As I noted last year, it’s well documented that the round-ended capsule-shaped metal stratospheric gondola designed by Charles Burgess and Tex Settle (referred to as “The Flying Coffin”) was approved by Rear Admiral Moffett, who died in April 1933 (on the US Navy airship USS Akron). It’s also known that it was constructed in the Naval Aircraft Factory in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, but never flown.
And really, you have to admit that witness descriptions of the 1947 Roswell Incident capsule – also a round-ended thin-skinned capsule-shaped hollow metal ‘thing’ – do sound extraordinarily similar. The only obvious difference (from what little we know of both) is the size, with the Roswell capsule being described as slightly larger (but not really by very much).
But even so, might the two have been the same thing? Was it the Flying Coffin that was found in Roswell? It’s a question I’ve been trying to resolve for a few years now. And I think I’ve now found an answer, but in a place I never expected…
Aluminium Alloys
Pure aluminium is nicely malleable – hammers and a buck, and you’re basically there. So if you were making a round-ended capsule (i.e. one with no stress concentration points), it would be easy in a factory to shape the aluminium gores into their desired final shape.
Auguste Piccard insisted on using pure aluminium for his gondolas, because (as I recall) he wanted to avoid stress failures while high up in the stratosphere. Which, to be fair, in the 1930s was entirely reasonable. But more generally, to prospective stratospheric gondola makers, pure aluminium isn’t really as strong as you’d like. Resisting the pressure difference in the stratosphere would mean a pure aluminium gondola would need to be quite thick – and quite heavy.
Yet at the same time, even by 1933 there was moderate knowledge of aluminium alloys. Duralumin was an Al–Cu–Mg alloy that had been invented in 1909: it included a thin aluminium “top coat”, to help cope with weathering. Yet even though Duralumin was widely used in aeronatical engineering (Zeppelins, airships, even the USS Akron, though it was a storm that brought that down), 1933-era engineers were still wary of its potential for stress fractures. But if not that, then what?
Looking at the range of aluminium alloys known in 1933, what looks to my eyes a safe middle ground (between pure aluminium and Duralumin) for stratospheric gondolas would have been an aluminium alloy formed of aluminium with ~1% manganese. (Less than 0.7% manganese doesn’t really gain strength, while more than 1.5% manganese and becomes more brittle.) While not as strong as Duralumin, aluminium with ~1% manganese would be nearly as malleable as aluminium, but significantly stronger.
Even in 1933, a top supplier like Alcoa could give you access to pretty good aluminium (if not particularly pure compared to modern day materials), and with whatever extra stuff you wanted mixed in. So, the Flying Coffin could have been (and I believe indeed probably was) made of an aluminium alloy, though rather than Duralumin I would guess Al + 1% Mn. And that was pretty damn impressive stuff.
Welding in 1933 and 1947
Impressive… except that aluminium alloy was only a part of the story. In 1933, the only real way to join gores (curved panels) together was with oxy-acetylene welding. And oxy-welded seams were – even in the hands of top welders – not great, not great at all. The poor seam quality meant that you had to use much thicker panels that you would like, to be defensive against leaky, cracky, achey-breaky seams.
That in turn would pretty much double the weight of the capsule, whichever type of aluminium you used. And so what I think we can predict about Settle and Burgess’ Flying Coffin is that:
- it was a bit of chunky boi
- it would have had visible, fairly ugly seams
- it would have felt basically industrial, not futuristic
However, fast forward to 1946-1947, and metal assembly had been revolutionised by TIG (Tungsten Insert Gas) welding. (It’s known as WIG in Europe, because Tungsten was also known as “Wolfram”.) This was developed in 1941-1942, so would not have been available to Settle and Burgess in 1933.
TIG welding was a world away from oxy-acetylene welding. All of a sudden, beautiful clean (and non-leaking) seams were possible, and even the norm. And this in turn meant that thinner sheets of aluminium alloy could be used, with the seams neatly sealed and then polished and brushed.
So the question really is: do you think the Roswell capsule would have evoked shock and awe if it had been constructed using 1933’s thicker aluminium alloy and oxy-acetylene welding? Or would 1947’s shiny (and – literally – seamless) lightweight capsule have given everyone who looked at it a wobbly feeling of glimpsing an unknown, alien future?
My own conclusion is that it was probably not the Flying Coffin, but a TIG-welded post-WWII round-ended aluminium alloy capsule. And if that’s correct, whoever stumbled across it in the middle of nowhere north of Roswell might easily – absent a genuine explanation – end up jibbering for years.
The Shock of the Really New
Arthur C. Clarke’s famous adage “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” was something he write in “Profiles of the future; an inquiry into the limits of the possible” as a footnoted aside. I suspect Clarke wanted his aphorism to play to the sci-fi gallery, to the readerly desire for curiosity.
But if I’m right, the evidence from Roswell hints at something slightly different (and I don’t intend this as a snowclone at all). Rather: it suggests that any sufficiently advanced technology is first and foremost a shock, one powerful enough to disrupt your ability to make sense of it.
In the real world of 1947, the US Army was presented with what must surely have seemed like Clarke’s “sufficiently advanced technology”, and the reverberations of that shock – plus the long chain of tragic misunderstandings it triggered – are still very much with us, nearly 80 years later.
I must have been at a complete loss a couple of nights ago but I watched a few of Leonard Nimoy’s old ‘In Search Of…’ programmes on YouTube. I’d bet you’d love the one on Bigfoot Pilch.
Anyway, one of the vids was ‘In Search of UFO Coverups’, from 1980. Of course the show featured Roswell.
According to the FBI the debris was from an experimental “radar reflecting” kite, NOT a weather balloon or a flying coffin. Or so says Noo Yawk lawyer/ufonut Peter Gersten, No less a figure than Spock himself says the FBI account was another “cover story”. See from 8 mins 5 secs:
https://youtu.be/cEsMwXE_eeU?si=dFztDAyt0NVUwBDp
Jesse Marcel also features heavily, saying the mysterious material was “not of this earth”. Highly illogical major!
