Truth about Mogul

Over on Rich Reynolds UFO Conjectures we’ve just had a lesson in some of the skeptical thought processes. In a conversation that was tangential to the main point, one of the commentators

Dr. Albert Crary

 wrote, “The only plausible explanation is Flight #4 did fly and there were many, many errors in how it was recorded (incorrectly) giving the impression it never did fly at all.”

My first thought was, “Seriously?”

The leader of Project Mogul in New Mexico was Dr. Albert Crary and it is his field notes and his documentation that apparently, according to some in the skeptical community, contained “many, many errors.”

And what were those errors?

He wrote, of Flight No. 4, scheduled to be launched at dawn on June 4, 1947, “Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 [midnight] and 06 this am. No balloon flights again on account of clouds. Flew regular sono buoy up in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver on ground but poor on plane. Out with Thompson pm. Shot charges from 1800 to 2400.”

Nothing really confusing here when you understand the New York University balloon project in New Mexico. They were attempting to create a constant level balloon, one that would remain at a specific altitude for a long period carrying a microphone to be used to detect explosions on the ground, or more specifically, atomic detonations by the Soviet Union. The ultimate purpose was to spy on the

Mogul test detonation.

Soviets, though I suspect that none of those in New Mexico knew that.

The note about “No balloon flights again,” referred to the attempt on June 3. And here is where Charles Moore, who would later claim he launched the Roswell saucer, got the idea of flights in the dark. The diary said, “Up at 0230 am ready to fly balloon but abandoned due to cloudy skies.” We know, based on the other reports and documentation that the CAA, forerunner to the FAA, that “Restrictions on the project is the Civil Aeronautics Authority requirement that balloon flights be made only on days that are cloudless to 20,000 feet.”

We know that a sonobuoy is in reality a microphone and it would be used to detect the explosions and transmit that information. According to the notes, that worked fine with the ground receiver but not as well for that in the aircraft, which we know was a B-17 according to other information in the notes.

Notes elsewhere show that a “cluster of balloons” is not a full array. According to the documentation, “This cluster method is of use and interest only as a stop-gap method of lifting the Army equipment to altitude now, and has been the method used while awaiting delivery of the non-extensible plastic balloons…. A flight was made on 3 April 1947 using this method. A cluster of 12 balloons meteorological [yes, that was the wording in the report] carrying a radiosonde, a 15 lb. dummy load and a series of ballast dropping devices was released from the football field at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.” This is from “Special Report #1, May, 1947.”

So, where is the evidence that Flight No. 4 flew? The field notes said expressly that it did not. We know that their fallback position, when the full array was cancelled, was to fly a cluster of balloons to perform other experiments, and we have a definition of what is meant by a cluster of balloons.

Charles Moore in New Mexico.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

For those who wish to invoke Charles Moore’s statement that Flight No. 4 was launched at sometime around 0300, in the dark and apparently in cloudy weather, we have the documentation to show that this is, to be generous, an error on his part and not from the notes in Crary’s diary. They arrived on the morning of June 3 at 0230 to prepare for the dawn launch, and in fact the June 5 launch was made just after dawn as required by the CAA instructions which are documented.

But never let the documentation get in the way of an explanation when you can confound the issue. Another comment over at UFO Conjectures was, “… missing data on the Mogul flight is a wrinkle, but you’re [the above comment] surely correct some sort of ‘admin’ error is to blame.”

But there is no missing data because the flight had been cancelled. The cluster of balloons was not a full array and the first launch of a Mogul flight in New Mexico was on June 5 and it is accounted for in the records. There was no admin error but a precise record of what happened until Charles Moore changed his story and complicated the issue to keep the myth of Mogul alive for his own, personal reasons.

Here’s something else. The Mogul array displayed in the Air Force report was Flight No. 2 and contained rawin targets which are necessary to explain the metallic debris reported by so many of those stationed in Roswell in 1947. But Flight No. 5, the first flight in New Mexico, and the one used by Karl Pflock to demonstrate the size of the arrays has no rawin targets. In fact, none of the illustrations of the make-up of the arrays in New Mexico show any rawins as part of the package. The only exception seems to be the demonstration array launched from Alamogordo on July 10 which needed rawins to explain the debris. All the flights were launched in the daylight, most in early morning until November when some were launched in the afternoon.

Further, the idea that the soldiers at Roswell were unaware of what these arrays were is false. First, Dr. Crary, on May 20, wrote that he had been over at the RAAF to fill with gas. Later, Moore would claim that he was turned back at the front gate even though he was driving a weapons carrier drawn from and with the markings of the Alamogordo Army Air Field on it while carrying the remains of a Mogul flight. On June 5, Flight No. 5 landed some 25 miles east of Roswell, which means that whole array would have been visible from the airfield which means tower crews and others on the airfield would have seen one in flight. The CAA required NOTAMs, which meant that the operations staff would have been aware of them as well, and such information would have been passed not only to flight crews but to the group commander.

All this documentation is available in various sources including Pflock’s book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe and the massive Air Force report which provides details about the balloon project in New Mexico, which Charles Moore made clear was the New York University balloon project and not Mogul. Mogul, a name that was clearly known to those in New Mexico in 1947, as demonstrated by Crary’s field notes and diary, was the code name for spying on the Soviets and it was the mission that was classified, not the name nor the experiments in New Mexico which negates the idea that Mogul was so highly classified that very few knew the name or what the arrays looked like.

The conclusion borne out by all the documentation is that it is not filled with “many, many errors” nor the idea that the “missing data on the Mogul flight is a wrinkle,” but that Flight No. 4 was cancelled, first on June 3 and then on June 4. Had it flown as Moore claimed, had it produced results as good as if not better than Flight No. 5 as Moore claimed, it would have been listed in the documentation.

The point here is that I’m at a loss to understand the tenacious way that debunkers cling to the Mogul explanation in the face of the evidence that has been mounted against it. I fail to understand how they can be so dismissive of that documentation by saying things like “The only plausible explanation is Flight #4 did fly and there were many, many errors in how it was recorded (incorrectly) giving the impression it never did fly at all,” and “…missing data on the Mogul flight is a wrinkle, but you’re [the above comment] surely some sort of ‘admin’ error is to blame.” The data are not missing and the evidence is quite clear.

And yes, I know that the documentation for a crash of an alien spacecraft is based almost solely on witness testimony gathered decades after the fact and there is some documentation that what was found was not alien, but there are some areas where it is not as clear cut as it is with Flight No. 4. I also realize that the elimination of Flight No. 4 as the culprit does not translate into evidence that what fell outside of Roswell was alien. It only means that this particular explanation, when you examine all the evidence, has failed. 

Charles B. Moore Dies

Blogger's note -- The following was picked from the New Mexico Institute of Technology web site is the following article on the passing of Dr. Charles B. Moore. Moore is seen here as he and I check atmospheric records in an attempt to learn if a Mogul balloon could have reached the Brazel (Foster) ranch in July 1947. I have interrupted the series on the Washington National UFO Sighting Press Conference for what I think of as important news.

