SuperHack/SuperHack CD.bin/UFO/ROSWELL1.ZIP/ROSWELL1.TXT

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                      ROSWELL TESTIMONY

                    by Christopher Schmidt
                   [e-mail]
                         January 1993



         1       INTRODUCTION
         1.1         Document Description
         1.2         Sequence of Events

         2       THE CIVILIANS
         2.1         Loretta Proctor
         2.2         Marian Strickland
         2.3         Bessie Brazel Schreiber
         2.4         William Brazel Jr
         2.5         Glenn Dennis

         3       THE COPS
         3.1         Barbara Dugger

         4       THE PRESS
         4.1         Frank Joyce
         4.2         Lydia Sleppy
         4.3         Walt Whitmore Jr

         5       THE MILITARY
         5.1         Jesse Marcel
         5.2         Jesse Marcel Jr
         5.3         Walter Haut
         5.4         Bill Rickett
         5.5         F.B.
         5.6         Robert Porter
         5.7         Robert Shirkey
         5.8         Robert Slusher
         5.9         Robert Smith
         5.10        Melvin Brown's Daughter
         5.11        Pappy Henderson
         5.12        Pappy Henderson's Wife
         5.13        Pappy Henderson's Daughter
         5.14        Pappy Henderson's Relatives
         5.15        Pappy Henderson's Friend #1
         5.16        Pappy Henderson's Friend #2

         6       PROSAIC EXPLANATIONS
         6.1         Weather Balloon
         6.2         Secret Rocket or Airplane



 1  INTRODUCTION



 1.1  Document Description

 A flying saucer crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
 This document contains testimony from people who were
 closely associated with this incident.

 Most of the testimony in this document is from the 1992 book
 "Crash at Corona" by Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner,
 published in the United States by Paragon House. That book
 contains lots of other interesting material, including
 material regarding another crash site in New Mexico. That
 book is the source of all testimony in this document except
 where noted.



 1.2  Sequence of Events

 On July 2, 1947, during the evening, a flying saucer crashed
 on the Foster Ranch near Corona, New Mexico. The crash
 occurred during a severe thunderstorm. (The military base
 nearest the crash site is in Roswell, New Mexico; hence,
 Roswell is more closely associated with this event than
 Corona, even though Corona is closer to the crash site.)

 On July 3, 1947, William "Mac" Brazel (rhymes with
 "frazzle") and his 7-year-old neighbor Dee Proctor found the
 remains of the crashed flying saucer. Brazel was foreman of
 the Foster Ranch. The pieces were spread out over a large
 area, perhaps more than half a mile long. When Brazel drove
 Dee back home, he showed a piece of the wreckage to Dee's
 parents, Floyd and Loretta Proctor. They all agreed the
 piece was unlike anything they had ever seen.

 On July 6, 1947, Brazel showed pieces of the wreckage to
 Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox. Wilcox called Roswell
 Army Air Field (AAF) and talked to Major Jesse Marcel, the
 intelligence officer. Marcel drove to the sheriff's office
 and inspected the wreckage. Marcel reported to his
 commanding officer, Colonel William "Butch" Blanchard.
 Blanchard ordered Marcel to get someone from the Counter
 Intelligence Corps, and to proceed to the ranch with Brazel,
 and to collect as much of the wreckage as they could load
 into their two vehicles.

 Soon after this, military police arrived at the sheriff's
 office, collected the wreckage Brazel had left there, and
 delivered the wreckage to Blanchard's office. The wreckage
 was then flown to Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort
 Worth, and from there to Washington.

 Meanwhile, Marcel and Sheridan Cavitt of the Counter
 Intelligence Corps drove to the ranch with Mac Brazel. They
 arrived late in the evening. They spent the night in
 sleeping bags in a small out-building on the ranch, and in
 the morning proceeded to the crash site.

 On July 7, 1947, Marcel and Cavitt collected wreckage from
 the crash site. After filling Cavitt's vehicle with
 wreckage, Marcel told Cavitt to go on ahead, that Marcel
 would collect more wreckage, and they would meet later back
 at Roswell AAF. Marcel filled his vehicle with wreckage. On
 the way back to the air field, Marcel stopped at home to
 show his wife and son the strange material he had found.

 On July 7, 1947, around 4:00 pm, Lydia Sleppy at Roswell
 radio station KSWS began transmitting a story on the
 teletype machine regarding a crashed flying saucer out on
 the Foster Ranch. Transmission was interrupted, seemingly by
 the FBI.

 On July 8, 1947, in the morning, Marcel and Cavitt arrived
 back at Roswell AAF with two carloads of wreckage. Marcel
 accompanied this wreckage, or most it, on a flight to Fort
 Worth AAF.

 On July 8, 1947, around noon, Colonel Blanchard at Roswell
 AAF ordered Second Lieutenant Walter Haut to issue a press
 release telling the country that the Army had found the
 remains of a crashed a flying saucer. Haut was the public
 information officer for the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell AAF.
 Haut delivered the press release to Frank Joyce at radio
 station KGFL. Joyce waited long enough for Haut to return to
 the base, then called Haut there to confirm the story. Joyce
 then sent the story on the Western Union wire to the United
 Press bureau.

 On July 8, 1947, in the afternoon, General Clemence McMullen
 in Washington spoke by telephone with Colonel (later
 Brigadier General) Thomas DuBose in Fort Worth, chief of
 staff to Eighth Air Force Commander General Roger Ramey.
 McMullen ordered DuBose to tell Ramey to quash the flying
 saucer story by creating a cover story, and to send some of
 the crash material immediately to Washington.

 On July 8, 1947, in the afternoon, General Roger Ramey held
 a press conference at Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort
 Worth in which he announced that what had crashed at Corona
 was a weather balloon, not a flying saucer. To make this
 story convincing, he showed the press the remains of a
 damaged weather balloon that he claimed was the actual
 wreckage from the crash site. (Apparently, the obliging
 press did not ask why the Army hurriedly transported weather
 balloon wreckage to Fort Worth, Texas, site of the press
 conference, from the crash site in a remote area of New
 Mexico.)

 The only newspapers that carried the initial flying saucer
 version of the story were evening papers from the Midwest to
 the West, including the Chicago Daily News, the Los Angeles
 Herald Express, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Roswell
 Daily Record. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and
 the Chicago Tribune were morning papers and so carried only
 the cover-up story the next morning.

 At some point, a large group of soldiers were sent to the
 debris field on the Foster Ranch, including a lot of MPs
 whose job was to limit access to the field. A wide search
 was launched well beyond the limits of the debris field.
 Within a day or two, a few miles from the debris field, the
 main body of the flying saucer was found, and a mile or two
 from that several bodies of small humanoids were found.