“Lawyer Peter Gersten has been a
well-known figure in UFOlogy at
least since the 1970s.He filed suit
against the CIA in U.S. District Court
in 1977 for release of documents concerning UFOs. This resulted in over
900 pages of documents being released,
although there was little in them that
wasn’t already known. There were fiftyseven pages that were held back due to
national security concerns. UFOlogists
made a big stink about this, claiming it
was proof of a government cover-up .In
actuality, the files were held back because they might allow other nations to
gain information on U.S. capabilities in
electronic and signals intelligence. For
example, there was one instance in
which the CIA listened in on a Cuban
Air Force pilot discussing a UFO
sighting. The problem wasn’t the UFO
sighting; it was that we didn’t want the
Cubans to know we’d been able to listen in on their pilots’ conversations.”
https://skepticalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2011/07/p25.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gersten
Steve H,
The Wikipedia article you linked to about Peter Gersten contains the following article in the “References” section at bottom. It’s about a documentary made by one of your and Nick’s fellow Britishers, Mark Pilkington, which is the most revealing I’ve seen on the subject of UFOs:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/mirage-men-film-review-568349/
Pilkington also penned a short book w/ the same title as the documentary in the link below. He’s the only one I’ve found who is credible on this topic. His work contains all you need to know about “UFOs”, IMHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS8WGTqBBik
FWIW, I can’t make heads or tails of Gersten. He reminds me a little of John Lear, former CIA pilot, who died recently. Lear, IMO, was a preeminent “Mirage Man” (aka “UFO researcher”). He was also the son of the man who developed the Lear Jet. A lot of these so-called “UFO researchers” and journalists are really CIA “Mirage Men” who infiltrate, or even set up, UFO groups in order to be able to monitor how much US citizens know about advanced American military technology, as well as to disseminate information. (MUFON, I believe, is an example.) They’re heavily invested in obscuring the truth about secret military projects in order to ensure that information is kept out of the hands of our adversaries.
You can see some of Lear’s interviews w/ George Knapp on You Tube as well. He, like Gersten, also appeared on Art Bell’s radio program here in the US. (Bell was based in Las Vegas, near Area 51). Here’s one of Lear’s more unbelievable and ludicrous interviews from long ago. Note, however, his impressive bona fides. Not unlike Gersten’s, IMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIZlpUMhcKQ
There are also plenty of modern-day “Mirage Men” who are actively disseminating the same kind of disinformation Lear and others were. They’re too numerous too mention and, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), they’ve perfected the game of smoke and mirrors quite well, managing to fool even some of the more discerning among us. I, for one, can’t fault them because I’d rather see them succeed in that game of smoke and mirrors than have our highly-developed military technology become known by our enemies.
AT
Thanks for the link to the doc. I had read the Hollywood Reporter article but usually I find these UFO docs so dull that I don’t watch ’em any more. Actually, though, this one was quite interesting. The central figure is obviously Rick Doty who now seems to be spouting all sorts of nonsense all over YouTube. The trouble when you start spreading disinformation is that a) you don’t know who else is doing the same thing and b) you start believing your own propaganda (or at least find out you can make money and gain a bit of fame by pretending you do).
According to the below “Peter Gersten was the person who, in 1983, introduced Rick Doty to Linda Moulton Howe.”
https://www.exopaedia.org/Gersten%2C+Peter
Linda said something interesting in the doc about there being “no question” of the reality of aliens visiting Earth. Once you stop asking questions you’ve had it as a person anyone else should take seriously.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_reports_and_disinformation
Pilch seems to be relying on this Nick Redfern feller for much of his explanation of the Roswell Incident but if you ask me the guy is cuckoo.
This pretty much debunks Redfern’s ideas:
https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/a/roswellredfern.htm
A few quotes.
“Redfern gave a lecture in the US, and a lady there told him that she saw, at Oak Ridge, in 1947 “three strange bodies” that “looked just like normal Japanese people” and “there were others that were obviously physically handicapped people with all sorts of syndromes like Progeria and Turners syndrome which do, no disrespect intended, make people look unusual. With Progeria you get an average height of 4 – 5 feet with a large, bald head. And sometimes, polydactylism, which is an extra finger which is a factor in a lot of these other syndromes.
“And the story is that these Japanese were victims of atrocities in a special Japanese “Unit 731” during the war much like the Nazi performed horrendous atrocities, and were brought in the US in secret in 1945, with their torturers, where the horrible Japanese experiences continued under US military direction.
“The lady tells Redfern that some of these victims were used by the US military in New Mexico in further terrible testing: some were sent up in the air in balloons to study the affects of lack of air on their bodies. Others were shot up to the sky in ejection capsules.
“The truth about Roswell is thus, that some of these victims and remains of balloons and capsule devices were sometimes seen in the desert by ordinary people, and this created the numerous Roswell crash stories. And of course the US government had to hide the truth, this is why they created the rumours of ET crashes.
“And Redfern says that he interviewed one guy from the Army Psychological Branch and one guy who worked, for at least a period, for the Defence Intelligence Agency (supposedly he means to say that they told the same story than [sic] the lady after his conference).
“Redfern agrees that the incident reported by Jesse Marcel, which is the core of the Roswell case, is unrelated. This is convenient, since Major Jesse Marcel and RAAF did not report any Japanese Progeria victims but debris of apparently unearthly nature. (Although, later in the interview, he tells a story in which the original Roswell case is related anyway with all this, in which Marcel and Brazel are supposed to really have stumbled on remains of a “gondola” filled with Japanese diseased/irradiated/mutant deformed POW).”
“Redfern actually filters the facts. Much has to do with quite horrendous experiments on people. His idea is that such experiments had to be kept secret, otherwise the US would collapse in the scandal. But experiments made on mentally retarded and abandoned people have been revealed and confirmed officially by the US Department of Health long ago. The US did not collapse. Sad to say, but terrible things continue to occur, and even when it surfaces, even when some people are upset and protest, the larger number does not care at all and no government collapse. For example in the recent years it as appeared that some orphanage for kids with AIDS in New York really had another agenda than help these kids in their suffering. Their suffering was terribly increased, on the contrary: the poor kids were used to test new AIDS pharmaceuticals. Whatever the implications in the high sphere of the city, the health services and the personal and management of the orphanage was, despite the revealing of these terrible acts, strictly nothing happened.”
“Despite the evidence that the most intriguing UFO data were silenced and kept inside walls by the USAF, Redfern accepts on the words of one unnamed “DIA guy” that the opposite occurred: the claim is that UFO affairs were promoted by government agencies. They wanted people to believe in alien visits, says Redfern’s guy, so that nobody discovers that small Progeria suffering Japanese people were thrown up to the ground from Horten flying wings suspended under Japanese Fugo-inspired balloons in the desert of New Mexico. An extraordinary claim, revisionist to all current theories on government UFO policies, with nothing more to support it than… hearsay.”
The Patrick Gross guy who wrote the above has gathered loads of documents, articles etc about Roswell for those who are more interested in the topic than I am:
https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/index.htm
I mean does this really sound like an extraterrestrial spacecraft? From an interview with Mack Brazel, Roswell Daily Record Chronicle, July 9, 1947: :
“Brazel related that on June 14 he and 8-year-old son, Vernon were about 7 or 8 miles from the ranch house of the J.B. Foster ranch, which he operates, when they came upon a large area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.