SOCORRO, N.M., March 4, 2010 – Charles B. Moore, renowned researcher on atmospheric physics, passed away on March 2, 2010, in Socorro.

Moore was professor emeritus of physics at New Mexico Tech and former chairman of Tech’s Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research. Although he retired in 1985, he remained active in his research until the last few years, when Alzheimer’s disease affected him. He is survived by his wife, Wilma, and their three children, Charles III, Rita, and Malcolm.

Moore took a long and circuitous route to the heights of his profession, managing to bypass a Ph.D. along the way, until 2003, when he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by New Mexico Tech. He received numerous awards from fellow scientists, including a fellowship awarded by the American Geophysical Union, the Otto C. Winzen Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Atmospheric Electricity Community.

Moore was born on October 28, 1920, in Maryville, Tenn. He started college at Georgia Institute of Technology in 1940, but like many of his generation, his education was interrupted by service in World War II. He served as a weather equipment officer for the U.S. Army Air Corps in the China-Burma-India theater, and later was a weather observer in occupied China.

Moore returned to Georgia Tech, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1947. He was then recruited for Project Mogul by New York University, which conducted the project for the U. S. Army Air Corps.

He later recalled that the extended field trips were what ended his graduate schooling.

Project Mogul involved launching balloons to carry microphones up to the base of the stratosphere, where the temperature of the atmosphere is highly effective at refracting sound waves. At the time, 1947, the United States was concerned with listening for nuclear testing by other countries, especially the Soviet Union, so the microphone-bearing balloons were launched to listen for the sounds.

The experiment succeeded in detecting U.S. nuclear tests in the South Pacific, 6,000 miles away, but it also added an important footnote to American cultural history. A balloon launched by Moore in June of 1947 later proved to be the item that is enshrined at Roswell as a “UFO.” Moore didn't realize the part he had played in the drama until he happened to see a newspaper picture of the pieces of the “UFO” in the 1990s.

Moore was considered a pioneer in the development and testing of modern polyethylene balloons as atmospheric research tools. In 1947, he made the first flight in a such a balloon, and in a later test, he made a 24-hour balloon flight from Minneapolis to New Jersey. In 1957, he made a record-breaking flight to the altitude of 82,000 feet in a pressurized balloon gondola, with Commander Malcolm D. Ross. During this flight, he made the first measurements which discovered traces of water vapor in the atmosphere of Venus.

After he carried reconnaissance cameras to high altitude for the U.S. Air Force, a program to fly balloons carrying these cameras over the Soviet Union was established by General Mills, for whom Moore worked until 1953. He was then offered an opportunity to work for Arthur D. Little, a research company in Cambridge, Mass., again on a project involving research by balloon. While there, he designed and built the first alkaline-metal vaporizers used in rocket-borne ionospheric probes. Also at Little, Moore met and began his long collaboration with Dr. Bernard Vonnegut.

Vonnegut was well-known as the scientist who had discovered that silver iodide could be used for cloud seeding. In 1956, Moore and Vonnegut were invited to New Mexico by E. J. Workman, then president of New Mexico Tech, to conduct thunderstorm research at Mt. Withington, some 70 miles west of Tech. For three successive summers, Moore and Vonnegut hauled truckloads of equipment to and from Boston each year, until the fateful day in 1958 when Moore suggested that what they needed was a mountaintop lab where the equipment could be kept year round.

Workman and his colleague Marx Brook liked the idea, but instead of Mt. Withington, as Moore proposed, they decided to put their lab in the Magdalena Mountains, closer to Socorro and within line-of-sight of the campus. By 1964, their lab – Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research – was built and ready to put into operation. In 1965, Dr. Stirling Colgate, the new president of New Mexico Tech, offered jobs to both Moore and Vonnegut. The latter chose to stay at Arthur D. Little – and later moved to SUNY Albany – but Moore was delighted at the opportunity and came to Tech as an associate professor of physics and research physicist.

In 1969, he became the chairman of Langmuir Laboratory. During his time at the helm, Moore greatly expanded the lab's facilities. He obtained funding for and organized the construction of a large addition to the Main Building, a balloon hangar, an airplane hangar, and underground shielded rooms (Faraday cages) on South Baldy Peak for studying nearby lightning. He was also responsible for the construction of a vertically-scanning radar and for solving the political problems to allow the launching of instrumented rockets into thunderstorms over Langmuir Laboratory. In addition, he organized the modification and instrumentation of an airplane that has flown into thunderstorms for many years.

Moore also taught techniques of launching balloons in severe weather to a number of Tech faculty members and students, many of whom continued their work in the field. Thus, he was the mentor of many of today's scientists who study electrical properties of severe storms.

Moore nominally retired from New Mexico Tech in 1985, but continued to be active in research. He developed the first real improvement to the lightning rod since Benjamin Franklin invented it in the 18th Century, by proving that blunt-tipped rods were more effective than pointed-tipped ones. As a result of his work, most of the lightning rods manufactured in the United States today are blunt-tipped.

Moore was a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and received New Mexico Tech's Distinguished Research Award in 1984 and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1997. He was a fellow in three scientific societies: The Royal Meteorological Society, American Meteorological Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Upon presenting Moore with an honorary doctorate in 2003, Dr. Daniel H. Lopez of New Mexico Tech said, “In a real sense, this is not an honorary doctorate at all. Charles B. Moore has been a leader in the field of atmospheric physics, and he has done research that would have earned him a Ph.D. many times over, had he consented to accept one before now.”

Dr. Paul Krehbiel, an atmospheric researcher who knew Moore well, commented, “Charlie was a person of many talents. He was a pioneer in the study of thunderstorms and lightning and a font of scientific knowledge. He was a true student of history and a historian in his own right, and possessed an excellent memory. He was a mentor and educator of many, myself included. His legacy lives on in the ideas, studies and projects that he developed and worked on over his long and amazingly varied career.”

Dr. William Winn, who worked with Charles Moore for many years, said, “Charles inspired me and many other young investigators with his enthusiasm, independent thinking, and precise use of the English language, and he was a delightful companion because of his good humor and storytelling skills."

-- NMT --

Wayne Brazel, Pat Garrett and UFOs

In the search for answers to questions about UFOs and alien spacecraft crashes, you sometimes run into strange information. Because Lincoln County, New Mexico was so large, much had happened there and as I was researching the Roswell UFO crash, I read the history of the county. One of the things that struck me was that the Brazel family had been part of that history some fifty or sixty years before anyone had heard of flying saucers or UFO crashes.

In a couple of books, I learned that Wayne Brazel had killed Pat Garrett but on one seemed to know what happened to Brazel. He disappeared some time after the trial and one of those historians speculated that Brazel had gone to South America and been killed there in a fashion similar to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Well, I was sitting there, in the cab of a pick up truck talking to a Brazel relative, so I asked the simple question and got a somewhat complex answer... Oh, not overly complex, mind you, but certainly not what I had been expecting.

