|
As evidence that the controversy surrounding the so-called
Roswell Incident refuses to roll over and die, in the 1990s
the Air Force published two investigative reports pertaining to the
events of July 1947. The following is taken from the Air Force’s
press release on the first report published in 1994 in response to
an inquiry launched by the General Accounting Office (GAO)
— the investigative arm of Congress.
|
The
GAO’s inquiry came as a direct result of questions
initiated by the late New Mexican Representative, Steven Schiff.
According to the Air Force’s massive, near-1000 page report (The
Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, 1994)
the debris found at
Roswell was most likely from a Mogul balloon — a
Top Secret Army-Air-Force device designed to assist the U.S.
military in detecting evidence of nuclear tests by the Soviets.
But what of the reports of alien bodies? In 1997, the Air Force
expanded on this aspect of the Roswell affair in
a document titled The Roswell Report: Case Closed.
This report discusses the
results of this exhaustive research and identifies the likely
sources of the claims of "alien bodies" at Roswell.
(see Video
HERE)
|
Roswell crash map
("click") |
Contrary to allegations,
many of the accounts appear to be descriptions of unclassified and
widely publicized Air Force scientific achievements. Other
descriptions of "bodies" appear to be actual incidents in which Air
Force members were killed or injured in the line of duty.
The conclusions are:
- Air Force
activities which occurred over a period of many years have been
consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or
three days in July 1947. "Aliens" observed in the New
Mexico desert were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that were
carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for
scientific research.
- The "unusual" military activities in the New Mexico desert
were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations.
Reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after
the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and "crew," were
actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in
anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.
- Claims of "alien bodies" at the Roswell Army Air Field
hospital were most likely a combination of two separate
incidents:
1. a 1956 KC-97
aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives;
and,
2. a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots
were injured. This report is based on thoroughly documented research
supported by official records, technical reports, film footage,
photographs, and interviews with individuals who were involved in
these events.
Despite the Air Force’s
attempts to diffuse the controversy surrounding the Roswell
events of 1947 and preempt the GAO’s
findings, it is significant to note several key factors.
-
First, Mogul balloons
possessed no unusual characteristics such as those described by the
witnesses to the event.
-
Second, the crash-test
dummy experiments that the Air Force asserts led to the legends of
alien bodies being recovered were not initiated until the 1950s.
-
Third, during the course
of its investigation, the GAO learned that all of the administrative
records of Roswell Army Air Field from March 1945 until December
1949 and all outgoing messages from the base from October 1946 to
December 1949 had been inexplicably destroyed.
The Roswell enigma
continues — despite the best efforts of the Air Force to lay the
matter to rest.
|