At the time Brazel was in a hurry to get his round made and he did not pay much attention to it. But he did remark about what he had seen and on July 4 he, his wife, Vernon, and a daughter Betty, age 14, went back to the spot and gathered up quite a bit of the debris.
The next day he first heard about the flying disks, and he wondered if what he had found might be the remnants of one of these.
Monday he came to town to sell some wool and while here he went to see sheriff George Wilcox and “whispered kinda confidential like” that he might have found a flying disk.
Wilcox got in touch with the Roswell Army Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a man in plain clothes accompanied him home, where they picked up the rest of the pieces of the “disk” and went to his home to try to reconstruct it…
When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds.
There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil.
There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction.
No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.”
Nice to know aliens use scotch tape – and pretty flowers too! Anyway, it ain’t no cipher mystery (a few “letters on some of the parts” – sounds like the SM “code” that never was).
https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/p/roswelldailychronicle9jul1947.htm
And Brigadier General Roger Ramey described the object as “A box KITE” according to an ABC radio report of 8 July 1947 which you can hear here:
https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/rw/n/abc8jul1947.htm
Steve H (again),
I’ve been thinking about your Peter Gerstner find. I think he (and you) are probably correct, and that the “UFO” that was discovered at Roswell was most likely a “radar reflecting” kite. The photo that first appeared in the paper of the debris found at the “crash site“ looks exactly like just such a kite.
My guess is Gerstner is not a “Mirage Man” after all, but a true believer in UFOs. Living in Sedona and engaging in New Age activities there suggests he’s more oddball eccentric than smoke and mirrors CIA.
Great find! Kudos to you. I think you’ve solved that age-old mystery!
Steve H,
My timing seems to be off again. If only I’d seen your most recent post before my last one went up!
The statement in one of your links that “Peter Gersten was the person who, in 1983, introduced Rick Doty to Linda Moulton Howe” makes me think that Gersten may in fact be, like Doty and even Linda Moulton Howe, a “Mirage Man” (or woman) after all. Just when I was prepared to give Gersten the benefit of the doubt! He’s a perfect example of how difficult it can be to find the truth in this murky subject. (Full disclosure, tho’. Am dashing this off without having read your entire post, so may have to amend my thoughts on this later!)
Not sure who published your “exopedia” link, but am inclined to believe that some websites are the work of the CIA. I’ve noticed in the past, e.g., that certain internet articles, including ones by Wikipedia, appear to have been scrubbed of information that was previously included in them. I was EXTREMELY pleasantly surprised, then, to read the Wikipedia article you linked to. How incredibly refreshing it is in its honesty and openness, and how wonderfully thorough, comprehensive, and informative! Amazing it hasn’t been taken down by the powers that be, tho’ maybe they just haven’t discovered it yet. Hope Nick is finding that link as valuable as I do. Am going to make a pdf of it before it disappears into the aether!
For the record, I sort of regret recommending Nick try to contact Leslie Kean or even Annie Jacobsen. Am a little on the fence still about Jacobsen, but honestly, I concluded awhile back that Leslie Kean, as your Wikipedia article points out, is very much a part of the smoke and mirrors brigade. Annie’s books are so entertaining that I think I can forgive her her occasional inaccuracies and/or lapses into disinformation. Haven’t read all her work tho’, so not sure just how much, if any, nonsense she’s deliberately or unwittingly disseminating.
Oddly enough, you make me want to read about George Van Tassel again. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out whether he was a con man, a true UFO believer, a deluded nutcake, or something else entirely. The History Channel program about him makes me think that he, too, was CIA, and that his “Integratron” was probably placed in the desert as a way to monitor those attempting to spy on a nearby US military base. The trailer for that episode is below. The part of the episode I found especially interesting includes a German “hermit” who was living in a cave not far from land where a nearby military base was erected at some point, tho’ I’m unclear just when the base was built. I believe the government suspected him of being a spy during WW2 and purchased his property because they wanted to eject him from the area for security reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJDI2Jd8dSw
After seeing the full episode of the program in the trailer above, I began to wonder if Kenneth Arnold might not have also been working for the CIA. He and Van Tassel even look like governments agents, IMO. As you no doubt know, Arnold was the first to supposedly see UFOs in ’47, just before the Roswell incident occurred, and is thought to be the father of the UFO movement. IIRC, Annie Jacobsen believes those “flying saucers” may have been the remnants of futuristic Nazi aircraft seized by the US after WW2.* Maybe you and Nick know all about this, tho’.
* — Is this smoke and mirrors, too? I wonder!
AT
Well, of course I’m an expert on Roswell, and have been for…hours!
My own opinion FWIW is that the while thing is ludicrously overblown.
Mack Brazel discovered a few bits of tin foil stuck together with scotch tape as he said in his interview quoted above.
Jesse Marcel was a UFO nut like a lot of military personnel. In 1978 a crazy UFO booster and ex-nuclear physicist called Stanton “Kinky” Friedman interviewed him.
“In 1978, while waiting in a Baton Rouge, La., television station for an interview, Friedman was told that Jesse Marcel, long retired from the Air Force and living nearby, had once handled the wreckage of a UFO. After quizzing Marcel, who still believed the debris he retrieved was extraterrestrial, Friedman reviewed the old stories about Roswell, painstakingly sought out and interviewed other witnesses, and came to a dramatic conclusion: there had been a cover-up of “cosmic Watergate” proportions. His research and conclusions became the basis of the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, co-written by Charles Berlitz (author of The Bermuda Triangle) and UFO investigator William Moore. Its publication put Roswell back on the map.”
https://time.com/archive/6731010/did-aliens-really-land/
Marcel mentioned seeing “hieroglyphics” on the debris, whereas Brazel had only seen a few letters. Charles Moore, a scientist who in 1947 was working on the then top-secret Project Mogul, speculate that “the New York toy company that manufactured the reflectors had reinforced the seams with leftover tape that Moore, recalled had “pinkish-purple abstract flower-like designs” – markings that Major Marcel could have interpreted as hieroglyphics.” Remember Brazel had mentioned the flowers. Of course conspiracy nuts will say this was part of a black ops operation or some sort of thing.