So, here’s what I learned about this case which is related to UFOs, but not really part of the history:

It should have been an open and shut case. Jesse Wayne Brazel confessed within hours of the shooting. Pat Garrett was dead, not all that far from Las Cruces, New Mexico and although Brazel said it was self defense, the evidence suggested that Garrett had died of a bullet wound to the back of the head. The bullet in his stomach, which might have been fatal even with medical treatment, was apparently fired after Garrett was down.

There are those who believe that there was a conspiracy to kill Garrett (Garrett murder site seen here) and Brazel was part of that conspiracy. There are those who believe that the dispute developed over Brazel’s leasing of Garrett’s ranch and Garrett’s desire to sell it. But there is also a history of animosity between the Brazel family and Garrett, which most historians seemed to have missed.

Pat Garrett was born in Alabama on June 5, 1850 and headed west nineteen years later, like so many others, to make a future. He was a cowboy in Lancaster, Texas, a buffalo hunter on the southern plains, a gambler and eventually a lawman. In 1876, while still a buffalo hunter, Joe Briscoe, for some reason, according to Garrett, attacked him with an axe. Garrett shot Briscoe, and then believing that his career choice had been wrong, left buffalo hunting for good and Texas for years.

Or maybe it was in 1878, according to some historians, and the other man, Briscoe, had drawn his pistol first. Garrett was the one who survived, being quicker and the better shot, and then, fearing retribution, fled into New Mexico where he worked first as a cow hand and then opened his own saloon.

In November 1880, George Kimbell, the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico resigned and Garrett was appointed as his replacement. Garrett promised to end the violence that resulted from to rival factions attempting to control commerce in the area, not to mention two groups of badge carrying law enforcement officers. Billy the Kill, who Garrett would kill months later in July, 1881, with his group of Regulators, who had some kind of semi-official legal standing, had opposed the sheriff and his deputies.

In December, Garrett killed a friend of Billy the Kid named Tom O’Folliard and then, a few nights later the posse killed Charlie Bowdre and captured Billy and other Regulators. They all were taken to Mesilla, New Mexico for trial. Convicted and sentenced to hang, Billy was escorted to Lincoln, New Mexico where the sentence was to be carried out. He escaped from the Lincoln County Court House and the make shift jail, killing guards J.W. Bell and Bob Olinger.

Garrett eventually tracked Billy to Ft. Sumner, New Mexico (museum seen here) and the home of Pete Maxwell. Billy was supposedly there to visit Maxwell’s sister, Paulita, but when he entered the darkened room, Garrett shot him twice, killing him from ambush.

Garrett had hit the high point of his life. A hastily written book, ghosted by his friend Ash Upson, was published but did little to improve the situation for Garrett. He lost the election for Lincoln County sheriff and in 1884, lost an election for state senator. He then left New Mexico, served briefly as a Texas Ranger. He was elected a county commissioner in Uvalde, Texas in 1889, and in October, 1889, he was appointed sheriff in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. He ran for Chaves County sheriff. Chaves County had once been part of the huge Lincoln County. He lost the election. In 1896 he was again appointed to fill the vacancy of Dona Ana County sheriff and then elected to the post.

During this time, Garrett had been attempting to support his growing family, a wife and nine children. He acquired ranch property around Las Cruces and up into the Organ Mountains between Las Cruces and Alamogordo.

In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt appointed Garrett as a Collector of Customs in El Paso, Texas, which is not all that far from Las Cruces. He was not reappointed, however, after he lost favor with the President, apparently introducing Roosevelt to a friend with an unsavory background. With that, Garrett retired to his ranch, but now was in financial difficulty.

To relieve some of those problems, Garrett allegedly leased one of his ranches to a young man named Jesse Wayne Brazel. Not much is known about Brazel, other than he came from a family with a long history in New Mexico. Records show that he was born in 1877, or rather it has been deduced based on court transcripts from the trial.

Others have suggested that Brazel was born in Greenwood City, Kansas but soon moved to Eagle Creek, not all that far from Lincoln, New Mexico. He has been called a "good-natured boy" with blue eyes and who was often seen wearing a Mexican-style sombrero. His father, Jesse M. Brazel (which probably explains why Jesse Wayne Brazel was more commonly called Wayne) moved them off to Gold Camp. This new home bordered the San Agustin Ranch owned by W. W. Cox, where Wayne Brazel found work.

It was in this area that Brazel met Olive Elizabeth Boyd, an eighteen-year-old teacher for the Organ District School and who tutored the children of A.P. Rhode. Brazel was thirty-one as they began to plan their wedding in 1908.

There are those who suggest that trouble erupted between Pat Garrett and Wayne Brazel because of the lease that Brazel had obtained for the Garrett property. Some claim that Pat Garrett had not signed the lease with Brazel. It was Garrett’s son, Poe. Poe probably didn’t care how Brazel planned using the ranch. Payment was to be made in July of each year with ten heifer calves and a horse. Brazel, instead of grazing cattle or horses as Garrett expected, moved in goats. Some said this caused trouble with Pat Garrett who disliked goats and believed that he had been mislead by Brazel and his friends. He wanted the goats gone.

In fact, Garrett filed suit claiming a breach of contract. Garrett insisted that a verbal agreement existed which excluded goats. But verbal agreements are not worth the paper on which they are written (or not written) even with Garrett arguing that the method of payment, cattle and horses implied that these would be the animals using the range.

When that failed, Garrett used a New Mexican law that made it illegal to herd livestock next to a residence. He swore out a complaint and shortly before Christmas, 1907, the trial began. Trial was held in a barbershop, conducted by Organ (New Mexico) Justice of the Peace Charles M. Anthony. There was no jury and Anthony, being a politician of sorts, refused to act as an arbitrator. He recessed court until spring, apparently hoping that everything would work itself out before then.

The truth here seems to be that Pat Garrett had no real legal standing in the dispute. Dona Ana County records show that Poe Garrett was the true owner of the land. But Pat hated goats, as did many cattlemen. Goats, like sheep, ate the grass so short that it was no good for cattle. The cattlemen wanted to keep goats and sheep off the range.

Others suggested that Garrett wanted to sell the ranch to raise money but Poe Garrett had signed a five year lease with Brazel. Brazel was willing to break the lease, but Garrett, or someone, had to buy all the goats. There was trouble with the counting, Garrett insisting that Brazel had hundreds fewer goats than Brazel believed he did. Or Brazel miscounted the first time, telling Garrett there were 1200 but later saying there were 1800. No matter.

Whatever he truth, there was trouble with Brazel. In fact, this was not the first time that Garrett had fought with the Brazel family. According to Bill Brazel, who knew his cousin Wayne and had visited him in Arizona long after the events outside of Las Cruces, Bill Brazel’s grandmother had been alone one night at a Brazel ranch house when a posse led by Garrett arrived. Bill Brazel didn’t tell me who Garrett was hunting, but this might have been in July 1898, as Garrett chased Bill McNew, Oliver M. Lee and Jim Gililland.

Garrett told the woman, who was standing on the porch, that he expected his horses to be fed and watered and that he would be staying the night at the ranch. Brazel held a Winchester, which she cocked and announced that Garrett and his men would not be spending the night and they should get off her property.

