and me on the Impact Site. It was much closer
to Roswell than the Debris Field near Corona.

By the time that Marcel returned from Fort Worth, the clean up on the Impact Site had been completed, the material taken to the base and stored in a hangar there.

Marcel was out of the loop for two reasons. First, he had been identified in the press release, which made him a target for reporters. That wasn’t a problem, because, he was in Fort Worth while the investigation and clean up continued in Roswell. Once Ramey declared it was a weather balloon, the reporters disappeared. Second, by the time he returned, the investigation, such as it was, had been completed in Roswell. If the craft was alien, the information about it would have been classified as top secret. There was no reason to expose Marcel to what had been learned while he was in Fort Worth. There was nothing he could add to the discussion at that point.

Did Marcel know about the recovery of the bodies? I would say, based on my experience as an Intelligence Officer, probably. But he hadn’t seen them. He had heard about them but he was uncomfortable talking about something that he hadn’t seen with his own eyes. He had seen the debris field and tested some of the debris. He said that it was from something that had not been made on Earth. He had not seen the bodies. As I say, I suspect that he had heard the rumors, but to him they were only rumors. He didn’t mention them for that reason.

It was Rickett’s statement about Marcel coming out to the Impact Site that sort of triggered these thoughts. You don’t expose more people to the secrets than are necessary. With the cleanup complete, there was no reason to bring Marcel into the event. It was over.

In fact, it seems that Marcel had asked Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC OIC in Roswell about a report he had written. Cavitt refused to show it to him, suggesting again, that Marcel had no need to know. The event was over.

And Ben Franklin had said that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. You simply did not provide information to someone who had no need to know, and by the time Marcel returned from Fort Worth, he had no need to know.

Okay, let the firestorm begin… I just handed in the book manuscript that I have been working on these last several months and am between projects. For those keeping score at home, I’m about to begin another of the Vietnam Ground Zero books written by “Eric Helm.” 

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?

Gilles Fernandez, Project Mogul and More Roswell Minutia

 

For those tired of the Roswell minutia, you can blame Gilles Fernandez for this trip down memory lane. In my post about the material photographed in General Ramey’s office, I wrote, in response to a question by another commentator, “Marcel told reporter Johnny Mann of WWL-TV in New Orleans that stuff in that photograph was NOT the stuff he had brought from Roswell. Thomas DuBose, the Eighth Air Force Chief of Staff (a very high-level position) that the stuff in the photographs (and he's in two of them) was switched. It wasn't the real debris.”

Thomas DuBose with Don Schmitt after one of the interviews

in Florida during our investigation of the events in 1947.

Gilles, in response to that quote, asked, “Concerning the so-called "Johnny Mann's interview: You can provide us such an interview and record? A link, PLEASE? And then the audio source, we can or not?”

A fair question that was somewhat hostile, though I would point out that the skeptical community accepts all that Charles Moore said about Project Mogul without critical comment, but I digress.

The short answer is that there is not an audio source. I did not record the conversation because, at the time, it didn’t seem to be all that important. Mann was just one more voice confirming that Marcel had said those pictures were not of the material he had found. All this had arisen, back in the mid-1990s, as we all began to question the source of the material that had been photographed in Ramey’s office. Skeptics were pointing out that the photographs published in The Roswell Incident, were cropped versions of larger photographs that clearly did show a rawin radar target, badly degraded and the neoprene envelop of a weather balloon. Those of us who saw the whole picture back in the early 1990s knew what they showed even before the skeptics began to beat their drum.

Bill Moore, according to The Roswell Incident, wrote, “Actually,’ said Major Jesse Marcel, shown kneeling here amid what he described as some of the less spectacular pieces of wreckage,’ this material may have looked like tinfoil and balsa wood, but the resemblance ends there.” That quote attributed to Marcel, and found as captions to the pictures in The Roswell Incident, is confusing.

Major Jesse Marcel in General Ramey's office with

the remains of the rawin radar target.

If that statement is accurate, then the discussion and the investigation end right there. The full, uncropped version proved that because it shows a weather balloon and rawin radar target. But, because nothing is ever simple in UFO investigations, that’s not the end of it.