That would include Pilch by the way:
“My own belief is that one of the first things the US Army people did was check to see if the debris in the field found by Mack Brazel might have been from (their own) Project Mogul. And then when they found it wasn’t, I believe that they planted details to make it look as though it might have been. Either way, I think it’s clear that they spoke with someone on the Project Mogul team (perhaps even Charlie Moore, why not?), and that was where the flowered paper tape and the earlier date came from.”
https://ciphermysteries.com/2025/11/25/roswell-timeline-what-did-and-didnt-happen
Then the “Roswell incident” was linked to an entirely separate event involving a spaceship and dead aliens. From the same Time article:
“Mentioned briefly in the book was a yarn, told secondhand to Friedman by a couple who attended one of his lectures in 1972. They claimed that a friend named Grady (“Barney”) Barnett, now dead, had told them about coming upon a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin, N.M., about 150 miles west of the Foster ranch, in 1947. Before being shooed away by military police, he claimed, he had spotted several little bodies strewn nearby. Since the story had no apparent connection to Roswell and was given scant credence by Friedman and the authors, it was generally ignored. Yet it was the UFO era’s first mention of alien casualties.”
In fact Barnett never told the story to anyone but his employers and a couple of close friends, including one Vern Maltais:
https://youtu.be/s3KdRG8lBzE?si=HbGwP_JQ_vhl36Mc
“Vern Maltais and his wife Jean say that in February of 1950, Barney told them a story about an incredible UFO crash event that had happened just “a few years prior” in the New Mexico desert. He provided details about his encounter, including viewing bodies that were not human. He said to Maltais that the bodies were very thin, three and a half to four feet tall and that there were four of them. Maltais also said that Barney spoke of archaeologists arriving at the crash scene.”
https://www.ufoexplorations.com/other-roswell-crash-secret-of-plain
“In February 1950, civil engineer Barney “Grady” Barnett from Socorro confided to the Maltais couple, his old friends whom he asked to keep secret, that on July 3, 1947, while he was on duty in the desert in the area between Magdalena and Socorro, he suddenly found himself in front of a disc-shaped metallic object 7 to 9 meters in diameter, which he approached on foot, almost to the point of being able to touch it.
“Meanwhile, other persons had arrived on site (including young people, perhaps students) who were part of an archaeological group from the University of Pennsylvania. Next to the crashed vehicle everyone had seen, projected outside, humanoid beings now lifeless, of thin build, with very large heads, light complexion and completely hairless. Shortly thereafter, a military truck loaded with soldiers entered the scene and promptly blocked and then removed the civilians, ordering them not to say a word about what they had seen (“for patriotic reasons of national security”), cordoning off the area. According to Barnett, the scene of the event was a rocky ridge close to the so-called San Agustin Plains, which has now become the site of the VLA (Verv Large Array) radio telescopes of the United States National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
“The credibility of Barnett’s testimony remained doubtful, as no one was ever able to question him on the matter, as he died when the Roswell case had not yet been discussed again. As for the group of archaeologists, it was not possible to verify the identities of any of them.”
https://www.neperos.com/article/s1jfv989c938fa6c
My own opinion is that Marcel’s and Barnett/Maltais’ accounts, well after the event, are mainly (or even purely) BS.
Then Nick Redfern comes along and writes a book in which he claims he has been told by some unknown woman that indeed there were bodies in the New Mexico desert but that they were “deformed/diseased” Japanese people who the Japanese had experimented on in WW2 and the Americans brought over to the States and continued with experiments including sending them up in a balloon for various nefarious tests.
If you think that sounds absurd bear in mind that Redfern is a conspiracy theorist who has written books on Bigfoot, Werewolves, Mothman, Area 51, the Loch Ness Monster, alien abductions, “paranormal parasites”, black eyed children, Men (and Women) n Black, the New World Order, the Man-Monkey (a UK Bigfoot), Zombies, Slenderman etc, etc.
Best of all apparently Marilyn Monroe was killed because of UFOs and extraterrestrials . In order to impress MM “into the sack” both JFK and RFK told her lots of classified info about aliens – “small goblin-like things with large, emotionless eyes and emaciated bodies” who had been the subject of autopsies at military bases. All quotes are from Diary of Secrets: UFO Conspiracies and the Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe.
In a “ball-shrinking moment for the brothers” they were informed that the “blonde bombshell” had written all this guff about aliens in her diary.
“Someone made a terrible, cold-hearted decision. Hollywood’s living legend (but not for long) had to be silenced….
“…the 4th [August] was when voluptuous, vivacious Marilyn became a cold, lifeless corpse. The inference is that Marilyn had to be killed before she had time to head to the press and blow the whistle on the UFO secrecy to which she had been exposed,”
So now you know.
Then in 1994, a leaking of an “alleged” CIA document by “someone” revealed the plot.
Redfern advises “I suggest you emit a loud “What the f***.” (my asterisks)
It seems he got a lot of info from your John Lear, which “would have made Fox Mulder salivate uncontrollably”. Lear believed that JFK himself was assassinated because he was going to spill the beans on UFOs.
That’s as far as the Amazon preview takes me so I don’t know whether Redfern is convinced of all this or playing it for laughs,
But according to the below there is a Roswell connection:
https://teakrulos.com/2021/06/18/teas-weird-week-nick-redferns-new-book-explores-marilyn-monroe-ufo-connection/
“At the center of the idea that Marilyn knew about the UFOs is a mysterious document that showed up in the 1990s and was sent to Milo Speriglio, author of Marilyn Monroe: Murder Cover-up (1982) and The Marilyn Conspiracy (1986). The document is either a well executed forgery hoax, or, I suppose, the real deal. Among the language in it is Monroe’s knowledge of a “spacecraft” crash in New Mexico.”
Like I said, a cuckoo,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Nicholas-Redfern/author/B001IXQG7E?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true (click on see all)
If you like a bit of jazz then this is one of my faves:
https://youtu.be/FvUcPDSXdU4?si=bxiH01wOqakBDIxQ
If Nick himself is reading this rubbish he might enjoy this film:
https://youtu.be/F_KLnZB8xdg?si=FgK_yw2E52avr5VZ
Spaceman Steve: it really is quite the industry, isn’t it? As with cipher mysteries in general, I try not to inhale but instead follow the evidence, however homoeopathically diluted it may be.
Indeed Nick
I rushed my last comment so there were a few typos.
No more from me on Roswell. Honest. Enjoy The Bamboo Saucer!
Steve H,
I believe that Stanton Friedman was contracted by the CIA to go out and conduct interviews w/ people in order to amplify the idea that UFOs are real. He’s one of many scientists, IMO, who were formerly employed by the government to work on advanced military technology who later went into the business of disseminating disinformation on behalf of the CIA. Goal: To encourage belief in UFOs for the purpose of obscuring knowledge about advanced military programs. I think, then, that Friedman also was a “Mirage Man” and that he was essentially doing what John Lear, Richard Doty, Linda Moulton Howe, Leslie Kean, and Bob Lazar were/are all doing. I believe the CIA concluded it’s better to have the public think it’s alien technology they’d stumbled across than to admit it’s our own.