Brazel won the stand-off. Garrett and his posse retreated but it became lore in the Brazel family. Garrett (house he built seen here) seemed to be a man who could be intimidated by a lone woman with a rifle and a menacing attitude, but it might be that he had other troubles that night and didn’t need to add this to the growing list. Whatever the reason, Garrett and his posse left.

There are other indications that Garrett knew the Brazels on a more personal level. It was said that he had known Wayne Brazel and his father for years, and that Garrett liked Wayne. Given the circumstances of Garrett’s run in with the family and his death, this seems unlikely.

Garrett would later capture McNew without trouble, but Lee and Gililland didn’t surrender easily. In a gun battle near the little town of Oro Grande, one of Garrett’s deputies, Kurt Kearney was killed. Garrett withdrew, and both Lee and Gililland escaped. Later they would be caught, but not by Garrett. They were acquitted and released.

Which brings us to Alameda Arroyo on February 29, 1908. Garrett sent Brazel a note saying that he would be in Las Cruces the next day. He suggested a meeting, apparently believing that the dispute would be resolved soon. Or maybe, according to the Garrett family, Brazel gave a note to Adamson to suggest some kind of negotiation. Either way, the two men were in communication and knew where the other would be the next day.

Garrett was riding in the buggy rented by and driven by Carl Adamson. They drove through San Agustin Pass and down into the tiny community of Organ. They continued down, toward Las Cruces and near a junction of two roads, both of which headed into Las Cruces, one being slightly longer but smoother and the other, rougher but shorter. They thought they saw Brazel ahead of them, talking with another man. That man rode off without being positively identified, though some would later claim it was Print Rhode, and as the buggy drew close, Brazel fell in with it.

At first the men didn’t say much to each other. Brazel rode by the side of the buggy where the road was wide enough, or in front or behind it when the road narrowed. Garrett finally asked Brazel why he said there were twelve hundred goats when he had so many more. Brazel said simply, he had miscounted. The argument grew heated at points but all parties seemed to have calmed down by the time they reached the Alameda Arroyo, about four miles east of Las Cruces.
Adamson stopped the buggy and climbed down to relieve himself. Garrett followed, holding the shotgun he carried. Or maybe he climbed down and reached for his shotgun. Brazel, apparently believing that Garrett was going to kill him, drew his revolver and fired twice, hitting Garrett in the head and in the stomach or so the story goes.

Garrett dropped his shotgun and fell. He died there. Adamson and Brazel left him, heading on into Las Cruces. At the sheriff’s office, Brazel turned over his pistol to Deputy Felipe Lopez and admitted that he had shot Garrett. He said it had been in self-defense.

A sheriff’s posse was dispatched and found Garrett lying on his back, a bullet hole in his face where the round had exited and another in his stomach. The fatal bullet had entered the back of Garrett’s head, suggesting he was facing away from Brazel when he was shot.

The shotgun was about a yard from Garrett’s body, but it looked as if it had been set there rather than dropped. The shotgun was in it’s scabbard and it was not loaded. Or, maybe it was loaded with bird shot. The testimony on this is somewhat muddled. No matter.

Garrett’s fly was unbuttoned, and it looked as if he had been occupied with that, rather than threatening Brazel when he was shot. The evidence as described certainly didn’t support the claim of self-defense.

W.C. Field, a Las Cruces doctor, as well as a farmer, examined Garrett at the murder site and later performed an autopsy. He said that the wound showed that Garrett had been shot in the back of the head and that the bullet’s trajectory took it through his brain and exited on the right eyebrow. The wound, according to the doctor, was consistent with a shot fired from a man on horseback, into the head of a man who was standing with his head slightly bowed. In other words, a man in the process of relieving himself.

The second wound had been fired into Garrett’s stomach and had traveled upward, stopping behind Garrett’s shoulder. Field found a .45 caliber slug there. The wound suggested it was caused by a man standing on the ground, shooting into a man already down. Field concluded that both wounds were from a .45, though he didn’t find the slug that had hit Garrett in the head.

Many years later, James Hervey, the New Mexico attorney general in 1908 said that he had visited the murder site with Captain Fred Fornoff of the New Mexico Mounted Police and Carl Adamson on the day of the killing. About fifty feet from the murder site, they found a Winchester cartridge and a cigarette butt though some have claimed there were two cartridges. There were hoof prints around that suggested someone might have waited in ambush to shoot Garrett.

Fornoff thought that Garrett had been shot from two directions by two different weapons, which might be true. But it also seems true that the shot to the head was the first fired and that came from a man on horseback, near Garrett. If true, then there was no reason for the second shot from ambush. None of that mattered, really, because Brazel had confessed to the crime. Adamson said nothing about another shooter, and he had, in effect, endorsed Brazel’s story. Adamson, it might be said, was a disinterested third party and his version of the events could be considered the most accurate.

Brazel’s trial began on Monday, April 19, 1909. It was a short trial, and the only witness to the crime, Carl Adamson, who had supported Brazel’s version of events at the preliminary hearing, was not called to testify. The prosecutor, Mark B. Thompson didn’t present any evidence to show that Garrett had been shot in the back of the head, or that his weapon might have been unloaded. He presented almost no evidence at all. It was almost as if he was on the side of the defense.

The defense was short and claimed the shooting was in self-defense. This hung on a claim that Garrett had told Brazel that he would get him off the ranch one way or another. Not much of a treat, but given Garrett’s history, it certainly could have been intimidating.

There was apparently no one to dispute the claim of self-defense and the jury got the case at 5:45 p.m. By 6:30, Brazel had been acquitted and was free. That ended any official attempt to learn what happened, or to find others who might have been implicated in the killing.
William W. Cox, the local and powerful rancher, had supported Brazel through the trial and when the verdict was announced, invited everyone to a barbecue at his ranch. This was, of course, the same Cox that had a long relationship with Brazel, who had loaned him money in the past and who would loan him more money in the future.

Although Bill Brazel (seen here) told me that Wayne had been ordered out of New Mexico after the acquittal, the records seem to indicate that he acquired the Harrington Well and then homesteaded a small ranch near Lordsburg, New Mexico and in 1910, he finally married Olive Boyd. He had a son in 1911. By 1915, his wife was dead, and Brazel sold his ranch. The government now filed perjury charges against Brazel because of some irregularity in the homesteading. When the charges were dropped, Brazel disappeared.

In 1935, an El Paso attorney was hired by Brazel’s son to find his father. The best that H. L. McCune could do was suggest Brazel went to South America and died in a shootout like that which killed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They believe he died around 1915.

But the truth is something less than spectacular. Though I don’t know why Brazel’s son couldn’t find his father, I asked Bill about that and mentioned South America. He laughed and said, "No. He went to Arizona. My Dad and I visited him there."

Wayne Brazel was still alive in the 1930s when his son began looking for him. Brazel said that he worked on a ranch there, doing the same things that he had done before. No one really knew about Pat Garrett or the murder charges that had been filed against him or any of his later trouble with the government.

People knew who Pat Garrett was because of Billy the Kid. Many of them thought Garrett was guilty of murder because of the way Garrett had ambushed the kid. Few knew that Garrett himself had been murdered.