 The military took Mac Brazel into custody for about a week,
 during which time he was seen on the streets of Roswell with
 a military escort. His behavior aroused the curiosity of
 friends when he passed them without any sign of recognition.
 Following this period of detention, Brazel repudiated his
 initial story.



 2  THE CIVILIANS



 2.1  Loretta Proctor

 [NB: In the sections of this document that contain
 testimony, all text not enclosed in brackets, like those
 that enclose this sentence, is verbatim testimony.]

 [Loretta Proctor, Mac Brazel's nearest neighbor, was one of
 the first to see pieces of the wreckage Brazel had found.
 She was interviewed in July 1990.]

 [Mac] had this piece of material that he had picked up. He
 wanted to show it to us and wanted us to go down and see the
 rest of the debris or whatever, [but] we didn't on account
 of the transportation and everything wasn't too good. He
 didn't get anybody to come out who was interested in it. The
 piece he brought looked like a kind of tan, lightbrown
 plastic. It was very lightweight, like balsa wood. It wasn't
 a large piece, maybe about four inches long, maybe just a
 little larger than a pencil.

 We cut on it with a knife and would hold a match on it, and
 it wouldn't burn. We knew it wasn't wood. It was smooth like
 plastic, it didn't have a real sharp corners, kind of like a
 dowel stick. Kind of dark tan. It didn't have any grain,
 just smooth. I hadn't seen anything like it.

 [The following statement by Loretta Proctor suggests the
 possibility that Mac Brazel had been bribed to keep quiet.]

 I think that within that year, he had moved off the ranch
 and moved to Alamagordo or to Tularosa and he put in a
 locker there. That was before people had home freezers, and
 it was a large refrigerated building. You would buy beef and
 cut it up and put it in those lockers and you had a key to
 it and you could get your beef out when you wanted it. I
 think it would have been pretty expensive, and we kind of
 wondered how he could put it in with rancher's wages.

 [Here is what Loretta Proctor said on the American
 television program "Unsolved Mysteries".]

 Floyd [Loretta's husband] and a neighbor was in Roswell and
 saw Mac surrounded by some of the Air Force people. And they
 walked right by them and Mac wouldn't speak to them. They
 thought it was kind of funny, I guess, really wondered what
 he'd got into. And Mac, he wouldn't talk about it after he
 come back home. But he did say if he ever found something
 else he wouldn't report it.



 2.2  Marian Strickland

 [Marian Strickland was a neighbor of Mac Brazel. She was
 interviewed in 1990.]

 [Mac] made it plain he was not supposed to tell that there
 was any excitement about the material he found on the ranch.
 He was a man who had integrity. He definitely felt insulted
 and mis-used, and disrespected. He was worse than annoyed.
 He was definitely under some stress, and felt that he had
 been kicked around.

 He was threatened that if he opened his mouth, he might get
 thrown in the back side of the jail. He gave that
 impression, definitely.



 2.3  Bessie Brazel Schreiber

 [Bessie Brazel Schreiber is Mac Brazel's daughter. Here is
 her description of wreckage from the crash.]

 [The material resembled] a sort of aluminum-like foil. Some
 of [these] pieces had a sort of tape stuck to them. Even
 though the stuff looked like tape, it could not be peeled
 off or removed at all. Some of these pieces had something
 like numbers and lettering on them, but there were no words
 we were able to make out. The figures were written out like
 you would write numbers in columns, but they didn't look
 like the numbers we use at all.

 [There was also] a piece of something made out of the same
 metal-like foil that looked like a pipe sleeve. About four
 inches across and equally long, with a flange on one end.
 [Also] what appeared to be pieces of heavily waxed paper.



 2.4  William Brazel Jr

 [William Brazel Jr is Mac Brazel's son. Here is his
 description of wreckage from the crash.]

 [One of the pieces looked like] something on the order of
 tinfoil, except that [it] wouldn't tear.... You could
 wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed
 its original shape... quite pliable, but you couldn't crease
 or bend it like ordinary metal. Almost like a plastic, but
 definitely metallic. Dad once said that the Army had once
 told him it was not anything made by us.

 [There was also] some threadlike material. It looked like
 silk, but was not silk, a very strong material [without]
 strands or fibers like silk would have. This was more like a
 wire, all one piece or substance.

 [There were also] some wooden-like particles like balsa wood
 in weight, but a bit darker in color and much harder.... It
 was pliable but wouldn't break. Weighed nothing, but you
 couldn't scratch it with your fingernail. All I had was a
 few small bits. [There was no writing or markings on the
 pieces I had] but Dad did say one time that there were what
 he called "figures" on some of the pieces he found. He often
 referred to the petroglyphs the ancient Indians drew on the
 rocks around here as "figures", too, and I think that's what
 he meant to compare them with.

 [Here are other remarks by William Brazel Jr.]

 My dad found this thing and he told me a little bit about
 it, not much, because the Air Force asked him to take an
 oath that he wouldn't tell anybody in detail about it. He
 went to his grave and he never told anybody.

 He was an oldtime Western cowboy, and they didn't do a lot
 of talking. My brother and I had just went through World War
 II (him in the Army and me in the Navy) and needless to say,
 my dad was proud. Like he told me, "When you guys went in
 the service, you took an oath, and I took an oath not to
 tell." The only thing he said was, "Well, there's a big
 bunch of stuff, and there's some tinfoil, some wood, and on
 some of that wood there was Japanese or Chinese figures."

 [At the time of the crash, William Brazel Jr had been living
 and working in Albuquerque, but returned when his father was
 taken into custody and thus there was no one to run the
 ranch.]

 I rode out there [the field where the wreckage was found] on
 the average of once a week, and I was riding through that
 area, I was looking. That's why I found those little pieces.

 Not over a dozen pieces. I'd say maybe eight different
 pieces. But there was only three [different] items involved:
 something on the order of balsa wood, something on the order
 of heavy-gauge monofilament fishing line, and a little piece
 of -- it wasn't tinfoil, it wasn't lead foil -- a piece
 about the size of my finger. Some of it was like balsa wood:
 real light and kind of neutral color, more of a tan. To the
 best of my memory, there wasn't any grain in it. Couldn't
 break it, it'd flex a little. I couldn't whittle it with my
 pocket knife.

 The "string", I couldn't break it. The only reason I noticed
 the tinfoil (I'm gonna call it tinfoil), I picked this stuff
 up and put it in my chaps pocket. Might be two or three days
 or a week before I took it out and put it in a cigar box. I
 happened to notice when I put that piece of foil in that
 box, and the damn thing just started unfolding and just
 flattened out. Then I got to playing with it. I'd fold it,
 crease it, lay it down and it'd unfold. It's kinda wierd. I
 couldn't tear it. The color was in between tinfoil and lead
 foil, about the [thickness] of lead foil.