I knew that Johnny Mann had interviewed Marcel in the early 1980s and had even taken him back to Roswell so that they could film a segment for Mann’s television station, WWL-TV in New Orleans. Mann said he also traveled to Pascagoula to interview Hickson and Parker about their abduction. At the time, Mann thought the abduction was the bigger story, so, after the segments aired, they reused the tapes, so the raw footage was no longer available… except they kept the raw footage of Hickson and Parker interview (which, I probably should mention to Philip Mantle and Irene Scott).

Mann had a copy of The Roswell Incident with him and he showed the pictures to Jesse Marcel, saying, “Jess, I gotta tell you, that looks like the remains of a weather balloon.”

Marcel said that it wasn’t the stuff that he had brought from Roswell. It was something else. The implication was that it had been switched. As far as I know, Bill Moore never produced a tape of Marcel saying it was the real stuff as quoted in his book. And I have no tape of what Mann said to me because I didn’t tape the conversation.

Why not, you might ask?

Because there was other evidence, some of which had been taped. Colonel Thomas DuBose, the 8^th Air Force Chief of Staff, and who appears in two of the pictures taken of the material in Ramey’s office, confirmed that the material had been switched. In an interview, conducted in 1991 and is on tape, said that “the switch was made to get the reporters off the general’s back.”

General Roger Ramey and Colonel Thomas Dubose
with the substituted wreckage in Ramey's office.

So, while I don’t have a tape of what Mann said to me, we do have a taped interview from another source telling us that the material in the pictures is not the stuff that Marcel had brought to Fort Worth.

During the filming of UFOs Are Real, Marcel, at one point, said that if he was in the pictures, then it was the real stuff, but then, shown the pictures taken in Ramey’s office said, “There’s a picture in the same room [meaning Ramey’s office]. It’s not the material I brought there [meaning to Fort Worth].

(For those interested, this came from the shot script for UFOs Are Real, Tape One, Page Two).

Then it gets worse if possible. Marcel is quoted in the transcript, apparently paraphrasing Ramey, “You can go ahead and scatter some of those pieces on the floor for the photographers and press but make sure they don’t get any details about anything.”

There was a question asked at that point in the interview. “Was that the actual material you had found?”

“I prepared that for the press. (That big piece was not part of it). [parens in the original document.]

(This came from the shot script for UFOs Are Real, Tape Two, Page One).

Marcel then adds, “Let me show you something. There’s a picture of the same room. It’s not the material I brought there.” That, of course, are the six pictures shot by J. Bond Johnson, a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and sent out over the news wires. Given the available documentation, we know those photographs were taken on July 8, 1947.

On tape three the interviewer said, “I talk about the book I’m showing him [which must be something with the pictures from Ramey’s office.] Book in Jesse’s lap showing warrant officer [Irving Newton]. The interviewer asked, “This is not the material you found?”

This means that Newton, seen in the seventh of the pictures kneeling with the balloon, is not what Marcel had brought to Fort Worth.

Marcel responded that question, saying, “Definitely not.”

This came from the shot script for UFOs Are Real, Tape Three).

Confusing enough?

Now we get to Linda Corley who interviewed Marcel in his home in Houma, Louisiana, in 1981 as part of her graduate studies. Gilles is quick to warn me not to bring up Corley because of Stan Friedman. Gilles wrote, “Maybe, you will next point to me Linday Corley 1981 tapes. Please, dont (sic) do this, I know how Stanton Friedman "recorded" this again.”

I’m not sure, but I believe the accusation is that Friedman altered the tapes that Corley had loaned him. He makes this allegation without evidence; however, it is an attempt to eliminate Marcel’s claim that the material in the pictures was not the debris he had recovered on the Brazel ranch. A point that Marcel made repeatedly to others.

Remember, all this started because I had mentioned the Mann interview, which I hadn’t recorded. Gilles has disposed of this by suggesting the interview can be rejected because there is no way to verify it. I did, provide the information in the mid-1990s when it would be possible to corroborate the statements with Mann himself.