Wayne Brazel lived out the rest of his life in obscurity. Attempts shortly after Garrett’s murder to learn where Wayne Brazel was failed and the family encouraged some of the rumors. But, when I talked to Bill Brazel some eighty years after the murder, with Wayne dead, he told me where he had gone when he left New Mexico. Bill knew that no one was searching for his cousin now and the information couldn’t hurt him. Wayne Brazel quietly passed from the public spotlight, and unlike Pat Garrett, that suited him just fine.

The Smoking Gun Proving the Trinity Tale is a Hoax

This is a fight that I really didn’t want to get into, but find myself dragged into it. I am surprised by the response that Dr. Jacques Vallee made to the issues raised by Douglas Dean Johnson’s May 1 analysis of the Trinity UFO crash. I found most of what was said to be weak. The main issues were not properly addressed and there were a few points that seemed to have escaped notice. I thought I would chime in with my own thoughts.

I’m not going to address all the problems with Vallee’s response here. For those interested, you can read Vallee’s response here:

https://visions13.wixsite.com/journo-jottings/post/jacques-vallee-hits-back-at-hoax-claims-over-trinity-ufo-crash-book

And you can read the rest of Johnson’s expose on the whole of the San Antonio UFO crash here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/

Like many others, I was bothered by the claim that the New Mexico National Guard would allow someone who was only thirteen enlist. The claim originated in an article Ben Moffett wrote for the Mountain Mail on October 30, 2003. Moffett wrote:

While at Socorro High School he left to join the National Guard at age 13, when very young children were allowed to sign up because of the World War II death toll in the New Mexico Guard. After leaving San Antonio [New Mexico], Jose [Padilla] continued guard duty in Van Nuyes, [sic] Calif., Air National Guard, and when the unit was activated, spent time in Korea.

That wasn’t the only reference to service in Korea. In their book, Vallee and Harris wrote:

On Friday, the 16^th of October 2020, Paola and I were back in Socorro one more time, to meet again with Mr. Padilla… Jose was recovering from an operation on his first bullet wound, the one from Korea.

This second reference puts Padilla in Korea and suggests something of a combat role though it is not claimed as such. They do offer a weak explanation for this discrepancy. In Vallee’s rebuttal, he wrote:

Here again, the reason for some of the uncertainty comes from the fact that he has resided in many places during his long life, had several marriages, misplaced or forget records along the way, and that any remaining private documents would still be in California where he used to live. In other words, he’s human. The few specific questions raised have simple answers, however. Jose was 16 in 1953, the last year of the Korean War., but no Pease treaty was ever signed. After the theoretical “cease fire” the US Army still needed boots on the ground for clean-up, repatriation of materiel, documentation and the like. Mr. Padilla has told us repeatedly that his service in Korea was during that phase, and that he was shot as part of the mop-up operations.

The explanation does not alter the original tale by all that much, other than to suggest that he was 16 rather than 13 when he joined the National Guard. As a former member of the military, I know that we were told to protect certain records such as our DD 214. This document verified military service and was necessary to validate that service when requesting various VA benefits. At the very least, with all his moves, Padilla should have kept a copy of that document. Yes, I have my DD 214s from my service as an enlisted man in the Army, another as a warrant officer in Vietnam, from my service in the Air Force in 1976 and in the Iowa National Guard. Padilla should have been able to supply such a document. And, in the event he lost all his military records, copies would be available at the Army Records Center in St. Louis. Verification of his military service is there and there is no reason that he, or for that matter Jacques Vallee, with Padilla’s permission, wouldn’t be able to offer the proof of this improbable story.

I will note that Johnson did contact the New Mexico National Guard. In two searches, there were unable to find any documentation to prove that Padilla had served. At this point, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Padilla never served in the New Mexico National Guard or the military. That certainly puts a cloud over many of his other claims.

As an aside, I have been challenged for decades about my claims of military service. I have been able to silence those claims by producing various documents, some of them from the late 1960s, and I too, have had many moves over the years but have been able to retain enough of these documents to prove my claims of military service.  Some of those documents are more than half a century old.

For those interested in more about Padilla’s alleged military service, including documents from the New Mexico National Guard, you can see them here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-jose-padillas-stolen-valor-military-claims-p/

One of the biggest problems is the tale that a New Mexico State Policeman, Eddie Apodaca, who was the police officer involved in the August 1945 UFO crash. According to Harris, Baca told her, “Jose came to over to my house, and I went with him to his house, where we met Eddie Apodaca who as a State Policeman, and a friend of the family. Faustino [Padilla’ father] had asked him to go with us to the crash site.”

The problem, outlined by Johnson, was that in 1945, Apodaca was not in New Mexico. He was in Europe at the end of the Second World War. He did not become a policeman until five or six years after the alleged UFO crash. You can read about the search for Eddie Apodaca here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-eddie-apodaca-the-real-policeman-who-cracked-the-trinity-ufo-crash-case/

Vallee’s response is not to provide some evidence that Eddie Apodaca was a state police officer in 1945, but to say there were six men named Edward Apodaca in New Mexico in 1980. But this doesn’t put any Eddie Apodaca in the state police in 1945. According to the records, there was no one named Eddie Apodaca in the state police, so it makes no difference how many were named Edward Apodaca if none of them were serving in the state police at the time.

I do wish, however, to deal with one important aspect of this case that is absolute nonsense. That is the attitude of the miliary, or rather, the alleged attitude of the military, when they arrived at the crash site to recover the craft. As I have mentioned in my review of the book, I found that attitude rather cavalier. The war in the Pacific had not ended, though there were suggestions of peace, and in 1944 and 1945, the Japanese had launched more than 9000 balloon bombs with the thought of setting forest on fire and hitting manufacturing centers. Some 250 of the bombs reached the United States. One of them killed six people in Oregon.

What this suggests is that if some sort of unidentified craft had fallen close to the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb had been detonated, the military would have been quite interested. They would have retrieved that object and they would not have left it unguarded or their trailers unguard because they wouldn’t want curious civilians taking a look at what they carried. Of course, this sort of speculation is unimportant now because, in the original story, things were a little different. Actually, they were quite different.

Tom Carey

In what in another age might have been called burying the lead, there is an audio recording with Reme Baca in which the story of the San Antonio crash is, well, completely different. It provides the evidence that the San Antonio UFO crash is a hoax. Tom Carey interviewed him a couple of decades ago with that old, boring story. You can read about it and listen to the tape here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-the-reme-baca-smoking-gun-interview/

Although this should be the stake through the heart of the tale, I know, from experience, that there are those who will not accept the evidence. They were talk about government agents and threats of jail or death. They will suggest there is a core of truth to the story. In this case, I think there were two boys living in New Mexico in 1945 named Reme Baca and Jose Padilla. Other than that, I don’t think there is much else that is true.

Don’t believe that? Just revisit the Alien Autopsy hoax in which pictures of the creation of the alien have been published… Don’t believe me, well, just look again at the tales told by Philip Corso that have been debunked in a fashion not unlike that we have just seen here… Or, for that matter, look at the tales told by Robert Willingham and the Del Rio UFO crash. I have published at great deal about that.

