What Crashed in Roswell- July 7, 1947

Originally posted by mmiichael
Exon only repeated what he'd been told and had accepted such informal reports.

Of course he did because the reports came from colleagues he highly trusted. He was base commander of Wright Patterson airforce base and a General. Do you really think his men thought: Guys lets make fun of the general and tell him an alien craft crashed in the desert just for kicks?

He also flew over the crash site personally and saw two distinct crash sites and tire tracks leading to these sites. This was a first hand account.

Neither one ever stated they saw anything from an alien craft or had any unambiguous information to that effect.

General Dubose personally took the phone call from Gen. McMullen where he was ordered to cover up what had been found. This is clearly stated in his affidavit.

I can easily produce many more first hand military witnesses who were there and said an alien craft crashed in the desert. Are you going to explain away all of them with speculation that they were telling people what they wanted to hear? No offence but that argument does not hold water.

Tellingly the star witness Marcel didn't even remember what year it happened when first interviewed. After many interviews Marcel recalled more clearly things like flying the UFO wreckage himself to Carswll AFB. Very unusual for someone who was not a pilot.

Marcel was a pilot in the airforce before so I don't know where you got the notion he was not a pilot. And can you please provide a source for the other statements supposedly made by Marcel?

But still none of these respected members of the US military or anyone with any credibility has provide evidence or a first hand account of seeing an alien aircraft or aliens.

It appears you are off the mark with your above statement.

First hand military witnesses (who handled or saw the debris):

Sgt. Robert Porter: B-29 flight engineer
1st Lt. Robert Shirkey: The base assistant operations officer
Sgt. Robert Smith: Roswell 1st Air Transport Unit
Sgt. Lewis Rickett

First hand military witnesses (who saw bodies):

Sgt. Frederick Benthal
Sgt. Thomas Gonzales
PFC. Elias Benjamin

It doesn't seem plausible.

I was wondering the following and I'm hoping you would be so kind to comment.

It appears you view all the witnesses and evidence that point to an alien crash with huge skepticism. There is nothing wrong with skepticism so that's not my point. My question is: Did you read the official Airforce report and explanation of the case with the same skepticism? If you did then what were your conclusions?




[edit on 30/1/09 by Fastwalker81]

As far as what Dubose said, here it is...(taken from his affadavit of 9/16/1991):

(5) In early July, I received a phone call from Maj. Gen. Clements McMullen, Deputy Commander, Strategic Air Command. He asked what we knew about the object which had been recovered outside Roswell, New Mexico, as reported in the press. I called Col. William Blanchard, Commander of the Roswell Army Air Field and directed him to send the material in a sealed container to me at Fort Worth. I so informed Maj. Gen. McMullen.

(6) After the plane from Roswell arrived with the material, I asked the Base Commander, Col. Al Clark, to take possession of the material and to personally transport it in a B-26 to Maj. Gen. McMullen in Washington, D.C. I notified Maj. Gen. McMullen, and he told me he would send the material by personal courier on his plane to Benjamin Chidlaw, Commanding General of the Air Material Command at Wright Field [later Wright Patterson AFB]. The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy.

(7) The material shown in the photographs taken in Maj. Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press.

If someone has a recant of this, I'd love to see it, vs. this sworn affadavit...


Then there's Brig. General Steven Lovekin:

(During a Pentagon meeting discussing Project Blue Book materials)
"Colonel Hollobard [sp? perhaps Hollogard] brought out a piece of what appeared to be metallic -- it was a metallic piece of -- it looked like a yardstick. It had deciphering--it had encryption on it. He did describe them as being symbols of instruction. And that's as far as he would go. But he did infer that the instructions, whatever they might have been, were something that was important enough for the military to keep working on on a constant basis.

"It seemed giant-like when I saw it because it was the first time I had ever seen anything like this before. And all eyes were just peeled on that particular thing. And when he told us what it was, it was frightening, it was eerie there. You could have heard a pin drop in the room when it was first mentioned.

"He said it had been taken from one of the craft that had crashed in New Mexico. It had been taken from a box of materials that the military was working on. They didn't use the word reverse engineering at that time, but it was something similar to the reverse engineering they felt like they needed to work on and that it was going to take years to do this."

As for General Exon, while it was second hand, he did emphasize "that he was told these things by men who were directly involved and whom he knew well and trusted."

It's really just more to throw on the pile though, as there are plenty of sworn affadavits already of ranking military personnel.

Originally posted by Fastwalker81

Marcel was a pilot in the airforce before so I don't know where you got the notion he was not a pilot. And can you please provide a source for the other statements supposedly made by Marcel?

