Since our investigation of the Roswell incident appeared in the July issue Popular Mechanics, we’ve heard from several readers who claim to have seen an extraterrestrial (ET). Most say he is a short, green fellow who never meant anyone any harm. A few warned us he is really tall, gray and malevolent. Another reader suggested ET is a time traveler. The hands-down most original description, however, comes from Air Force Capt. James McAndrew. He insists ET’s most distinguishing characteristic is a heavy steel eyebolt protruding from his head.

The Voyager-Mars aeroshell and scores of crash dummies fell on the desert in New Mexico during the 1950s and 1960s.

This unusually placed piece of hardware is essential to the government’s latest–and fourth, but who’s counting–explanation of the so-called Roswell incident. According to those who want to believe the truth is out there, visitors from another planet crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, during the first week of July 1947, and the government has been covering up the event ever since.

McAndrew, who wrote the Air Force study that is supposed to set the record straight, says the members of ET fan clubs have it all wrong. “For the most part, the descriptions collected by UFO theorists were of actual operations and tests carried out by the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s,” he said. “When these descriptions were compared to documented Air Force activities, they were much too similar to be a coincidence.”

These tests, says McAndrew, became part of Roswell lore because of vivid imaginations and imperfect memories. There was an impolite snickering from the Washington press corps when McAndrew said this at a press conference, but I wasn’t among those laughing. This is because I know from firsthand experience how easily the eye can be misled when it comes to unexpected aerial phenomena

One Moonless night several years ago, I was driving along the narrow country lane that leads to my house. As I rounded a curve, the high beams of my car knifed across a newly mowed field of hay. About 50 ft. ahead, in my backyard, I saw what appeared to be a humanoid figure. It was dressed in a silver suit and moved like an Apollo astronaut enjoying the Moon’s reduced gravity.

On closer inspection, the “alien” proved to be a half-dozen Mylar balloons that had escaped from a sweet-sixteen party. After traveling who knows how far, they had too little helium to remain aloft. But there was just enough of the lighter-than-air gas to hold them erect and to allow them to dance in the gentle August breeze. I can understand how a person seeing a crashed “Sierra Sam,” as the Air Force dummies were nicknamed, could mistake him for an ET.

Also, the Air Force’s insistence that what many believed to be alien wreckage was actually the remains of metal-coated balloons dovetails with our own investigation. PM concluded that the “flying disc” that crashed at Roswell was one of two types of experimental vehicles. Either it was a circular vertical takeoff and landing aircraft based on German designs, or it was a manned version of the Mogul nuclear-test-monitoring balloon that made use of Japanese expertise gained in launching ocean-crossing Fugos. The latter were intended to ignite forest fires in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.

In its latest report, titled “The Roswell Report: Case Closed,” the Air Force sticks by its 1994 claim that the Roswell debris was nothing more than the remains of a Mogul balloon. But a close reading suggests there may be more to 1940s-era balloon testing than the government is willing to reveal, even now.

The new report makes specific reference to a robust high-altitude-balloon research effort that included manned projects. In one especially striking passage, McAndrew reveals, “Polyethylene balloons flown by the U.S. Air Force have reached an altitude of 170,000 ft. and lifted payloads of 15,000 pounds.”

McAndrew says he obtained this information from the Air Force Phillips Laboratory. PM readers will recall this organization as the research group that is currently developing a military version of the X-33 space plane.

Given the Phillips Laboratory’s long history in cutting-edge aerospace projects, we were curious about exactly when they began working on these high-altitude, heavy-lift balloons. But this is where the Air Force’s report is a little vague. Of the nearly 450 items footnoted in McAndrew’s report, two lack the bibliographic citations needed to connect them with original government files that tell the whole story. One omission involves the comment about the Phillips heavy-lift balloon projects. The second piece of incompletely cross-referenced information pertains to Roswell. “From 1947 to the present,” the report says, “the Roswell area has been the site of hundreds of balloon and payload recoveries, including those that carried anthropomorphic dummies.” But what else besides the Mogul balloons were launched in this era? It would help settle the matter if the Air Force would look at projects by other government agencies that would have used these balloons in their intelligence gathering. Records of the old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the CIA might be a good place to start.

On balance, the Air Force study explains away dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of UFO sightings in the 1950s and 1960s. It also addressed claims about secret alien autopsies, saying the corpses in question were those of airmen killed in the crash of a refueling plane.

As far as further debunking the Roswell episode, McAndrew was less successful. The questions he left unanswered, especially about the role of the Phillips Laboratory, AEC and CIA, make it hard for even a UFO skeptic to accept the report’s conclusion that the Roswell episode should be stamped “Case Closed.”

By: Jim Wilson

Roswell - Military Post-Roswell Debunking Campaign Roswell - Project Mogul