I also believe that a shift took place circa late ‘60s – mid-‘70s, probably after Project Blue Book was shut down, in which the government decided it was more useful to encourage belief in UFOs than to try to counter it by claiming that what some had seen was merely “swamp gas” and the like. Prior to that, the government simply made ludicrous claims like the preceding that no one was buying. After Blue Book was shut down, I believe they decided that if you can’t beat ‘em (people who think they’d seen a UFO), join ‘em, and simply encourage belief in aliens. IIRC, Annie Jacobsen even describes how the concept for the movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, may have even been hatched by the CIA in her book, “Area 51.” Very useful in getting the public to become less fearful of flying saucers perhaps.
I wonder what you’d make of Annie’s “Area 51,” Steve. Have you read it? There’s a story in it that purports to explain the Roswell incident in a way that’s extremely disturbing. I believed it for awhile (stupidly, perhaps), but am very dubious about it now. Would love to know what you think of it.
More later maybe, after I’ve had a chance to finish reading your posts.
AT
I promised Nick that I wouldn’t comment on Roswell again, but ever the gentleman I am obliged to respond to your comment above. This however WILL be my last word on the topic – for now anyway! Unfortunately it will be long, not with my words but quotes from multiple sources, with a few comments from me in between.
Firstly, I hadn’t heard of Annie Jacobson – I really know VERY little about UFO research. But looking at Wikipedia it appears that she offered a different, but similar, theory to Nick Redfern.
“The book [Area 51] , based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, addresses the Roswell UFO incident and dismisses the alien story.
“Instead, it suggests that Josef Mengele was recruited by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to produce “grotesque, child-size aviators” to be remotely piloted and landed in America to cause hysteria in the likeness of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio drama War of the Worlds, but that the aircraft crashed and the incident was hushed up by the Americans. Jacobsen writes that the bodies found at the crash site were children. Grotesquely but similarly deformed, aged around 12, each under five feet tall, with large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes. “They were neither aliens nor consenting airmen, but human guinea pigs”, she claims.”
To be honest this sounds as ridiculous as Nick Redfern’s “ideas” – but I think Redfern might be taking the piff anyway. The question then is…is Cipher Mysteries being funded by the CIA to propagate such rubbish in order to discredit the whole UFOlogy movement? A couple of years ago I reported that I had heard that Elon Musk had been considering a hostile takeover bid for CM, so perhaps he was talked out of it by senior CIA operatives who thought they had a perfect dupe in Orlando M Pilchard Esq, otherwise known as Lord Nicholas of Pelling.
If you want to know more about Nick’s thoughts (propaganda?) about the CIA see his 28 Nov 2025 post: https://ciphermysteries.com/2025/11/28/what-links-roswell-to-the-cia
It might be a fruitless game trying to work out who are the “real” UFOlogists and who are the “mirage men”, so I wouldn’t speculate about Kinky. We know William “Bill” Moore, co-author of The Roswell Incident, was involved in spreading disinformation. According to author Barna William Donovan “critics have deemed The Roswell Incident “a collection of wild hearsay” offering “second and third-hand accounts Berlitz and Moore then use for fantastic speculation and to jump to a lot of unwarranted conclusions”, and that when critics and skeptics characterized the Majestic 12 documents as fraudulent, “The accusing fingers were pointing at Moore.” (Wikipedia)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bJkhqU1IXHAC&pg=PA104&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
According to an article in UAP-UFO Notice:
“Following the release of The Roswell Incident, Moore became a prominent figure in the UFO research community, presenting himself as a dedicated investigator. However, behind his earnest portrayal lay a startling twist in his story: Moore was actively participating in a disinformation campaign, fueled by none other than Richard Doty, a special agent for the U.S. Air Force.
“Throughout the 1980s, Doty was notorious for disseminating fabricated information about UFOs to various individuals within the UFO community. Among those caught up in this web of deception were notable researchers like Linda Moulton Howe. It wasn’t until UFO researcher Robert Hastings exposed this operation that many began to understand the depth of Doty’s misdirection.
“Moore believed that by engaging in this disinformation scheme, he would be granted access to genuine government secrets regarding UFOs. His hope was that playing along would eventually unveil real insights about what the government knew. But the truth was starkly different.
“In a shocking turn of events, Moore publicly confessed to his involvement in these deceptive practices during a speech at the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) conference in 1989. He revealed that for years he had knowingly shared fabricated information with fellow ufologists. This startling admission shattered his credibility, leaving his standing in the community in ruins.
“Since that pivotal moment, William Moore has become somewhat of a ghost in the world of ufology, shrouded in mystery. His absence from the community raises questions: Has he retreated from the spotlight altogether, or is he quietly continuing his research in obscurity? The truth remains elusive.”
https://uapnotice.com/what-happened-to-william-moore-seeking-information-on-his-disappearance/
I have looked a bit more into some of the relevant claims about the Roswell Incident and will highlight a few of these now.
You may remember I linked the interview with Mack Brazel from the Roswell Daily Record Chronicle, July 9, 1947. The details he gave the paper have been dismissed by UFO propagandists like Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle. In an amazing piece of sophistry, in an article [‘Roswell, July 9,1947’] which Pilch linked in an earlier post, they wrote:
“Our investigation over the past 18 months has shown conclusively that the newspaper account of July 9 is false, the product of coercion to which Mac Brazel was subjected by military investigators. Testimony from other primary witnesses who were at the site in the days after he crash contradicts what Brazel told the Daily Record. We also have descriptions of the recovered material from several witnesses whose reports differ radically from the July 9 account.” (p4)
What “shown conclusively” means is that they have relied on hearsay from a couple of bat-shit crazy witnesses, Mack Brazel’s son Bill and Jesse Marcel Jnr.
Continuing on page 4 : “”There was indeed lettering on some of the wreckage, but it was not in English. Jesse Marcel, Jr., described it as geometric symbols. He drew those he could remember on a pad for us. They were embossed on an I-beam and were purplish. The l-beam itself was strong and slightly flexible. But maybe the most devastating testimony comes from Maj. Marcel, In an interview for a TV documentary he said, “It was not anything from this earth. That I’m quite sure of. Because being in intelligence, I was familiar with all materials used in aircraft and in air travel. This was nothing like this. It could not have been.” Other portions of the newspaper story also fall apart upon examination. The story claims that Brazel was not alone at the ranch when he found the object. According to his son and his neighbors, there was no one at the ranch house other than Mac in June and July 1947, The family was living in Tularosa, New Mexico, then. In fact, Loretta Proctor told us that it was her son who was with Mac when he found the debris. The young Proctor was only seven at the time and remembers almost nothing about it.”