The real problem here seems to be that AARO, that supposed investigation into UAPs, has heard this tale and found it compelling. I suspect, in the not-too-distant future, AARO will report that the story is a hoax and use it to compromise other UFO mysteries that have no explanation. They will tell us that they looked at the San Antonio case and discovered that two men invented the tale to cash in on the interest in UFOs. And with that, they will dismiss all the UFO, well, UAP, phenomenon as having been the work of overactive imaginations, misidentifications of nature objects, and people who wish to see their names in print or be interviewed to participate in documentaries. They’ll forget to tell you that it was members of the UFO community that exposed the hoax for what it is. They won’t mention the work of Douglas Johnson but they will tell you all about the investigation they conducted to prove the point.

At any rate, I hope the latest, with the taped interview available for all to hear, will be sufficient to end this controversy. I know it won’t, but I can hope. 

Aztec in Perspective by Monte Shriver - Part Two

(Blogger’s Note: The following is reprinted by permission. Given the length of the original article, I have broken it into three parts and will publish all three over the next week. It was written by one-time resident of Aztec, Monte Shriver, and provides an interesting insight into the alleged crash. Again, reprinted by permission of Monte Shriver.)

THE AZTEC INCIDENT -RECOVERY AT HART CANYON 

BY SCOTT AND SUZANNE RAMSEY, DR. FRANK THAYER AND FRANK WARREN

In his forward to this book, Stanton Friedman  states “In this outstanding new book, Scott and Suzanne Ramsey have done an incredible job of really digging the evidence…and that none of the objections made to the reality of the Aztec Crash story stand up to careful scrutiny”. He concludes by saying “This is a very important book setting new standards for investigation, persistence and the casting of a very wide net to locate witnesses.”. On the contrary, my review of this book has found numerous errors, dubious conclusions and improbable events.

I can find no evidence to support is Mr. Ramsey’s statement on page 27 of -Behind the Flying Saucers - Updated Edition published by Conspiracy Journal in which he states “…Hart Canyon Road used to be the best way to get to Durango, by stage coach….” My research found the following:

William S. Wallace’s  “Stage Coaching in Territorial New Mexico” quoting from the New Mexico Historical Review 32 (1957): 207 “1882 - Aztec, S.E. of Durango, Co. 42 Miles by stage.” I seriously doubt if you could reach Aztec in 42 miles by using Hart Canyon.

“San Juan County, New Mexico - A Photographic History: Volume II” on page 33: “…The normal route for supplies took about a month. The route was from Farmington to Aztec, up the river to Animas City, CO…Arrington started the first daily four-horse mail stage between Durango and Farmington on July 1, 1890.…”

Aztec: A Story of Old Aztec from the Anasazi to Statehood by  C.V. Koogler and Virginia Koogler Whitney: page 66: Circa 1892 in one of the first meetings of the San Juan County Commission “…The first road matter was the presentation of a petition for a county road leading down the Animas River beginning at the Colorado line and running on the west side of the river to Aztec….”  I know that road as the “Ruins Road” and it joins U.S. 550 at Cedar Hill. The book is also full of numerous references of the early settlers going up the Animas River to Animas  City, CO for supplies and how one had to cross the Animas River 9 times between Aztec and Trimble Springs, CO.

Report of the Territorial Governor of New Mexico to the Secretary of the Interior (1902), page 580: “…At present, a daily stage line to Durango…place the people of the county in connection with the railroads. Durango, Colorado…is the nearest station on the north, a distance of 38 miles from Aztec…” 

The following are either small errors or large errors depending upon your point of view:

Page 18:  “…drove 148 miles from Albuquerque airport to Aztec…” Actually, the distance from the airport to Aztec in more like 180 miles or so.

Page 23:  “…the Highway Grill was one of the only restaurants in Aztec in 1948...” I thought it was called the Highway Lounge in 1948, but in the July 1-15, 2011 copy of the Talon, Janelle Osburn remembers it being called George’s Bar in 1948 and was owned by George and Thelma Derby. That now sounds correct to me. Sometime later, I believe the bar was purchased by Bill Faverino and Jack Vescovi and the name was probably  changed to the Highway Lounge at that time. According to Betty Lawson Waggoner, they didn’t start serving food there until the mid-1990’s.

Page 143: “…in 1945 New Mexico was the fifth largest state by area…” Actually, it was the fourth largest state by area until Alaska was admitted to the Union in 1959.

Page 143: “Kirtland Army Air Field was a large fighter base as well as home of the Eighth Air Force”. I can find no record of the Headquarters of the Eighth Air Force ever having been anywhere in New Mexico.

Page 147: Johnny Hernandez was driving from Regina, NM to Cuba with a truck load of logs and turned onto Highway 44 for “the LONG AND DESOLATE RIDE BACK TO CUBA (emphasis added).” It’s about 3 miles from where the Regina road (NM State Road 96) hits Highway 44 into Cuba. That may be a long and desolate 3 mile ride in North Carolina but it sure isn’t in New Mexico. I should note that it is only about 12 miles from Regina to Highway 44.

On the same trip, Mr. Hernandez  saw a bright green light passing over his truck at a tremendous speed and then headed north toward Taylor Mountain.  In Herbert E. Ungnade’s 1965 book Guide to New Mexico Mountains, he does not list a “Taylor Mountain”. Perhaps Mr. Ramsey meant Mount Taylor, but that is 80-90 miles southwest of Cuba, not north and Mr. Hernandez certainly would have known where Mount Taylor was located. More about the green lights later.

Page 194 - In 1946, a radar site was built near El Vado Lake. “The lake was built for Los Alamos as a power plant with one single General Electric Hydro Generator to supply power to Los Alamos.”  Not true about the dam. Actually, the dam impounding the lake was built in1934-35 and is used for flood control purposes and as storage for the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. The Los Alamos Utility Department built, owns and operates the 8 MW hydroelectric facility at the dam but it was not put into service until 1988.

Page 199 - In 1948 “... the site was owned by H. D. Dunning or Harold Dunning, as the locals called him….” I never heard anyone, including my Dad, call him anything but “Hy” Dunning. I’m not sure of the spelling of “Hy,” and I didn’t know his first name was Harold until I read it in this book.

Pages 154-5: Five-mile crossing bridge. In checking out the route through Largo Canyon, Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Bill Metzger found a railroad bridge at five-mile crossing that would not have been wide enough to transport the disc. However, during a walking survey of the bridge, they found a nameplate “…showing it to be manufactured long before the flying saucer incident,…”  But “Bill’s encyclopedic knowledge of the railroad industry quickly came into play as he realized this was a narrow gauge railroad bridge…Bill had to explain that…the bridge was probably moved from a dismantled rail line and installed across the dry wash…”.  Mr. Ramsey then states “To our surprise, we learned through research that, indeed, the old bridge was in fact a frontier narrow gauge railroad bridge from the Bloomfield area that was moved to Largo Canyon in the 1960’s to aid oil field development.”