 I was in Corona, in the bar, the pool hall. Sort of the
 meeting place, domino parlor.... That's where everybody got
 together. Everybody was asking, they'd seen the papers (this
 was about a month after the crash) and I said, "Oh, I picked
 up a few little bits and pieces and fragments." So, what are
 they? "I dunno."

 Then lo and behold, here comes the military out to the
 ranch, a day or two later. I'm almost positive that the
 officer in charge, his name was Armstrong, a real nice guy.
 He had a [black] sergeant with him that was real nice. I
 think there was two other enlisted men. They said, "We
 understand your father found this weather balloon." I said,
 "Well yeah." "And we understand you found some bits and
 pieces." I said, "Yeah, I've got a cigar box that's got a
 few of them in there, down at the saddle shed."

 And this (I think he was a captain), and he said, "Well, we
 would like to take it with us." I said, "Well..." And he
 smiled and he said, "Your father turned the rest of it over
 to us, and you know he's under an oath not to tell. Well,"
 he said, "we came after those bits and pieces." And I kind
 of smiled and said, "OK, you can have the stuff, I have no
 use for it at all."

 He said, "Well, have you examined it?" And I said, "Well,
 enough to know that I don't know what the hell it is." And
 he said, "We would rather you didn't talk very much about
 it."



 2.5  Glenn Dennis

 [Glenn Dennis was a mortician in Roswell in 1947. His
 employer provided mortuary services for Roswell Army Air
 Field. Dennis drove a combination hearse and ambulance for
 both civilian and military assignments. On July 9 or 10,
 1947, Dennis got several phone calls from the Roswell AAF
 mortuary officer, who was more of an administrator than a
 mortuary technician. The officer wanted to know about
 hermetically sealed caskets ("What was the smallest one they
 could get?"), and about chemical solutions. Dennis was
 interviewed in August 1989 by Stanton Friedman.]

 This is what was so interesting. See, this is why I feel
 like there was really something involved in this, because
 they didn't want to do anything that was going to make an
 imbalance. They kept saying, "OK, what's this going to do to
 the blood system, what's this going to do to the tissue?"
 Then when they informed me that these bodies [had] laid out
 in the middle of July, in the middle of the prairie, I mean
 that body's going to be as dark as your [blue] blazer there,
 and it's going to be in bad shape. I was the one who
 suggested dry ice. I'd done that a time or two.

 I talked to them four or five times in the afternoon. They
 would keep calling back and asking me different questions
 involving the body. What they were really after was how to
 move those bodies. They didn't give me any indication they
 even had the bodies, or where they were. But they kept
 talking about these bodies, and I said, "What do the bodies
 look like?" And they said, "I don't know, but I'll tell you
 one thing: This happened some time ago." The only thing that
 was mentioned was that they were exposed to the elements for
 several days.

 I understand these bodies weren't in the same location as
 where they found some of the others. They said the bodies
 weren't in the vehicle itself; the bodies were separated by
 two or three miles from it. They talked about three
 different bodies: two of them mangled, one that was in
 pretty good shape.

 [That evening, Dennis took a GI accident victim to the base
 infirmary, which was in the same building as the hospital
 and the mortuary. He walked the injured GI inside, then
 drove around to the back to see a pretty young Army Air
 Forces nurse he had recently gotten to know.]

 There were two MPs standing right there, and I got out and
 started to go in. I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did if
 I hadn't parked in the emergency area. They probably thought
 I was coming after somebody. The doors were open to the
 military ambulances and that's where some wreckage was, and
 there was an MP on each side. I saw all the wreckage.

 I don't know what it was, but I knew there was something
 going on, and that's when I first got an inclination that
 something was happening. What was so curious about it, was
 that in two of those ambulances was a deal that looked like
 [the bottom] half of a canoe. It didn't look like aluminum.
 You know what stainless steel looks like when you put heat
 on it? How it'll turn kinda purplish, with kind of a blue
 hue to it? [Dennis later said that he saw a row of
 unrecognizable symbols several inches high on the metal
 devices.] I just glanced in and kept going.

 When I got inside, I noticed there was quite a bit of
 activity. When I went back into the lounge, there were "big
 birds" [high-ranking officers he didn't recognize, though he
 was familiar with all the local medical people] everywhere.
 They were really shook up. So I went down the hall where I
 usually go, and I got down the hall just a little way and an
 MP met me right there. He wanted to know who the hell I was
 and where I was from, and what business did I have there? I
 explained who I was. Evidently he was under the impression
 that they called me to come out.

 Anyway, I got past that and I went on in and then this is
 where I met the nurse. She was involved in this thing, she
 was on duty. She told me, "How in the hell did you get in
 here?" I said, "I just walked in." She said, "My God, you
 are going to get killed." And I said, "They didn't stop me."
 I was going to the Coke machine to get us a Coke, and this
 big red-headed colonel said, "What's that son of a bitch
 doing here?"

 He hollered at the MPs and that's when it hit the fan. These
 two MPs grabbed me by the arms and carried me clear outside.
 They carried me to the ambulance. I didn't walk, they
 carried me. And they told me to get my ass out of there.
 [They followed him back to the funeral home.]

 About two or three hours later, they [called] and told me,
 "You open your mouth and you'll be so far back in the jug
 they'll have to shoot pinto beans [into you] with a bean
 shooter." I just laughed and said, "Go to hell."

 [Dennis spoke with the nurse again the following day.]

 She said there were three little bodies. Two of them were
 just mangled beyond everything, but there was one of them
 that was really in pretty good condition.

 And she said, "Let me show you the difference between our
 anatomy and theirs. Really, what they looked like was
 ancient Chinese: small, fragile, no hair." She said their
 noses didn't protrude, the eyes were set pretty deep, and
 the ears were just little indentations. She said the anatomy
 of the arms was different, the upper arm was longer than the
 lower. They didn't have thumbs, they had four different, she
 called them "tentacles", I think. Didn't have any
 fingernails. She then described how they had little things
 like suction cups on their fingertips.

 I asked her were these men or women? [Were their] sex organs
 the same as ours? She said, "No, some were missing." The
 first thing that decomposes on a body would be the brain,
 next the sex organs, especially in women. But she thought
 there had probably been something, some animals. Some of
 these bodies were badly mutilated.

 She said they got the bodies out of those containers [the
 ones he had seen in the backs of the ambulances, on the way
 into the hospital]. See, they weren't at the crash site,
 they were about a mile or two from the crash site. She said
 they looked like they had their own little cabins. She said
 the lower portion, the abdomen and legs, was crushed, but
 the upper portion wasn't that bad. She told me the head was
 larger and it was kind of like, the eyes were different.