Note they say “the most devastating testimony comes from Maj. Marcel, In an interview for a TV documentary”, without even mentioning WHICH TV doc it was. Of course it was the Leonard Nimoy programme I linked in an earlier comment. If you ask me Maj. Marcel comes across as a space cadet of the first water, but perhaps we shouldn’t indulge ourselves in ad hominem arguments. On second thoughts, why the hell not? Everybody else does.
Summing up, Schmitt and Randle say:
“”On the other hand, nearly every detail in the July 9 article is, we contend, incorrect. It appears that the article is the result of a cover story in tie making. It is filled with lies that first hand testimony has recently exposed. Our investigation has shown that Mac Brazel told the July 9 story under duress while in the company of officers from the 509th Bomb Group, that he lied during the interview, and that those officers knew he was lying. It was the beginning of the cover-up that lasted, almost intact, for 30 years. As a revealing point, we have also leamed from Bill Brazel that his father took an oath that he would not reveal the details of the find. Why would the Army ask Mac Brazel to take an oath of secrecy concerning the ordinary weather balloon he found? We suggest the reason is that whatever he found was secret and had to remain so. Thus the need for the cover story he gave on July 9 a the Daily Record.” (p13)
You know what? I am calling this out as complete BS. Like most UFOnuts they rely on testimony from people who are ALREADY UFO believers, mainly second-hand (and second-rate) witnesses – and ignore any other evidence, or lack thereof, or counter-testimonies. For example, where are there any photos of the “hieroglyphics”? It’s all hearsay, rumour, gossip and/or deliberate fabrication – by the “witnesses” or the UFO researchers or both.
Also see the interesting editorial from the same publication:
https://cufos.org/PDFs/IUR%20issues/IUR%20Vol.%2014%20No.%206%20Nov.-Dec.%201989.pdf
Another article that Nick linked was:
‘Mack Brazel RECONSIDERED’
BY THOMAS J. CAREY and DONALD R. SCHMITT
https://www.nicap.org/rosbraz.htm
“[Neighbour Floyd] Proctor confirmed for [William] Moore that Brazel had been kept in military custody for about a week, after which he would not talk about the event, preferring instead to change the subject or briefly repeat the balloon story if pressed. Proctor also described being in Roswell with another neighbor, L. D. Sparks, during the period of Brazel’s detention. Brazel was surrounded by about half a dozen military escorts as he walked down the street. He was behaving strangely, according to Proctor, and pretended that he did not recognize Proctor and Sparks when they passed. This episode was corroborated in a 1988 interview we conducted with Sparks in his Roswell home, and also by Leonard Porter and Bill Jenkins, two other neighbors of Brazel who were there at the time.
“Strange writing or symbols on some of the Roswell debris have been described by other witnesses, such as Maj. Marcel and his son, Jesse Marcel Jr. Mack told friends and family about seeing similar markings, including Bill Jr., Mack’s older sister Lorrene Ferguson, and Proctor. Bill recalled his father describing the writing as like “figures,” and thought his father meant it resembled the ancient Indian petroglyphs or rock figures common in the Southwest. On the other hand, Ferguson and Proctor recalled Mack’s description as being more like the “wiggles” one finds on wrappers of Chinese or Japanese firecrackers, and that they were in various pastel colors.”
Note the mention of confessed liar and disinformation merchant William Moore again here. And the Proctors seem like the biggest nutters of the lot. In an article l linked in a previous comment, Anthony Bragalia’s ‘THE OTHER ROSWELL CRASH: The Secret of the Plains Revealed’, he writes:
“We must all agree that the specific number of crash sites – and the precise location of each – may never be conclusively resolved. We must remain open to various scenarios. As rancher Loretta Proctor (who saw some of the debris that rancher Mac Brazel took to her) told me, the craft may have “skipped” or “leaked” several times and that there was more than one location. She says that she doesn’t have “all of the answers” but she allows that “maybe there were even two separate UFOs that crashed during roughly the same time.”
Perhaps the crash event near Roswell and the one at the Plains were the result of two distinctly different UFOs that had fallen not precisely at the same time, but very close to the same time. Or maybe they were more intimately related. Possibly they were crashes from the same “skipping” or “shedding” saucer. This would have involved a highly-energetic craft with multiple “compartments” that fell in stages and pieces far and wide in New Mexico. But whatever the exact scenario, Barney Barnett likely fits into the equation…somehow.”
Loretta Proctor was the wife of Floyd Proctor and mother of Dee.
In another piece by Bragalia we read that unfortunately Dee Proctor “exhibited an extraordinary reluctance to discuss the incident throughout his life. He was also a lifelong alcoholic, but never drinking around his mother Loretta. In fact he was described to me by more than one as a “raging alcoholic” (including by a Deputy Clerk at the Lincoln County, NM Clerk’s office.) Dee was nearly hermetic, divorced and he was morbidly obese. He died at age 66 in January 2006 of a massive heart attack while driving to a Ruidoso ranch…
“In the Summer of 2011 Loretta Proctor’s niece Kay went to visit her Aunt. Kay was accompanied by her friend Jules and they recorded the Roswell crash recollections of the nonagenarian. Speaking of the widely-reported “memory metal” that came from the UFO crash scene and that was seen by many witnesses, Loretta made a jaw-dropping statement. Jules says that with a “measure of smiling venom” Loretta said of her son Dee, “A certain little brat kept it (some memory metal) hidden away his whole life.” The “reminder” visits that Dee received throughout his life were warning visits that Dee should not only never utter a word, but that if he had the memory metal – or knows where pieces may be- he was always under watch and they would always know where he was and what he was doing.
“The two Roswell children [Dee and Mack’s son Vern] who found the UFO crash site were the first human beings in history to lay eyes upon the Extraterrestrial and things not made on Earth. Both of them – Dee and Vern – never spoke publicly about the event for as long as they lived. One of them ran from researchers and one ran from life itself. Both had “issues” that seemed insurmountable following the crash event- and both died young , keeping a burden that ultimately proved too difficult for either to bear.”
https://www.theufochronicles.com/2012/03/children-who-bore-witness-to-roswell.html
The accounts mentioned in the ‘REPORT OF AIR FORCE RESEARCH REGARDING THE “ROSWELL INCIDENT”, July 1994′ seem closer to the truth (but who knows?)