This is propagated misinformation like a lot of what's written on Roswell.

check here:

www.roswellfiles.com...


" The FAA, which has complete records going back to well before 1928 has never heard of Jesse Marcel.

His Reserve Officer Career Brief, dated 20 Nov 47, lists his flying experience as "none".

His application for appointment as a 2nd Lieut. (completed and signed by Marcel in Jan 1942) doesn't doesn't support this claim.

His Classification Questionnaire (completed and signed by Marcel in Feb 1942) goes out of the way to list such talents as photography and amateur radio, acting in high school and community plays, and singing in a quartet doesn't mention any experience as a pilot! One would think that being a pilot would be of more value to the Air Force and the war effort than singing in a quartet. "

www.roswellfiles.com...


Sorry to be such a wet blanket of Close Encounters. Marcel lied and invented as he came under the spotlight, seeking to write himself into the history books. I accept hard data not distorted information assembled by enthusiasts.


Mike F

"It appears you view all the witnesses and evidence that point to an alien crash with huge skepticism."

I choose to call it being realistic. I would love to see evidence. I am actively looking. As to the witnesses, I use filters. For example, a credible witness does not confer that credibility to their testimony. Finding credible testimony is tricky. Affidavits are even worse. While an affidavit can have legitimate business/legal uses, proving ET exists is not one of them.

"My question is: Did you read the official Airforce report and explanation of the case with the same skepticism? If you did then what were your conclusions?"

Yes. I think there is not enough space in several postings to list all conclusions. But my first conclusion is that not many understand that the report was an answer to a Congressional inquiry, which means that it has to meet requirements imposed by congress. The Air Force did not just suddenly decide to tell the world about Roswell. A Congressman formally tasked them to do this. They had to answer and to do so in a specific way, and within a specific time-frame.

And on this "first" conclusion topic, there are multiple anomalies. The congressman involved was one of almost no Congressmen who were ever actively in the Reserve forces and called up "out of Congress" to active duty. He served in the Air Force. When he returned to Congress after being called to active duty in the first Gulf War, he made the Congressional Inquiry of the Air Force. It lost some fizz because he was from the 1st congressional district, not the 2nd, which would have been the full force Roswell Inquiry. (That is a separate conclusion in its own right.) The Congressman representing Roswell (2nd district) did not appear to participate in the inquiry, even though both representatives were of the same political party. As you can see, I am dealing with multiple curios long before I have got past the reason for the report. I am many conclusions away from even touching the report itself.

[edit on 2-2-2009 by nightwing]

Originally posted by mmiichael


This is propagated misinformation like a lot of what's written on Roswell.

check here:

www.roswellfiles.com...

Thanks for the link.

I noticed that the same website states the following:

Marcel was awarded two Air Medals.

It appears the Air Medal is awarded for achievement while participating in aerial flight.

The Air Medal is awarded to any person who, while serving in any capacity in or with the Armed Forces of the United States, shall have distinguished himself/herself by meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight.

en.wikipedia.org...

So then the question comes to mind: How did Marcel obtain these medals if he was not a pilot?

Sorry to be such a wet blanket of Close Encounters. Marcel lied and invented as he came under the spotlight, seeking to write himself into the history books. I accept hard data not distorted information assembled by enthusiasts.

No problem in the end we all are looking for the same thing I hope and that is the truth.

Originally posted by Fastwalker81

Marcel was awarded two Air Medals.

So then the question comes to mind: How did Marcel obtain these medals if he was not a pilot?

The majority of those who served with the Air Force and who even went up in planes were not pilots. Rotating crews handled artillery and on flight duties. They were awarded Air Medals routinely for being on successful missions. Gunners got one for every successful target hit.

My uncle was in the Air Force in WW2, but got sick on planes so worked on the ground. He got a medal.

Again, a lot of enhancement and exaggeration of personal involvement happens with Roswell and other historical events when participants are questioned years later. This has been well documented.

30+ years after the fact Marcel was told by UFO investigators that something routine he had done back in 1947 was suddenly of great interest and significance. He ran with it.


MF

Some confusion could be due to the TWO Jesse Marcels also...

Jesse Marcel Sr. was not a pilot, but an Air Force intelligence officer.

Jesse Marcel Jr. (his son) is a highly experienced pilot.

I think that many get confused when examining the testimony of either, and the confusion is understandable.

However, yes, Jesse Sr. was on record talking about flight experience, but personally, that's easy to chalk up to being on a plane and shooting down an enemy, vs. actually flying the plane. I don't know about you, but I'd still count that as "one I shot down"...

Marcel was good at telling tall stories.

In the bob pratt interview he claimed all sorts of things which turned out to be whoppers.