 [A few weeks later, Dennis heard from his father.]

 "What the hell'd you get into? What kind of trouble are you
 in?" I said, "I'm not in any trouble." And he said, "The
 hell you're not. The sheriff [an old friend of the elder
 Dennis] said that the base personnel have been in and they
 want to know all about your background."



 3  THE COPS



 3.1  Barbara Dugger

 [Barbara Dugger is the granddaughter of George and Inez
 Wilcox. George was the sheriff who Mac Brazel contacted
 after discovering the crashed flying saucer. Barbara Dugger
 was interviewed in 1991 by Kevin Randle.]

 [My grandmother said] "Don't tell anybody. When the incident
 happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told
 George and I that if we ever told anything about the
 incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family
 would be killed."

 They called my grandfather and someone came and told him
 about this incident. He went out there to the site. There
 was a big burned area and he saw debris. It was in the
 evening. There were four space beings. Their heads were
 large. They wore suits like silk. One of the little men was
 alive. If she [Inez] said it happened, it happened.

 [Regarding the death threat, Barbara said Inez said:] "They
 meant it, Barbara. They were not kidding."

 She said the event shocked him. He never wanted to be
 sheriff again after that. Grandmother ran for sheriff and
 was defeated. My grandmother was a very loyal citizen of the
 United States, and she thought it was in the best interest
 of the country not to talk about it.



 4  THE PRESS



 4.1  Frank Joyce

 [Frank Joyce worked at the radio station KGFL. He got a
 phone call from a man, presumably Mac Brazel, who reported
 wreckage on his ranch.]

 He asked me what to do about it. I recommended he go to
 Roswell Army Air Base [sic].

 The next thing I heard was that the PIO, [Lieutenant] Walter
 Haut, came into the station some time after I got this call.
 He handed me a news release printed on onionskin stationary
 and left immediately. I called him back at the base and
 said, "I suggest that you not release this type of story
 that says you have a flying saucer or flying disk." He said,
 "No, it's Ok. I have the OK from the C.O. [Colonel
 Blanchard]."

 I sent the release on the Western Union wire to the United
 Press bureau. After I returned to the station, there was a
 flash on the wire with the story: "The U.S. Army Air Corps
 [sic] says it has a flying disk." They typed a paragraph or
 two, and then other people got on the wire and asked for
 more information. Then the phone calls started coming on,
 and I referred them to [the airfield].

 Then the wire stopped and just hummed. Then a phone call
 came in, and the caller identified himself as an officer at
 the Pentagon, and this man said some very bad things about
 what would happen to me. He was really pretty nasty.
 Finally, I got through to him: I said, "You're talking about
 a release from the U.S. Army Air Corps." Bang, the phone
 went dead, he was just gone.

 Then [station owner Walt] Whitmore called me and said,
 "Frank, what's going on down there?" He was quite upset. He
 asked, "Where did you get this story?" In the meantime, I
 got this [USAAF news] release and hid it, to have proof so
 no one could accuse me of making it up. Whitmore came in to
 the station and I gave him the release. He took it with him.

 The next significant thing occurred in the evening. I got a
 call from [Mac] Brazel. He said we haven't got this story
 right. I invited him over to the station. He arrived not
 long after sunset. He was alone, but I had the feeling that
 we were being watched. He said something about a weather
 balloon. I said, "Look, this is completely different than
 what you told me on the phone the other day about the little
 green men," and that's when he said, "No, they weren't
 green." I had the feeling he was under tremendous pressure.
 He said, "Our lives will never be the same again."



 4.2  Lydia Sleppy

 [Lydia Sleppy was a teletype operator at Roswell radio
 station KSWS. The event she describes below took place
 around 4:00 pm on July 7, 1947. She was interviewed in
 October 1990 by Stanton Friedman.]

 We were Mutual Broadcasting and ABC, and if we had anything
 newsworthy, we would put it on the [teletype] machine, and I
 was the one who did the typing. It was in my office. Mr
 Tucker [Merle Tucker was the station owner] was in
 Washington DC trying to get an application approved for a
 station in El Paso, when this call came from John McBoyle
 [another KSWS staffer]. He told me he had something hot for
 the network. I said, "Give me a minute and I'll get the
 assistant manager," because if it was anything like that, I
 wanted one of them there while I was taking it down.

 I went back and asked Mr [Karl] Lambertz (he came up from
 the big Dallas station) if he would come up and watch. John
 was dictating and [Karl] was standing right at my shoulder.
 I got into it enough to know that it was a pretty big story,
 when the bell came on [signaling an interruption]. Typing
 came across: "This is the FBI, you will cease transmitting."

 I had my shorthand pad, and I turned around and told [Karl]
 that I had been cut off, but that I could take it in
 shorthand and then we could call it in to the network. I
 took it in shorthand, as John went on to give the story. He
 had seen them take the thing away. He'd been out there
 [presumably at the Foster ranch] when they took it away. And
 at that time, if I remember correctly, John said they were
 gonna load it up and take it to Texas. But when the planes
 came in, they were from Wright Field.



 4.3  Walt Whitmore Jr

 [Walt Whitmore Jr was the son of the owner of Roswell radio
 station KGFL. Here is his description of wreckage from the
 crash.]

 [It was] very much like lead foil in appearance but could
 not be torn or cut at all. Extremely light in weight. Some
 small beams that appeared to be either wood or woodlike had
 a sort of writing on it which looked like numbers which had
 either been added or multiplied [in columns].



 5  THE MILITARY



 5.1  Jesse Marcel

 [Major Jesse Marcel was one of the the first two military
 people to visit the Corona crash site. The other was
 Sheridan Cavitt, who to this day has refused to even
 acknowledge that he was there on the ranch with Marcel.
 Jesse Marcel died in 1982. He was interviewed in 1979.]

 When we arrived at the crash site, it was amazing to see the
 vast amount of area it covered. It was nothing that hit the
 ground or exploded [on] the ground. It's something that must
 have exploded above ground, traveling perhaps at a high rate
 of speed, we don't know. But it scattered over an area of
 about three quarters of a mile long, I would say, and fairly
 wide, several hundred feet wide. So we proceeded to pick up
 all the fragments we could find and load up our Jeep
 Carry-All. It was quite obvious to me, familiar with air
 activities, that it was not a weather balloon, nor was it an
 airplane or a missile. What it was, we didn't know. We just
 picked up the fragments. It was something I had never seen
 before, and I was pretty familiar with all air activities.
 We loaded up the Carry-All but I wasn't satisfied. I told
 Cavitt, "You drive this vehicle back to the base and I'll go
 back out there and pick up as much as I can put in the
 car,", which I did. But we picked up only a very small
 portion of the material that was there.