“…while conducting the popular literature review, one of the documents reviewed was a paper entitled “The Roswell Events” edited by Fred Whiting [see below] and sponsored by the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR). Although it was not the original intention to comment on what commercial authors interpreted or claimed that other persons supposedly said, this particular document was different because it contained actual copies of apparently authentic sworn affidavits received from a number of persons who claimed to have some knowledge of the Roswell event. Although many of the persons who provided these affidavits to the FUFOR researchers also expressed opinions that they thought there was something extraterrestrial about this incident, a number of them actually described materials that sounded suspiciously like wreckage from balloons. These included the following:
“Jesse A. Marcel, NM (son of the late Major Jesse Marcel; 11 years old at the time of the incident). Affidavit dated May 6, 1991. ” … There were three categories of debris: a thick, foil like metallic gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plastic-like material, like Bakelite; and there were fragments of what appeared to be I-beams. On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. This writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved, geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to Russian, Japanese or any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics, but it had no animal-like characters ……
“Loretta Proctor (former neighbor of rancher W.W. Brazel). Affidavit dated May 5, 199 1. .”..Brazel came to my ranch and showed my husband and me a piece of material he said came from a large pile of debris on the property he managed. The piece he brought was brown in color, similar to plastic…’Mac’ said the other material on the property looked like aluminum foil. It was very flexible and wouldn’t crush or bum. There was also something he described as tape which had printing on it. The color of the printing was a kind of purple…”
“Bessie Brazel Schreiber (daughter of W.W. Brazel; 14 years old at the time of the incident). Affidavit dated September 22, 1993. .”..The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst. The pieces were small, the largest I remember measuring about the same as the diameter of a basketball. Most of it was a kind of double-sided material, foil-like on one side and rubber-like on the other. Both sides were grayish silver in color, the foil more silvery than the rubber. Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape. The tape was about two or three inches wide and had flowerlike designs on it. The ‘flowers’ were faint, a variety of pastel colors, and reminded me of Japanese paintings in which the flowers are not all connected. I do not recall any other types of material or markings, nor do I remember seeing gouges in the ground or any other signs that anything may have hit the ground hard. The foil-rubber material could not be tom like ordinary aluminum foil can be tom…”
“Sally Strickland Tadolini (neighbor of WW Brazel; nine years old in 1947). Affidavit dated September 27, 1993. “.. What Bill showed us was a piece of what I still think as fabric. It was something like aluminum foil, something like satin, something like welltanned leather in its toughness, yet was not precisely like any one of those materials. …It was about the thickness of very fine kidskin glove leather and a dull metallic grayish silver, one side slightly darker than the other. I do not remember it having any design or embossing on it…”
“Robert R. Porter (B-29 flight Engineer stationed at Roswell in 1947). Affidavit dated June 7, 1991 ” On this occasion, I was a member of the crew which flew parts of what we were told was a flying saucer to Fort Worth. The people on board included … and Maj Jesse Marcel. Capt. William E. Anderson said it was from a flying saucer. After we arrived, the material was transferred to a B-25. I was told they were going to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. I was involved in loading the B-29 with the material, which was wrapped in packages with wrapping paper. One of the pieces was triangle-shaped, about 2 1/2 feet across the bottom. The rest were in small packages, about the size of a shoe box. The brown paper was held with tape. The material was extremely lightweight. When I picked it up, it was just like picking up an empty package. We loaded the triangle shaped package and three shoe box-sized packages into the plane. All of the packages could have fit into the trunk of a car. …When we came back from lunch, they told us they had transferred the material to a B-25. They told us the material was a weather balloon, but I’m certain it wasn’t a weather balloon…
“In addition to those persons above still living who claim to have seen or examined the original material found on the Brazel Ranch, there is one additional person who was universally acknowledged to have been involved in its recovery, Sheridan Cavitt, Lt Col, USAF, (Ret) . Cavitt is credited in all claims of having accompanied Major Marcel to the ranch to recover the debris, sometimes along with his Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) subordinate, William Rickett, who, like Marcel, is deceased. Although there does not appear to be much dispute that Cavitt was involved in the material recovery, other claims about him prevail in the popular literature. He is sometimes portrayed as a closed-mouth (or sometimes even sinister) conspirator who was one of the early individuals who kept the “secret of Roswell” from getting out. Other things about him have been alleged, including the claim that he wrote a report of the incident at the time that has never surfaced.
“Since Lt Col Cavitt, who had first-hand knowledge, was still alive, a decision was made to interview him and get a signed sworn statement from him about his version of the events. Prior to the interview, the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken. Subsequently, Cavitt was interviewed on May 24, 1994, at his home. Cavitt provided a signed, sworn statement of his recollections in this matter. He also consented to having the interview tape-recorded. In this interview, Cavitt related that he had been contacted on numerous occasions by UFO researchers and had willingly talked with many of them; however, he felt that he had oftentimes been misrepresented or had his comments taken out of context so that their true meaning was changed. He stated unequivocally, however, that the material he recovered consisted of a reflective sort of material like aluminum foil, and some thin, bamboo-like sticks. He thought at the time, and continued to do so today, that what he found was a weather balloon and has told other private researchers that. He also remembered finding a small “black box” type of instrument, which he thought at the time was probably a radiosonde. Lt Col Cavitt also reviewed the famous Ramey/Marcel photographs of the wreckage taken to Ft. Worth (often claimed by LITO researchers to have been switched and the remnants of a balloon substituted for it) and he identified the materials depicted in those photos as consistent with the materials that he recovered from the ranch. Lt Col Cavitt also stated that he had never taken any oath or signed any agreement not to talk about this incident and had never been threatened by anyone in the government because of it. He did not even know the incident” was claimed to be anything unusual until he was interviewed in the early 1980’s.
“Similarly, Irving Newton, Major, USAF, (Ret) was located and interviewed. Newton was a weather officer assigned to Fort Worth, who was on duty when the Roswell debris was sent there in July, 1947. He was told that he was to report to General Ramey’s office to view the material. In a signed, sworn statement Newton related that .”..I walked into the General’s office where this supposed flying saucer was lying all over the floor. As soon as I saw it, I giggled and asked if that was the flying saucer … I told them that this was a balloon and a RAWIN target…” Newton also stated that .”..while I was examining the debris, Major Marcel was picking up pieces of the target sticks and trying to convince me that some notations on the sticks were alien writings. there were figures on the sticks, lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings, with no rhyme or reason (sic). He did not convince me that these were alien writings.” Newton concluded his statement by relating that .”..During the ensuing years I have been interviewed by many authors, I have been quoted and misquoted. The facts remain as indicated above. I was not influenced during the original interview, nor today, to provide anything but what I know to be true, that is, the material I saw in General Ramey’s office was the remains of a balloon and a RAWIN target.””
https://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/Roswell/RoswellIncident.html
The Plains mentioned in the title of the first Anthony Bragalia article linked above are the Plains of San Agustin. Fred Whiting, who featured in the Air Force Report, was involved in the Plains of San Agustin Conference (Crash Ill) sponsored by the Center for UFO Studies and the Fund for UFO Research, February 15-16, 1992, in Chicago, Illinois.