How good was this “research ” (emphasis added)? It is not very good in my opinion. Here is what the New Mexico State Highway Department has to say about the bridge.   

New Mexico Historical Bridge Survey

New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department

Federal Highway Administration Region 6

1987 

Largo Canyon Bridge No. 8118 County Road A-80 near Blanco. 

“This bridge was originally constructed in 1928 over the San Juan River at Blanco by the Pueblo Bridge and Construction Company. In 1966 it was relocated about five miles east over Largo Arroyo on a county Road. The Largo Canyon Bridge is a steel through truss and has a total length of 254 feet. Its roadway is only 13 feet wide. A Warren Truss consisting of seven triangular panels was used in its design. The Largo Canyon Bridge is one of the longest truss spans constructed in New Mexico”.

 

A NARROW GAUGE RAILROAD BRIDGE, INDEED!!!!!!

When the new highway bridge was built over the San Juan River in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, the old bridge described above was moved a short distance from the new bridge. A high school friend of mine, Bruce Hare, told me that San Juan County hired his two brothers in 1966 to move the old bridge to five-mile crossing. On page 101 of Marilu Waybourn’s book “Images of America - Aztec”, you will find a picture of the old two-way bridge over the Animas River at Aztec noting that in 1929, it too was built by the Pueblo Bridge and Construction Company. 

On June 30, 2012, my wife and I visited the bridge and found the following nameplate on it. 

INSTALLED AND DEDICATED

PRUITT  BRIDGE

OCTOBER 1966

SAN JUAN COUNTY COMMISSION

JAMES M. DURRETT - DISTRICT 1

BERT BARNES  CHAIRMAN - DISTRICT 2

LELAND T. SEIDEL - DISTRICT 3

ROAD SUPERINTENDENT

A. L. PRUITT 

HIGHWAY ROUTES TO AZTEC 

Before I discuss finding the disc, I need to discuss why Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Metzger were in Largo Canyon in the first place. To quote again from Dr. Friedman in the Foreword to the book  “Using old maps and their consultant’s expertise, they were able to show…transport of three large segments (of the UFO) was feasible using…existing roads, appropriate maps etc…This was truly research by investigation rather than using the debunker approach of research by proclamation.” 

In Chapter Nine, “Moving the Craft”, Mr. Ramsey maintains that his research revealed that today’s Highway 550, old NM 44, is a far different route today that it was in 1948 when the old road turned hard right (north) at Counselors eventually entering Largo Canyon and reaching the Blanco area. He maintains that “When the Chaco Canyon ruins were excavated in the early 1950’s, the State Highway and Transportation Department decided to re-route U.S. Highway 44 so that it would pass close to the ruins…”(Emphasis added.) This re-route and excavation must come as a surprise to both the National Park Service and the New Mexico Highway Department. 

My research shows that Mr. Ramsey is dead wrong in his conclusions about the road from Bernalillo through Cuba to Aztec. My conclusion is based on my own personal knowledge having traveled all or part of the road since 1940, discussions with Gerald Williams who traveled the road in 1946 and my review of the Official Road Map of New Mexico issued by the New Mexico State Highway Department for the years 1923, 1925, 1936, 1940 and 1947-1951. The 1936 map shows the road in the same basic configuration as it is today(contrary to Mr. Ramsey’s assertion) with the only major differences being road surface and highway number designation as follows:

1936: The road was designated a primary State Route from Bernalillo to Aztec. It was State Road(SR)44 from Bernalillo to Cuba and SR 55 from Cuba to Aztec. The road was gravel from Bernalillo to about 10 miles south of La Ventana and then was classified as graded the rest of the way to Aztec except for small sections of gravel around Lybrooks and Bloomfield.  Interestingly enough, it shows Chaco Canyon National Monument about 25 miles S/SE of the highway just as it is today. I could not find any maps between 1925 and 1936, so I don’t know how long before 1936 the road assumed its present configuration. Also, I think it is worth noting that in the 1936 map, SR 44 reappears as a 3^rd class route (the lowest state category) from around Counselors apparently down Largo Canyon to just east of Blanco. This designation and road disappears from all the subsequent maps that I found.

1940: SR 44 is now paved all the way from Bernalillo to Cuba. SR 55 is gravel from Cuba to Bloomfield and graded from Bloomfield to Aztec.

1947: The road is now designated SR 44 all the way from Bernalillo to Aztec and is paved all the way except where it is gravel from about 10 miles south of Bloomfield to Aztec.

1948: The road is now paved all the way to Aztec. At page 152, the Ramsey book states “The 1948 road was improved road for the most part, meaning paved or at least gravel packed with heavy sand”. Of course, he had the road going down Largo Canyon from Counselors.  

I hope the history of the Bernalillo-Aztec road will dispel the assertion that in 1948 the main road was down Largo Canyon from Counselors to Blanco. I should note that the  1925 Road Map shows the Haynes Trading Post 37 miles NW of  Cuba with two roads going northwest, one apparently down Largo to Aztec and the other to Farmington. As best I can tell from the Legend on the map these two unnumbered roads were classified by the New Mexico Highway Department as “Second Class - Under maintenance and all year roads except after continuous rains.” According to the 1954 book Wild, Woolly and Wonderful by Jim and Ann Counselor, the Hayne’s Trading Post was closed sometime in the late 1920’s -- before the Counselor’s built their trading post (circa 1930) where it is located today. I stopped at the trading post recently and they have early pictures of the post taken in either the 1930’s or 1940’s.  

According to the Photographic History of San Juan County - Volume II on page 33 “A trip to Albuquerque meant wagon roads either to Blanco, through Largo Canyon and Wash  to the settlement of Haynes, to Cuba and beyond or all the way to Shiprock through Gallup and then to Albuquerque”. On page 25, there is a 1927 picture of the ferry across the San Juan River at Blanco looking east, 1927 and page 24 notes “The main route from Albuquerque was following Largo Canyon to the river, taking the ferry, and proceeding to Blanco and beyond…”. The ferry was obviously replaced by the bridge which was built in 1928. No later than 1936, SR 44 replaced this route as the road was moved to the west to its present configuration, now designated U.S. 550. 

In all the years I have traveled the road, I can recall only three road relocations. The road immediately south of Bloomfield used to run slightly  west of where it is today. I suspect it was moved to its present location when the road was paved in 1948. The next relocation was from Cuba to La Ventana where the road was moved west out of the foothills to where it is today. As one drives north from La Ventana today, the old road is visible coming down the hill on the right. The next relocation was about 10 miles south of La Ventana where the road was moved slightly east for a few miles. I hope some of my classmates from the class of 1952 can help my memory in this regard. 