 One thing that impressed me about the debris that we were
 referring to is the fact that a lot of it looked like
 parchment. A lot of it had a lot of little members [I-beams]
 with symbols that we had to call them hieroglyphics because
 I could not interpret them, they could not be read, they
 were just symbols, something that meant something and they
 were not all the same. The members that this was painted on
 -- by the way, those symbols were pink and purple, lavender
 was actually what it was. And so these little members could
 not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn
 that. It would not burn. The same with the parchment we had.

 But something that is more astounding is that the piece of
 metal that we brought back was so thin, just like the
 tinfoil in a pack of cigarette paper. I didn't pay too much
 attention to that at first, until one of the GIs came to me
 and said, "You know the metal that was in there? I tried to
 bend that stuff and it won't bend. I even tried it with a
 sledge hammer. You can't make a dent on it."

 I didn't go back to look at it myself again, because we were
 busy in the office and I had quite a bit of work to do. I am
 quite sure that this young fellow would not have lied to me
 about that, because he was a very truthful, very honest guy,
 so I accepted his word for that. So, beyond that, I didn't
 actually see him hit the matter with a sledge hammer, but he
 said, "It's definite that it cannot be bent and it's so
 light that it doesn't weigh anything." And that was true of
 all the material that was brought up. It was so light that
 it weighed practically nothing.

 This particular piece of metal was, I would say, about two
 feet long and perhaps a foot wide. See, that stuff weighs
 nothing, it's so thin, it isn't any thicker than the tinfoil
 in a pack of cigarettes. So I tried to bend the stuff, it
 wouldn't bend. We even tried making a dent in it with a
 16-pound sledge hammer, and there was still no dent in it. I
 didn't have the time to go out there and find out more about
 it, because I had so much other work to do that I just let
 it go. It's still a mystery to me as to what the whole thing
 was. Like I said before, I knew quite a bit about the
 material used in the air, but it was nothing I had seen
 before. And as of now, I still don't know what it was. So
 that's how it stands.

 [Here is what Jesse Marcel said on the American television
 program "Unsolved Mysteries".]

 There were just fragments strewn all over the area, an area
 about three quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet
 wide. So we proceeded to pick up the parts.

 I tried to bend the stuff, it would not bend. I even tried
 to burn it, it would not burn. That stuff weighs nothing.
 It's not any thicker than tin foil in a pack of cigarettes.
 We even tried making a dent in it with a 16-pound sledge
 hammer, still no dent in it.

 One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all our
 activities, that it was not a weather balloon, nor an
 aircraft, nor a missile. It was something else, which we
 didn't know what it was.



 5.2  Jesse Marcel Jr

 [Jesse Marcel Jr is Major Jesse Marcel's son. When Major
 Marcel returned from the Foster Ranch with a carload of
 wreckage from the crashed flying saucer, he stopped off at
 home to show his wife and his eleven-year old son what he
 had found. Jesse Jr is now a medical doctor, an Army reserve
 helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam, and a qualified
 aircraft accident investigator.]

 The crash and remnants of the device that I happened to see
 have left an imprint on my memory that can never be
 forgotten. The craft was not conventional in any sense of
 the word, in that the remains were most likely what was then
 known as a flying saucer that had apparently been stressed
 beyond its designed capabilities.

 I'm basing this on the fact that many of the remnants,
 including I-beam pieces that were present, had strange
 hieroglyphic typewriting symbols across the inner surfaces,
 pink and purple, except that I don't think there were any
 animal figures present as there are in true Egyptian
 hieroglyphics.

 The remainder of the debris was just described as
 nondescript metallic debris, or just shredded fragments, but
 there was a fair amount of the intact I-beam members
 present. I only saw a small portion of the debris that was
 actually present at the crash site.

 [Here is what Jesse Marcel Jr said on the American
 television program "Unsolved Mysteries".]

 When [Dad] came back to the house he had a bunch of wreckage
 with him at the time, and he brought the wreckage into the
 house. Actually wakened my mother and myself out so we could
 view this, because it was so unusual. This was about two
 o'clock in the morning as I recall, and he spread it out so
 we could get some basic idea what it looked like, what it
 was....

 We were all amazed by this debris that was there, primarily
 because we didn't know what it was, you know, it was just
 the unknown....

 This writing [on a short piece of I-beam] could be described
 as like hieroglyphics, Egyptian-type hieroglyphics, but not
 really. The symbols that were on the I-beams were more of a
 geometric-type configuration in various designs. It had a
 violet-purple type color and was actually an embossed part
 of the metal itself.

 Years after this incident happened, we would talk privately
 among ourselves about what the possibilities of this, what
 this thing was. And I feel that we, well I know that we came
 to the conclusion it was not of earthly origin.

 If I had not actually held pieces of it in my hand, I would
 not think that it would be possible. But because I happened
 to see this, that's the only reason I believe it....

 My dad said obviously it [the weather balloon story] was a
 cover-up story, it was not a weather balloon. He was a
 little disturbed about that, but he had his own security
 classification to protect. He could not really go public
 with, hey this is not the real thing, I mean this is not a
 weather balloon. So he had to keep that to himself.



 5.3  Walter Haut

 [Second Lieutenant Walter Haut was a public information
 officer at Roswell AAF in 1947. Colonel Blanchard ordered
 Haut to issue a press release telling the country that the
 Army had found a flying saucer. Here is the text of Haut's
 press release.]

 The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality
 yesterday when the Intelligence office of the 509th Bomb
 Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was
 fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the
 cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's
 office of Chaves County.

 The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime
 last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored
 the disc until such time as he was able to contact the
 sheriff's office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel
 of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

 Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at
 the rancher's home. It was inspected at Roswell Army Air
 Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher
 headquarters.

 [Here is what Haut said on the American television program
 "Unsolved Mysteries".]

 I took the release into town. And that was one of the things
 that Colonel Blanchard told me to do, take it into town,
 because if there was any validity to this, he didn't want
 the news media to feel that we had jumped over their heads
 and were not cooperating with them.

 [Here is what Haut said in an interview for an article in
 "Air and Space/Smithsonian" magazine, Sep-Oct 1992, when
 asked what he thought really happened back in 1947.]

 I feel there was a crash of an extra-terrestrial vehicle
 near Corona.



 5.4  Bill Rickett

 [Bill Rickett was a Counter Intelligence Corps officer based
 in Roswell. He had an opportunity to examine some of the
 wreckage recovered from the Foster Ranch. He escorted Dr
 Lincoln LaPaz, a meteor expert from the New Mexico Institute
 of Meteoritics, on a tour of the crash site and the
 surrounding area.]