- claimed he shot down 5 planes but theres no reference to this in his military record.
- claimed he was awarded 5 medals. In fact he was awarded 2
- claimed he had a degree in nuclear physics . No record could be found of him attending the university

Witness testimony is still only part of the issue...

1. FACT - Something crashed near Roswell in July of 1947.
It's acknowledged by believers and skeptics alike, and recovery is a matter of record with the press

2. FACT - The military story is that a MOGUL balloon crashed, and witnesses are confusing the bodies with dummies used in Project High Dive.
However, no other MOGUL recovery before or after garnered such fanfare, and often teams didn't even go to look for MOGUL balloons. Why?
Because of fact 3. In addition, Project High Dive was at least 5 years after the Roswell incident. This is quite a stretch, even for the Air Force....

3. FACT - MOGUL used off the shelf materials, nothing exotic or classified, including rubber balloons, paper foil (like one might find on a Hershey bar), and balsa wood.
It seems to be a great disservice to citizens and military officers to say they confused these materials with something out of this world. In addition, why would the military establish a military cordon (as shown printed in the Ramey memo and witness testimony) and have rushed flights with the debris to the leading foreign tech branches (as shown in the press stories and witness testimony)?

4. SOLID EVIDENCE - There is still NO reason for a project as MOGUL to be classified for over 50 years, well after it's purpose was obsolete....unless it was covering up something else.

5. SOLID EVIDENCE - The Ramey memo. Skeptics still haven't been able to shoot this down (that I have yet seen), and the memo states some very critical key words for piecing together a debris recovery effort of a crashed disc with bodies, just as stated in the original press release.

6. SOLID EVIDENCE - The military's own press release, in which they stated they recovered a flying disk.

Memories after 50+ years will be fuzzy, and old military men will try and play up their achievements (human nature), but none of that changes the facts and very solid evidence of the case, that lead one to thoroughly throw out the military's MOGUL/HIGH DIVE explanation, even if you didn't even consider the witnesses. So, that said...what crashed that would still be a secret over 60 years later? If it was ours, or a foreign power's, it would be hopelessly obsolete, and certainly not still classified....so again...whose device was it? As the secret is still being kept....

Try substituting the words Manned Airship for balloon, and you're getting closer, in my opinion, to what happened.
An extremist Japanese group taking part in a well-planned revenge attack (they certainly had the motive and the kamikaze ruthlessness) could have sent up an adapted zeppelin-type craft (I believe their allies in WW2 could have supplied one of those a couple of years earlier?) to take advantage of the same Jet Stream phenomenon utilised by their balloons in 1945, but this time do it properly! Now that would make a big bang, and it would certainly need hushing up.
Little men? They would have had to use very small, light crew members to save weight - possibly midget ninjas or even kids? Burned hairless in the crash, they would look pretty damn alien to most locals who saw them.
Whether or not this is what happened, it would certainly make a good plot for a movie or Clive Cussler novel!

The Roswell incident was well over 60 years ago. No one seemed too interested for the longest time until UFO investigators picked up the thread 30 years after the fact. And it's been 30 years since that.

I've seen a lot of re-examination of the original documentation and coverage finding holes and inconsistencies. One has to factor in that it was a time when the possibility of an alien invasion was taken seriously by the military.

But without anyone coming forward in after all this time, a mass of circumstantial indicators but no real evidence, the whole things looks more to me like confusion and alarm at the time, with the waters muddied of late by opportunists trying to make some hay out of creating a cover-up story.

No retired military personnel, scientists, biologist, journalist, anyone, has ever come forward and added anything substantial to the story of the US having material from an otherworldly intelligence.

This is about a big story as there ever was. The narrative of the US government keeping it top secret for so long may be appealing to some.
But 60+ years later I just see a lot of grasping at straws and no real substantiation.


Mike F

It would seem that the testimony of top military officials who saw the debris wouldn't constitute "further evidence".

I imagine then, that the only evidence acceptable to many is to actually have a piece of the craft or an EBE to tout...

That's a bit like claiming the Stealth fighter doesn't exist.
Oh, but there's pictures, and videos, and all these military guys say it exists!

Fine, please show me a piece of the craft....

Waiting....

Yep, that's what I thought.... Such material is highly classified and secured, and anyone trying to come forward with it would either see the material switched and/or be arrested with a nice cover story to explain it all. (it's certainly what I would do in their shoes)...That's the thing of it.

it would help if the primary witnesses stopped changing their stories when theyre found out.

Marcel claimed he was only ever photographed with the debris that was retreived from the ranch. About 5 years later when it was proven to be balloon debris in the ramey office photos the story changed.