I was stunned to hear the allegation that the road had been re-routed because of excavations at Chaco. During 1940-41, my Dad accompanied by me would haul coal from Durango, Colorado to Chaco for the National Park Service. We would take the road from Bloomfield to Huerfano Trading Post (now abandoned), turn to the SW and go by the Otis Trading Post(shown on the 1947 and 1948 maps) and then drive 25 miles to Chaco. In 1961 or 1962, my wife and I turned off SR 44 at Blanco Trading Post en route to Crownpoint via Chaco. We never went in through Nageezi because it was past Blanco Trading Post. The Nageezi and Blanco Trading Post entrances are now closed so you must enter about 5 miles SE of the old Nageezi entrance. The archaeologist at Chaco Canyon National Monument told me that there had been no reroute of SR44 in the 1950’s because of excavations at Chaco. In fact, the 1936 official state road map and all subsequent road maps show the Monument to be approximately 25 miles S/SW of SR 44, now US 550. 

What is really important to note here is that in 1948 NM 44 (now U.S. 550) was not just the way from Cuba to Aztec. Rather, it was the main route to the San Juan Basin from Albuquerque, Santa Fe and the Rio Grande Valley down to El Paso not mention most of eastern New Mexico. NM 17 (now U.S. 64) was considered a third class route (dirt) from Dulce to a few miles east of Blanco where it became a secondary state route on into Bloomfield. The only other paved route from the south was from Gallup to Shiprock to Farmington and Aztec but that route would normally only be used by people from the far western side of the state.

 

FINDING THE DISC 

In reading the Ramsey book, I got the impression that most of his direct information about the crash and the crash site came from Doug Noland and Ken Farley. However, at page 200, Mr. Ramsey states that “The story was told to me directly by oilfield workers, particularly Doug Noland…”. I can’t find anywhere in his book where he named any oilfield workers other that Doug Noland.  

As related in Chapter One, “Eight Months After Roswell”, there is a summary of the story told to Mr. Ramsey some 50 years after fact by Doug Noland, a 19 year-old man working for the El Paso Oil Company (I wonder if he means El Paso Natural Gas Company?). The time line of events really seems questionable to me.  Doug arrives in the predawn hours. (Sunrise was

6:08 a.m. local time.) He arrived at the home of his supervisor, Bill Ferguson at 5:00 a.m..  Unfortunately, we have no idea where Bill Ferguson lived, but for Doug to drive from Mancos, Colorado must have taken at least an hour which means he left his home around 4:00 a.m. I would think that would mean that Doug had to be up by at least 3:30 a.m.  To work this schedule five days a week seems a little fishy to me. I base my hour estimate of Doug’s travel time on the fact that during the summer of 1956, I was a tool dresser for John Pool and we were drilling a top-to-bottom hole near the old Fort Lewis College at Hesperus, CO. It took us at least an hour to get from Aztec to the rig. 

Bill tells Doug that a brush fire is burning in Hart Canyon near one of the company’s drip tanks and that they had to get out there fast (There is no mention of how or when Ferguson was notified, how far they had to travel or how long it took them to get there). Upon arrival, they found oil field workers (never identified) already there who told them that the fire was on top of the mesa and that something strange was sitting on top of the hill. I found nothing to indicate the fire was started by the craft. This means someone saw the fire on the mesa around 4:00 a.m. The Dunnings apparently didn’t know about the fire and 4:00 a.m. is a bit too early for oilfield workers to go to work since it is still dark. And, it would have to have been one hell of fire if it was seen from Highway 550! I think the illogical time sequences puts the whole story in doubt.  

Anyway, they found the disc in the pre-dawn light and when the sun came up they were able to see inside the disc. Soon “others” started arriving on the Mesa including local ranchers. No mention of how all these other people heard about the disc. After the ranchers arrived, a law enforcement office from Cuba arrived stating that he had followed the disc from Cuba (more about this improbable happening to follow). Now, even more people show up including a law enforcement officer from Aztec whose name Doug had forgotten.  

At page 4 of Chapter 1, Mr. Ramsey states that “Doug was living in Mancos, Colorado at the time and was familiar with all the Aztec people, as well as county law enforcement, being that the town is also the San Juan County seat.” I find this comment hard to believe. I grew up in Aztec and other than Mims Lane, I didn’t know any of the county law enforcement except for the name of the sheriff. How would a young man, living in Mancos, Colorado who drove 50 miles one-way just to reach his supervisor’s house in the pre-dawn hours and worked in the oil patch all day ever have the opportunity to be “familiar with all the Aztec people as well as county law enforcement”? Mr. Ramsey also states at page 201 that Doug Noland “...lived in Mancos, CO before making Aztec his home, where he worked day and night in the oil patch as well as for the community of Aztec (emphasis added).” On June 29-30, 2012 I attended my 60^th high school reunion in  Aztec along with the class of 1951. Almost all of the attendees spent their entire lives in Aztec. Some of them spent their careers with El Paso Natural Gas Company and some were in business there. Not a single person I talked to remembered a Doug Noland ever living in Aztec, much less working for the community of Aztec.  

It is impossible to determine who the local law enforcement officer mentioned was. In 1948, I believe J. C. McKinsie was the Aztec Town Marshall. I remember him walking around the downtown area with his flashlight checking businesses at night. Gerald Williams remembers him patrolling the alleys at night in his Studebaker car. Since he worked at night, I doubt if he would have visited the site. Who would have notified him? State Policeman Andy Andrews lived in Farmington so his presence is doubtful. That would leave the Sheriff’s office in Aztec but in Steinman’s book on page 213 in apparently reprinting an article by Mike McClellan, it was reported by Sheriff Dan Sullivan that “His own father was sheriff at the time and had no recollection of a crash, aircraft being in the area or anything that would support Carr’s claims.” 

Next we have Ken Farley who was driving to Cedar Hill, New Mexico from Durango, Colorado to pick up a friend (unidentified) and drive to San Diego, California. Before I go further, I need to give you, dear reader, some distances. It is 4.4 miles from Aztec to the Hart Canyon entrance and 5.7 miles from the old store in Cedar Hill to the Hart Canyon entrance. Due to the nature of the terrain, it is impossible to see the entrance to Hart Canyon from either Cedar Hill or Aztec until you are effectively at the entrance to the Canyon. With that in mind, let’s go back to Ken Farley. Upon arriving to pick his friend up at Cedar Hill ( we have no idea what time he arrived to pickup his friend), Ken is told “…there was a lot of activity just south of their pick-up point near an old dirt road…” There is no mention of how his friend knew this. He  would have to have been at the entrance to Hart Canyon to see the activity. But the story gets better. The friend then tells Ken that “..there had been some vehicles, including a police car going in that direction…”. And by the time they got to the entrance to Hart Canyon, they were able to follow the dirt and dust clouds the other cars and trucks were making to arrive at the crash site. It must have been quite a caravan charging up Hart Canyon. Anyone having any doubts about the sequence of events yet? 

Well, here is one more event for you to ponder. A preacher, living in Aztec, on his way to his new church in Mancos, also saw the commotion and headed up the canyon.  One would have to conclude that with all the commotion and dust and vehicles going up Hart Canyon, half of Aztec must have been there. Why didn’t people in Aztec know about this event? I think there are two possibilities: 1) The story is true and the government people on site swore everyone to secrecy and told them never to reveal the event to anyone, or 2) It never happened and the secrecy story makes good cover as to why no one knew about it.