 [The material] was very strong and very light. You could
 bend it but couldn't crease it. As far as I know, no one
 ever figured out what it was made of....

 It was LaPaz's job to try to find out what the speed and
 trajectory of the thing was. LaPaz was a world-renowned
 expert on trajectories of objects in the sky, especially
 meteors, and I was told to give him all the help I could.

 At one point LaPaz interviewed the farmer [Mac Brazel]. I
 remember something coming up during their conversation about
 this fellow thinking that some of his animals had acted
 strangely after this thing happened. Dr LaPaz seemed very
 interested in this for some reason.

 LaPaz wanted to fly over the area, and this was arranged. He
 found one other spot where he felt this thing had touched
 down and then taken off again. The sand at this spot had
 been turned into a glass-like substance. We collected a
 boxful of samples of this material. As I recall, there were
 some metal samples here, too, of that same sort of thin foil
 stuff. LaPaz sent this box off somewhere for study; I don't
 know or recall where, but I never saw it again. This place
 was some miles from the other one.

 LaPaz was very good at talking to people, especially some of
 the local ranch hands who didn't speak a lot of English.
 LaPaz spoke Spanish. I remember he found a couple of people
 who had seen two -- I don't know what to call them, UFOs I
 suppose -- anyway, had seen two of these things fly over
 very slowly at a very low altitude on a date, in the
 evening, that he determined had been a day or two after the
 other one had blown up. These people said something about
 animals being affected, too....

 Before he went back to Albuquerque, he told me that he was
 certain that this thing had gotten into trouble, that it had
 touched down for repairs, taken off again, and then
 exploded. He also felt certain there were more than one of
 these devices, and that the others had been looking for it.
 At least that's what he said. He was positive the thing had
 malfunctioned.

 The Air Force's explanation that it was a balloon was
 totally untrue. It was not a balloon. I never did know for
 sure what its purpose was, but it wasn't ours. I remember
 speculating with LaPaz that it might have been some higher
 civilization checking on us. LaPaz wasn't against the idea,
 but he was going to leave speculations out of his report.



 5.5  F.B.

 [F.B. was an Army Air Forces photographer stationed at
 Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington DC when he and
 fellow photographer A.K. were flown aboard a B-25 bomber to
 Roswell Army Air Field sometime during the second week of
 July 1947. F.B. was interviewed by Stanton Friedman.]

 One morning they came in and they said, "Pack up your bags
 and we'll have the cameras there, ready for you." We didn't
 know where we was going.

 [After a few hours' flight, they arrived at Roswell.] We got
 in a staff car with some of the gear they had brought along
 with us in trucks, and we headed out, about an hour and a
 half, we was heading north.

 We got out there [one of the crash sites in the Corona area]
 and there was a helluva lot of people out there, in a closed
 tent. You couldn't hardly see anything inside the tent. They
 said, "Set your camera up to take a picture fifteen feet
 away." A.K. got in a truck and headed out to where they was
 picking up pieces. All kinds of brass running around. And
 they was telling us what to do. Shoot this, shoot that.
 There was an officer in charge. He met us out there and he'd
 go into the tent and he'd come back and tell us, "OK." He'd
 stand there right besides us and [say], "OK, take this
 picture."

 There was four bodies I could see when the flash went off,
 but you was almost blind because it was a beautiful day,
 sunny. You'd go in this tent, which was awful dark. That's
 all I was taking, bodies. These bodies was under a canvas,
 and they'd open it up and you'd take a picture, flip out
 your flashbulb, put another one in [take another picture]
 and give him the film holder (each holder held two sheets of
 four-by-five inch cut film) and then you went to the next
 spot.

 I guess there was ten to twelve officers, and when I got
 ready to go in, they'd all come out. The tent was about
 twenty by thirty foot. The bodies looked like they was lying
 on a tarp. One guy did all the instructions. He'd take a
 flashlight and he'd come down there. "See this flashlight?"
 Yes sir. "You're in focus with it?" Yes sir. "Take a picture
 of this." He'd take the flashlight away. We just moved
 around in a circle, taking pictures. Seemed to me [the
 bodies] were all just about identical. Dark complected. I
 remember they was thin, and it looked like they had too big
 of a head. I took thirty shots. I think I had about fifteen
 [film] holders. It smelled funny in there.

 A.K. came back in a truck that was loaded down with debris.
 A lot of pieces sticking out that wasn't there when they
 took off. We got debriefed on the way back to the airport
 [Roswell Army Air Field]. About four the next morning, they
 woke us, they took us to the mess hall, we ate, we got back
 on the B-25 and headed back. When we got back to Anacostia
 we got debriefed some more, by a lieutenant commander. [It
 was made clear to both F.B and A.K. that whatever they
 thought they saw in New Mexico, they hadn't seen.]



 5.6  Robert Porter

 [M/Sgt Robert Porter was a B-29 flight engineer with the
 830th Bomb Squadron. He happens to be Loretta Proctor's
 brother. He was interviewed by Stanton Friedman.]

 We flew these pieces. [Some officers in the crew] told us it
 was parts of a flying saucer. The packages were in wrapping
 paper, one triangle-shaped about two and a half feet across
 the bottom, the rest in smaller, shoebox-sized packages.
 [They were in] brown paper with tape. It was just like I
 picked up an empty package, very light. The loaded
 triangle-shaped package and three shoebox-sized packages
 would have fit into the trunk of a car.

 On board were Lieutenant Colonel Payne Jennings [deputy
 commander of Roswell] and Major Marcel. Captain Anderson
 said it was from a flying saucer. We got to Fort Worth, they
 transferred [the packages] to a B-25 and took them to Wright
 [Field]. When we landed at [Fort Worth], Colonel Jennings
 told us to take care of maintenance, and after a guard was
 posted, we could eat lunch. We came back, they told us they
 had transferred the material to a B-25. They told us it was
 a weather balloon. It WASN'T a weather balloon.



 5.7  Robert Shirkey

 [First Lieutenant Robert Shirkey was assistant operations
 officer of the 509th Bomb Group. He was interviewed by
 Stanton Friedman.]

 A call came in to have a B-29 ready to go as soon as
 possible. Where to? Forth Worth, on Colonel Blanchard's
 directive. [I was] in the Operations Office when Colonel
 Blanchard arrived and asked if the airplane was ready. When
 told it was, Blanchard waved to somebody, and approximately
 five people came in the front door, down the hallway, and
 onto the ramp to climb into the airplane, carrying parts of
 the crashed flying saucer. I got a very short glimpse, asked
 Blanchard to turn sideways so [I] could see too. Saw them
 carrying pieces of metal. They had one piece that was
 eighteen by twenty-four inches, brushed stainless steel in
 color.