Brazel Jnr liked a nice flip flop on his story. First it was claimed the "object" must have exploded midair and rained debris down as there was no impact crater or gouges in the ground. Around 8 years later he changed it to Huge 200 feet long gouges that took years for the grass to grow over again. A blatant obvious attempt to suggest something more substantial crashed.

Its also very interesting authors of roswell books like to quote the 8 year old brazel jnr so much but ignore 15 year old bessie brazel. Who gave a very clear description of the debris. "rubber, sticks, foil. Looked like a large balloon had burst." She gave this description to every ufologist who asked. They all surpressed that information. Not exactly objective of them was it?

One last thing, nowhere in the army press release does it say the debris was of extra terrestrial origin. Marcel came out with that in the 1970s.

Originally posted by yeti101
A blatant obvious attempt to suggest something more substantial crashed.

I asked this question to mmiichael but he seemed to have missed it. Your above comment seems to imply you think nothing substantial crashed.

Thats fair enough but may I ask if you read the official Airforce report with the same skepticism you display here?

If you did what were your conclusions?




[edit on 3/2/09 by Fastwalker81]

Originally posted by Fastwalker81

I asked this question to mmiichael but he seemed to have missed it. Your above comment seems to imply you think nothing substantial crashed.

Thats fair enough but may I ask if you read the official Airforce report with the same skepticism you display here?

If you did what were your conclusions?

I missed the link but found this 1994

Official Roswell Incident Report - United States Air Force

and assume it's the one referred to

www.ufoevidence.org...


I may come off as an arch-skeptic, but following this story for
30 years has done that.

Seeing all the con-men, glory opportunists, and watching the hard evidence and solid testimony always evaporate on examination has done that.

This has the same earmarks of validating a miracle as the Catholic Church is wont to do.



Mike F

"Official Roswell Incident Report - United States Air Force" = mmiichael

That's a good place to start if you have not looked into it before. I hope to have the opportunity to wade through all the attachments someday. That would be fun.

I understand your comments well enough because there is a lot of realism in what you have observed. And even the most dedicated researchers pursue a belief so hard that it interferes with their goal. Lets try another example. Lets pick one that has the potential to crack the Roswell puzzle. Meaning that this could be the real thing if done right. Yes, the so called Ramey "memo".

Gazrok positions this memo as solid evidence. I say it could lead to solving the puzzle completely, if real. In this case, we both agree on the potential importance of the memo, but we disagree as to the credibility of it as evidence. Lets see what the above report says about it. Here it is:

"This organization ("a national level organization") reported on July 20, 1994, that even after digitizing, the photos were of insufficient quality to visualize either of the details sought for analysis." = AF Report

One sentence, which actually addresses an ongoing effort to read the alien writing some say is in the Ramey photos in addition to the contents of the memo itself. Does this disprove the memo decipher ? No.
Gazrok is correct when he says nobody has stepped forward to disprove it. And nobody will, and nobody has to.

The Ramey memo offers an opportuniy to leave the legal realm of conflicting testimony and maybe bring science into the equation. Nobody has stepped forward to disprove it because extraordinary claims do NOT have to be disproved. Science doesn't work that way.

The basic idea behind the Ramey memo decipher is a good one. It got the attention of the Air Force such that they admit they also checked it out. The idea offers an opportunity (perhaps) of acquiring credible evidence the UFO community would desire. It seems to me that no stone should be left unturned to acquire evidence using science. The techniques used should be carefully documented and every step annotated as to how it is done. It must be easily duplicated, as in "experiment" and then submitted for a scientific review. Given the potential for discovery in the memo, I believe it would be desirable to turn it into a proper technique for scientific support.

This would not be difficult to do. One example would be something like the SIMAGIS smart imaging analysis software. It saves, stores, and documents any repeatable image analysis. This is an area that is getting better with time. The only thing that is not changing is the original resolution of the original negative. Once you hit the resolution limits, no amount of enhancement will make chicken salad out of chicken poop.

There are two important choices with the Ramey memo. It is a chance to use science methods to discover new and original evidence, or to make an extraordinary claim without doing the science. In the latter case, we simply proceed from conflicting testimony (legal world) directly onto fraud (Scientific world). I believe the dedicated and most talented researchers out there want no part of the second choice.

Originally posted by nightwing


Gazrok positions this memo as solid evidence. I say it could lead to solving the puzzle completely, if real. In this case, we both agree on the potential importance of the memo, but we disagree as to the credibility of it as evidence. Lets see what the above report says about it. Here it is:

"This organization ("a national level organization") reported on July 20, 1994, that even after digitizing, the photos were of insufficient quality to visualize either of the details sought for analysis." = AF Report

One sentence, which actually addresses an ongoing effort to read the alien writing some say is in the Ramey photos in addition to the contents of the memo itself. Does this disprove the memo decipher ? No.
Gazrok is correct when he says nobody has stepped forward to disprove it. And nobody will, and nobody has to.