Corley’s critical information was published in her book, For the Sake of My Country, when she asked Marcel about the pictures in Ramey’s office. He said, “What you see in there is nothing but a piece of brown paper that I put over so that the news media couldn’t get a picture of what I had.”

Corley asked, Oh, you were covering the stuff?

Marcel replied, “I was covering it. But nobody knew that. I was told by my commanding general, ‘Just don’t say anything. Don’t show anything…’”

Later he said, “You see this picture right here? That’s a fake. After I left there… He claimed it was fragments of a weather balloon… This is part of a weather balloon.”

There is another aspect to this that seems to be important. Marcel told Corley that he had never met either Bill Moore or Stan Freidman in person. They had only talked on the telephone. That made we wonder if Marcel made his statements about the real material without seeing the pictures. Knowing Stan Friedman, I can’t believe that he hadn’t sent Marcel copies of those pictures, but if he hadn’t, then Marcel might have been confused on the issue. That suggests that other pictures had been taken with the real debris at some other time in a different location but we have never found those, if they exist.

The problem here is that this is my speculation but it is based on extrapolations from the situation at the time and the fact that when Marcel saw the pictures from the book, said that is wasn’t the stuff that he had taken to Fort Worth.

There is another aspect that Gilles keeps harping on, which is related to but not essential to this conversation. He wrote, more than once, “You are wrong and somehow "betraying" your readers: Technical report 1 PROOVES it flaw.”

This is a reference to Flight #4, which becomes clear in the rest of Gilles’s comment. I believe he is suggesting that because it was not recorded and absent in the tables, it didn’t exist. He wrote:

If this flight is not reported and/or recorded in the tables, it is for what I wrote, than in my blog or in my book:*** is not present in the table summary that it was canceled or never existed, but because:

Or no attempt or no materials to control/record the altitude were made.
Or because special gear or technic tested.

Or due to different failures on ground or during the flight.

You wrote: "that are missing HERE" (the caps lock are mines) in this interview. You well know the original question (it was concerning the tables and the absence or missing flights in the tables); therefore why some flights are missing in the tables."you don't have it there": "there" = in the tables.”

While I admire anyone who can communicate in a foreign language, I do not speak or read French. I do have a limited knowledge of Spanish and have communicated with Spanish speakers in their language but I imagine they have some difficultly in understanding me. But, as they say, “I digress.”

I believe the claim here is that I created the idea of Flight #4 as a way of eliminating the debris displayed in Ramey’s office from the conversation. But I’m not the one to introduce that concept into the discussion. In a “white paper” created by Charles Moore, an engineer working with the balloons in Alamogordo, we learn the following:

According to C.S. Schneider’s progress report for May 1947, NYU Flight #3 from Bethlehem, PA on May 8 was the last attempt to carry instruments aloft before June 4, whereas they accent on June 5 was identified as NYU Flight #5. On this basis, I [Charles Moore] think the June 4^th balloons carried NYU Flight #4, although there is no mention of this flight in the NYU summary because no altitude data were obtained.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data that I suppled for the
analysis of the track Flight #4 might have followed. Yes, I have
published this before but it shows that I followed all paths
searching for the truth. I did work with Moore.

The Skeptical Inquirer provided us with 70 facts about the Roswell Incident. Kendrick Fraizer wrote:

The reporter should have told readers what we now know (almost certainly) the debris to have been: remnants of a long vertical “train” of research balloons and equipment launched by New York University atmospheric researchers and not recovered—specifically, Flight No. 4. The research team launched NYU Flight #4 on June 4, 1947, from Alamogordo Army Air Field and tracked it flying east-northeast toward Corona. It was within seventeen miles of the Brazel ranch when the tracking batteries failed and contact was lost.

And this comes from Smithsonian Magazine, written by Pat Trenner and published on July 7, 2010:

Mogul Flight 4 was launched from Alamogordo on June 4, 1947, and is likely the source of the debris Brazel brought to Sheriff Wilcox. 