 5.8  Robert Slusher

 [S/Sgt Robert Slusher was assigned to the 393rd Bomb
 Squadron. On or about July 9, 1947, he was on board a B-29
 that carried a single crate from Roswell AAF to Fort Worth
 AAF. Also on board were were four armed MPs. He said the
 crate was twelve feet long, five feet wide, and four feet
 high. Upon arrival at Fort Worth, the crate was loaded onto
 a flatbed weapons carrier and hauled off, accompanied by the
 MPs, who later rejoined the crew for the return flight.
 Robert Slusher was interviewed in 1991.]

 [There was an implication that the contents of the crate was
 sensitive to air pressure, which suggests that the crate
 contained something other than pieces of metal. The plane
 flew at the unusually low altitude of four to five thousand
 feet. Usually on such a trip a B-29 flies at twenty-five
 thousand feet, as its cabin is pressurized and the B-29
 flies better at high alititude. However, the bomb bay where
 the crate was stowed cannot be pressurized.]

 The return flight was above twenty thousand feet, and the
 cabin was pressurized. The round trip took approximately
 three hours, fifteen minutes. The flight was unusual in that
 we flew there, dropped the cargo, and returned immediately.
 It was a hurried flight; normally we knew the day before
 there would be a flight.

 There was a rumor that the crate had debris from the crash.
 Whether there were any bodies, I don't know. The crate had
 been specially made; it had no markings.



 5.9  Robert Smith

 [Robert Smith was a member of the First Air Transport Unit,
 which operated Douglas C-54 Skymaster four-engined cargo
 planes out of the Roswell AAF. He was interviewed in 1991.]

 A lot of people began coming in all of a sudden because of
 the official investigation. Somebody said it was a plane
 crash, but we heard from a man in Roswell that it was not a
 plane crash, it was something else, a strange object. There
 was another indication that something serious was going on.
 One night, when we were coming back to Roswell, a convoy of
 trucks covered with canvas passed us. When they got to the
 [airfield] gate, they headed over to this hangar on the east
 end, which was rather unusual. The truck convoy had red
 lights and sirens.

 My involvement in the incident was to help load crates of
 debris into the aircraft. We all became aware of the event
 when we went to the hangar on the east side of the ramp.
 There were a lot of people in plain clothes all over the
 place. They were inspectors, but they were strangers on the
 base. When challenged, they replied they were here on
 Project So-and-So, and flashed a card, which was different
 from a military ID card.

 We were taken to the hangar to load crates. There was a lot
 of farm dirt on the hangar floor. We loaded [the crates] on
 flatbeds and dollies. Each crate had to be checked as to
 width and height. We had to know which crates went on which
 plane. We loaded crates on three [or] four C-54s. We weren't
 supposed to know their destination, but we were told they
 were headed north.

 All I saw was a little piece of material. You could crumple
 it up, let it come out. You couldn't crease it. One of our
 people put it in his pocket. The piece of debris I saw was
 two to three inches square. It was jagged. When you crumpled
 it up, it then laid back out. And when it did, it kind of
 crackled, making a sound like cellophane. It crackled when it
 was let out. There were no creases.

 There were armed guards around during loading of our planes,
 which was unusual at Roswell. There was no way to get to the
 ramp except through armed guards. There were MPs on the
 outskirts, and our personnel were between them and the
 planes.

 The largest [crate] was roughly twenty feet long, four to
 five feet high, and four to five feet wide. It took up an
 entire plane. It wasn't that heavy, but it was a large
 volume. The rest of the crates were two or three feet long
 and two feet square or smaller. The sergeant who had the
 piece of material said [it was like] the material in the
 crates. The entire loading took at least six, perhaps eight
 hours. Lunch was brought to us, which was unusual. The
 crates were brought to us on flatbed dollies, which was also
 unusual.

 Officially, we were told it was a crashed plane, but crashed
 planes usually were taken to the salvage yard, not flown
 out. I don't think it was an experimental plane, because not
 too many people in that area were experimenting with planes.
 I'm convinced that what we loaded was a UFO that got into
 mechanical problems. Even with the most intelligent people,
 things go wrong.

 [The C-54 into which I helped load the single twenty-foot
 crate] would have been Pappy Henderson's. I remember seeing
 T/Sgt Harbell Elzey, T/Sgt. Edward Bretherton, and S/Sgt.
 William Fortner.



 5.10  Melvin Brown's Daughter

 [Sergeant Melvin Brown was a cook at Roswell AAF in 1947.
 One day, he was called out to help guard material retrieved
 from the Foster Ranch. His daughter Beverly was interviewed
 by Stanton Friedman in 1989.]

 When we were young, he used to tell us stories about things
 that had happened to him when he was young. We got to know
 those stories by heart and would all say together, "Here we
 go again."

 Sometimes, but not too often, he used to say that he saw a
 man from outer space. That used to make us all giggle like
 mad. He said he had to stand guard duty outside a hangar
 where a crashed flying saucer was stored, and that his
 commanding officer said, "Come on, Brownie, let's have a
 look inside." But they didn't see anything because it had
 all been packed up and [was] ready to be flown out to Texas.

 He also said that one day all available men were grabbed and
 that they had to stand guard where a crashed disc had come


 down. Everything was being loaded onto trucks, and he
 couldn't understand why some of the trucks had ice or
 something in them. He did not understand what they wanted to
 keep cold. Him and another guy had to ride in the back of
 one of the trucks, and although they were told that they
 could get into a lot of trouble if they took in too much of
 what was happening, they had a quick look under the covering
 and saw two dead bodies, alien bodies.

 We really had to giggle at that bit. He said they were
 smaller than a normal man, about four feet, and had much
 larger heads than us, with slanted eyes, and that the bodies
 looked yellowish, a bit Asian-looking. We did not believe
 him when we were kids, but as I got older, I did kind of
 believe it. Once I asked him if he was scared by them, and
 he said, "Hell no, they looked nice, almost as though they
 would be friendly if they were alive."



 5.11  Pappy Henderson

 [Captain Oliver Wendell "Pappy" Henderson was stationed at
 Roswell AAF in 1947. He had flown thirty missions in B-24
 Liberator bombers in Europe. He had participated in the
 postwar A-bomb tests in the Pacific and earned major
 commendations for his flying. Unfortunately, he died before
 any UFO investigator could interview him, but near the end
 of his life he old some of the people closest to him about
 what he had seen in July 1947.]



 5.12  Pappy Henderson's Wife

 [Sappho Henderson was Pappy Henderson's wife. She was
 interviewed by Stanton Friedman.]