The Ramey memo offers an opportuniy to leave the legal realm of conflicting testimony and maybe bring science into the equation. Nobody has stepped forward to disprove it because extraordinary claims do NOT have to be disproved. Science doesn't work that way.

The basic idea behind the Ramey memo decipher is a good one. It got the attention of the Air Force such that they admit they also checked it out. The idea offers an opportunity (perhaps) of acquiring credible evidence the UFO community would desire. It seems to me that no stone should be left unturned to acquire evidence using science. The techniques used should be carefully documented and every step annotated as to how it is done. It must be easily duplicated, as in "experiment" and then submitted for a scientific review. Given the potential for discovery in the memo, I believe it would be desirable to turn it into a proper technique for scientific support.

There are two important choices with the Ramey memo. It is a chance to use science methods to discover new and original evidence, or to make an extraordinary claim without doing the science. In the latter case, we simply proceed from conflicting testimony (legal world) directly onto fraud (Scientific world). I believe the dedicated and most talented researchers out there want no part of the second choice.

My take on the Ramey memo is that it is not a smoking gun or leading to one. What I surmise happened is in that in the lack of certainty on anything in those first days time, when the possibility of discovering an outworldly or foreign power source craft on US soil was a very real concern, anything was considered possible, and all options had to be addressed.

Someone in the upper military ranks and/or scientific community may have communicated to Ramey that given the incomplete information nature of the event, he should ship all pieces of evidence including the remains of any victims, machinery, etc. with extreme thoroughness and maximum security.

For a brief moment no on could say what was found and the possibility of unidentified pilots being in the wreckage could not be dismissed.

This seems the logical answer.


Mike F

Originally posted by mmiichael
Someone in the upper military ranks and/or scientific community may have communicated to Ramey that given the incomplete information nature of the event, he should ship all pieces of evidence including the remains of any victims, machinery, etc. with extreme thoroughness and maximum security.

I would like to point out a problem with this theory.

General Ramey did not recieve this memo, he was the person that wrote it. The memo is apparently directed at General Hoyt S. Vandenberg and provides a status update regarding the Roswell crash incident.

Of course Ramey had just told the press it was a weather balloon and even was so kind to pose with the debris as we all know. Not that the debris in the picture has any significance as the Airfore later admitted no weather balloon had crashed, thus confirming the debris was just a red herring.

Just a general response. It's late and my cut n' paste abilities are down.

We aren't privy to what Ramey heard from his colleagues or conversations by phone and otherwise undocumented. There must have been plenty.

For a few days military personnel were dealing with some extreme possibilities they weren't prepared for in the desert in 1947. Things like a Russian spying mission or conceivably beginning of an invasion, a possible vestige of the WW2 from the Japanese, and the new wild card - a possible otherworldly intrusion.

An intelligent officer would give security first disinformation to the public press with the situation's status undetermined. There's no overriding law or ethics saying the military has to be provide the truth or even a consistent story to the public.

I think this in the end has opened the Roswell incident to more speculation than it deserves. Conflicting reportage and testimony which could only be resolved if someone privy to the bigger picture explained it with a reasonable time frame.

As with the Kennedy assassination and even 9/11, the real story has been muddied by plated information, false documentation, leading questions to participants, and so on.

When I first followed this and it came out about the fake Majestic documentation and Stanton Friedman conceding he'd falsified information
it became apparent this was developing int a sub-industry for the supposedly impartial investigators.

Well documented, witnesses to Lincoln's assassination changed their stories over decades. Typically the same week report would be from someone saying they heard a shot but didn't see anything. 40-50 years later they'd be talking about wresting with John Wilkes Booth as he was escaping. And this was the common pattern of evolving stories - always become more dramatic with heightened involvement.


Applying common sense and a knowledge of human behaviour in the potential event of the millenium I'd say the lack of compelling evidence only leads to one conclusion.


Mike F

Originally posted by Schaden
Balloon explanation doesn't cut it for me.


I'm still about 90% sure Roswell was a crashed/disabled ET spaceship.

I agree , too many peoples testimony there was a disc and dead beings.

I thought it was crash test dummies dropped from a plane?


That is what the final explanation was in the 90's from the government wasn't it?

Why would it take 50 years to figure that out or tell us?

The governments sketchy coverup and excuses speak for itself.