According to Charles Moore, there was a Flight #4 but no data was recovered so there was no entry in that Technical Report 1. But Charles Moore provided comment in various places including his: March 16, 1995 paper, “The New York University Balloon Flights During Early June, 1947, and additional information from the Air Force report that includes Technical Report 1 that are relevant to the discussion.

According to the written record Mogul Flight No. 4 was cancelled. There is no equivocation about it. The flight was cancelled, which should be the end of the story… but no, Albert Crary’s diary, one of those records, and part of the source material, mentions that a cluster of balloons was flown on the date in question. This was allegedly Flight No. 4.

The documentation from the New York University balloon project shows that the first successful flight in New Mexico was Flight No. 5. But Moore claimed that Flight No. 4 was just as successful; they just didn’t record it (see page 11 of his white paper). If it was as successful, then why not record it and tout it as the first successful flight in New Mexico? Why not report the data collected rather than leave it out of the record altogether. Why would Crary say the flight had been cancelled if it had actually flown and was successful?

This, I believe, negates the claim that there was no Flight #4 to be cancelled and certainly refutes the idea that this was somehow my creation. Even Charles Moore referred to Flight #4 suggesting that it had performed as well as Flight #5.

But now we come back to Johnny Mann and what he said to me. Gilles Fernandez would like something more concrete than my reported conversations with Mann. At that time, I had called Mann to ask him about his interview with Marcel, it just wasn’t that important to record it. I didn’t record it because I was verifying the facts as laid out in other, recorded interviews and published information from other researchers. I asked about the pictures and Mann told me that Marcel told him that the material was not what he had found in the field. We have Marcel on film and on tape saying the same thing in other interviews.

That same afternoon, I called Jesse Marcel, Jr. and basically asked the same question and got the same answer. Since there was documentation that Marcel, Sr. had made the statements to others about the debris being switched, it seemed to be unnecessary to record the information. Even if you reject what Mann told me, or more importantly, you reject Mann’s statements without a tape or recording to consult, all these other sources confirm that Marcel said, repeatedly, that the pictures taken in Ramey’s office was not the material he had found in the field.

I don’t mind Gilles asking the question, but given all this other, documented testimony, it seems to be irrelevant. Eliminate the Mann interviews that I conducted, there are all these other statements made by Marcel about the pictures, many of them on tape.

We’re back to the point about what we want to believe about those events. We do have Colonel DuBose telling us that the material in Ramey’s office was switched. When we, and I mean Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I, investigated this, we had statements from two of the men in the office that day, DuBose and Marcel. We can prove what they said because of the recorded interviews. My discussion with Mann added the same thing. Marcel denying what was seen in the pictures was the material Brazel had found and Marcel recovered.

This then, is my long response to the question as by Gilles Fernandez. No, I have no recording of my interview with Johnny Mann, but then I can point you to other recordings and documentation that verifies the information as I reported it.

Now, it’s up to you, as the reader, to decide where the truth lies in all this. Clearly Marcel seemed to contradict himself on the matter and we can speculate about why that is. But the point here, is that I have additional evidence that verifies the information that Mann supplied to me. I didn’t invent the quotes as has been alleged.

I hope the answer to Gilles Fernandez’s question is adequate. He doesn’t have to believe me, but there is confirmation about the accuracy of the statement. And, in addition, I hope this is my last word on this very narrow aspect of the Roswell case.

(PS) For those of you playing along at home, let me point out another item that is consistently misstated. While the ultimate purpose of Mogul was to spy on the Soviets was top secret, the activities in Alamogordo were unclassified. This is the reason that a Mogul array was photographed and article about the balloon project was published in newspapers around the country on July 10.

The front page of the Alamogordo News on July 10, showing off the balloon arrays
in the attempt to prove that the project was responsible for the Roswell debris.

Get it? They made no Herculean effort to recover the remains of other flights because there was nothing in them that would reveal the purpose of the flights and it wouldn’t lead to Mogul. Photographs and newspaper article were not violating national security. As a former Air Force intelligence officer, I understand these things. I could talk all day about the activities in Alamogordo and it was no violation or compromise of project. If I mentioned the purpose, then I would be in trouble because that was what was classified. Can we retire this nonsense now?)

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.