 We met during World War II when he flew with the 446th Bomb
 Squadron. He flew B-24s [on] thirty missions over Germany.
 After the war, he returned home and was then sent to
 Roswell. While stationed there, he ran the "Green Hornet
 Airline", which involved flying C-54s and C-47s carrying
 VIPs, scientists, and materials from Roswell to the Pacific
 during the atom bomb tests. He had to have a Top Secret
 clearance for this responsibility.

 In 1980 or 1981, he picked up a newspaper at a grocery store
 where we were living in San Diego. One article described the
 crash of a UFO outside Roswell, with the bodies of aliens
 discovered beside the craft. He pointed out the article to
 me and said, "I want you to read this article, because it's
 a true story. I'm the pilot who flew the wreckage of the UFO
 to Dayton, Ohio [where Wright Field is]. I guess now that
 they're putting it in the paper, I can tell you about this.
 I wanted to tell you for years." Pappy never discussed his
 work because of his security clearance.

 He described the beings as small with large heads for their
 size. He said the material that their suits were made of was
 different than anything he had ever seen. He said they
 looked strange. I believe he mentioned that the bodies had
 been packed in dry ice to preserve them.

 [Here is what Sappho Henderson said on the American
 television program "Unsolved Mysteries".]

 My husband Oliver Henderson, otherwise known as "Pappy" in
 the Air Force, he was entrusted with many of this country's
 top secrets. And they were safe with him. He never told
 anything that he wasn't supposed to. And therefore it was 34
 years after this incident happened that I heard about it....

 My husband told me the bodies were smaller than human
 bodies. The heads were larger and the eyes were rather
 sunken and a little slanted. Clothing was of material unlike
 anything he had seen before. They were strange, they were
 not of this earth.

 When my husband, who was a man of truth, who was trusted
 with 29 different Army aircraft planes, first pilot aircraft
 commander, tells me this story, I believed him.



 5.13  Pappy Henderson's Daughter

 [Mary Kathryn Groode is Pappy Henderson's daughter.]

 When I was growing up, he and I would often spend evenings
 looking at the stars. On one occasion, I asked him what he
 was looking for. He said, "I'm looking for flying saucers.
 They're real, you know."

 In 1981, during a visit to my parents' home, my father
 showed me a newspaper article which described the crash of a
 UFO and the recovery of alien bodies outside Roswell, New
 Mexico. He told me that he saw the crashed craft and the
 alien bodies described in the article, and that he had flown
 the wreckage to Ohio. He described the alien beings as small
 and pale, with slanted eyes and large heads. He said they
 were humanoid-looking, but different from us. I think he
 said there were three bodies.

 He said the matter had been Top Secret and that he was not
 supposed to discuss it with anyone, but that he felt it was
 alright to tell me because it was in the newspaper.



 5.14  Pappy Henderson's Relatives

 [Stanton Friedman spoke with Pappy Henderson's son and
 cousin, both of whom told of having heard Pappy quietly tell
 his story after the newspaper article appeared.]



 5.15  Pappy Henderson's Friend #1

 [John Kromschroeder is a dentist and a retired military
 officer. In 1977, Henderson told Kromschroeder that in 1947
 he had transported wreckage and alien bodies. About a year
 later, Henderson showed Kromschroeder a piece of metal he
 had taken from the collection of wreckage. Kromschroeder and
 Henderson shared an interest in metallurgy. Kromschroeder
 was interviewed in 1990.]

 I gave it a good, thorough looking-at and decided it was an
 alloy we are not familiar with. Gray, lustrous metal
 resembling aluminum, lighter in weight and much stiffer. [We
 couldn't] bend it. Edges sharp and jagged.



 5.16  Pappy Henderson's Friend #2

 [In 1982, Pappy Henderson met with several members of his
 old bomber crew during a reunion. One of these men was later
 interviewed.]

 It was in his hotel room that he told us the story of the
 UFO and about his part. All we were told by Pappy is that he
 flew the plane to Wright Field. He definitely mentioned the
 bodies, but I don't recall any details except that they were
 small and different. I was skeptical at first, but soon saw
 that Pappy was quite serious.



 6  PROSAIC EXPLANATIONS



 6.1  Weather Balloon

 If what crashed was a weather balloon, there would have been
 no need for secrecy. According to the testimony, military
 officers admonished subordinates and civilians not to talk
 about what they saw.

 If what crashed was a weather balloon, Major Marcel would
 have recognized the material Mac Brazel showed him as
 weather balloon material, and would not have journeyed far
 out on a remote sheep ranch with an officer from the Counter
 Intelligence Corps to examine the crash site.

 The wreckage described by Marcel and others was too
 voluminous, and spread out over too large an area, to have
 been the wreckage of a crashed weather balloon.

 There is no reason the Army would transport the wreckage of
 a weather balloon from the remote desert outside Corona
 first to Roswell AAF, then on to Fort Worth AAF.

 Most of the witnesses who saw or handled the wreckage would
 have recognized the remains of a crashed weather balloon.



 6.2  Secret Rocket or Airplane

 If what crashed was any kind of secret military apparatus,
 one would expect at least some of the pieces to have
 recognizable letters or numbers on them. Many of the
 witnesses say that some of the wreckage bore a very strange
 kind of writing, but not one witness has said that any of
 the wreckage bore any recognizable symbols.

 If what crashed was any kind of secret military apparatus,
 the Army would have said simply, "This is secret, and no
 more questions will be answered, period." The Army would not
 have concocted the flying saucer and weather balloon
 stories. In 1947, Americans were less skeptical about the
 motives of their government, and the people of New Mexico,
 including journalists and other civilians, were dependent
 for their livelihood on secret military projects.

 If what crashed was any kind of secret military apparatus,
 the Army would not have waited for a rancher to inform them
 of the crash before sending military personnel to examine
 the wreckage, five days after the crash.

 Rockets and airplanes that were secret in 1947 are not
 secret now. If what crashed was a secret rocket or airplane,
 it would have been revealed as such years ago. (Incredibly,
 the Army is sticking to its weather balloon story, even
 though nobody believes it anymore.)

 By July 1947, rockets launched from White Sands were fitted
 with self-destruct mechanisms so that an errant rocket could
 be destroyed before leaving the test range. The Corona crash
 site is about 75 miles from the nearest border of the test
 range.

 They did not fly secret airplanes in New Mexico in 1947.
 There was plenty of room for that in California, where all
 the secret airplane projects were carried on.

 There is no reason the Army would transport the wreckage of
 a crashed rocket or airplane to Fort Worth AAF, then to
 Wright AAF in Ohio. The wreckage of a secret rocket would
 stay in New Mexico, and the wreckage of a secret airplane
 would be sent back to California, if anywhere.

 Most of the witnesses who saw or handled the wreckage would
 have recognized the remains of a crashed rocket or airplane.