See: https://cufos.org/PDFs/books/Plains_of_San_AgustinR.pdf
He wrote an article for the summary report of the conference (‘The Plains of San Agustin Controversy, July 1947: Gerald Anderson, Barney Barnett, and the Archaeologists’), titled ‘Raiders of the Lost Archaeologists’ (by Fred Whiting, Secretary-Treasurer, Fund for UFO Research – see p34)
“Everybody agrees there was a crashed craft and alien bodies [!] recovered somewhere between Corona and Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947. However, Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt disagree with Don Berliner and Stan Friedman over whether there is sufficient evidence to conclude there also was a crashed craft and aliens (both dead and alive) recovered on the Plains of San Agustin. As I understand them, here are their major arguments:
“Berliner/Friedman: (1) Barney Barnett told a number of his closest acquaintances-and a military officer-that he saw a crashed craft and alien bodies on the Plains. (2) Gerald Anderson says he saw a crashed craft and aliens-both dead and alive-on the Plains. (3) Anderson is a responsible member of society; he has not shown a tendency to lie, nor has he sought monetary gain for his story. (4) There is evidence that others (including Robert Drake) also heard about a crashed UFO and bodies of occupants on the Plains.
“Randle/Schmitt: (1) Barney Barnett was really over near Corona and lied about seeing a crashed saucer and alien bodies on the Plains, in order to divert attention from the real crash at Corona. (2) Gerald Anderson’s story is not supported by any credible evidence. (3) Anderson is an unreliable witness and probably made it all up. (4) Drake’s account isn’t supported by anyone; he is a contaminated source and therefore can’t be believed.”
So there is a dispute about where the alien bodies were found – both on the Plains AND at a site nearer Corona, where Brazel found the debris, or just the latter.
From what I understand Nick P is only concerned with the Corona location (believing Barney Barnett was “really over near Corona”?), although he mentions a THIRD site.
“Witness accounts indicate that the 1947 Roswell Incident was spread across three separate sites:
#1: The debris field site – lots of thin metallic debris
#2: The crashed craft site – a Volkswagen Beetle-sized ‘alien’ capsule + dying little people
#3: The Dee Proctor site – ummmmm, Mack Brazel found “something” here
Sites #1 & #3 were fairly close together on the J. B. Foster ranch (where Mack Brazel worked as the ranch supervisor), while site #2 was several miles east-southeast of them.”
Note: The San Agustin Plains are over 300 miles from Roswell. The idea that the crashed craft and alien bodies turned up near Corona is a later claim, or more correctly, fabrication.
https://ciphermysteries.com/2025/11/21/what-exactly-did-mack-brazel-see-that-convinced-him-so-strongly-that-it-was-aliens
For my own part I don’t believe ANYTHING of any significance involving crashed flying objects – apart from weather kites/balloons – happened near Roswell or in the rest of New Mexico. This would place me in the clutches of Charybdis according to our esteemed moderator. Perhaps that explains my sinking feeling when discussing Roswell. Fellow contributor Matt Lewis doesn’t even think us “Britishers” should be allowed to have an opinion on the matter. I think he came over to America on the Mayflower or something like that. He must be even older than me!
Unlike Nick I don’t think it is possible – or desirable – to chase after a “grand narrative” of the Roswell Incident, or Non-Incident. I’m quite happy with historical fragments, but maybe I’m one of those dreaded relativists. Trouble is those fragments point to a big nothingburger.
PS This is a much better version of The Bamboo Saucer on the Russian video sharing site Odnoklassniki: https://ok.ru/video/2953885518542 – it’s crappy but fun.
Spaceman Steve: that’s a whole lot of noise, and a lot of misinformation too. For me, the right questions to ask are all about what led up to Roswell, not what happened after it. What I liked about Nick Redfern’s book is that – for a few pages, at least – he tried to reach towards the right kind of answer. True, he didn’t get particularly far: but at least he tried.
Steve H,
Thanks for weighing in on the Annie Jacobsen story. I agree w/ you that it’s obviously fiction. I should have realized that, especially in light of the info you and Nick found on Roswell.
Still haven’t made my way thru all the info in your posts, but looking forward to it. In the meantime, here are a few of my thoughts, for what they’re worth:
Re Stanton Friedman, Linda Howe, and others who I believe were courted by the CIA to advance the false narrative that UFOs are real: Friedman, IIRC, like Lear, had just retired when he began interviewing people about Roswell. Like Lear, I believe he, too, had been on the government’s payroll for most of his career. Both men had impressive credentials and therefore, would have been seen as indisputably credible candidates for advancing the idea that aliens are real. This, then, is why I believe they were chosen to help advance that phony narrative.
I also believe that other writers, media figures, and even filmmakers have been similarly courted by the powers-that-be and have been granted access to restricted government info in order to disseminate disinformation. Who could argue w/ such a task if it means contributing to increased national security and the continued well-being of all US citizens? It also bestows caché and the feeling of being special for having been given insider knowledge.
If you look at the background of Linda Moulton Howe, you’ll see that she graduated from Stanford where a lot of advanced technological research is developed and adapted for eventual use by the military. She was recruited as a journalist by the CIA or Pentagon, I believe, to cover up the truth about the military’s testing of cattle in the ‘70s who were later found mutilated on US ranches. She did so, IMO, by egging on the idea in her reporting that it was aliens who were responsible for those mutilations. I don’t believe she was “caught up in this web of deception,” as the article you posted claims. W/ her background at Stanford and her connections there, I think she was seen as the ideal journalist to report on that anomalous activity, to observe just how much the local population knew about the work the military was doing, and to divert attention away from what was actually occurring.
There’s another dynamic at work here also, however, which involves the money that can be made when discussing the topic of aliens. George Knapp, e.g., whose skepticism was plain to see for anyone watching the early interviews he conducted w/ John Lear, later admitted that his ratings skyrocketed after those interviews aired. I believe Knapp knew full well that UFO stories were being fabricated by Lear, Lazar, and other government employees but chose to get into bed w/ them anyway because of the money that could be made and the notoriety that could be achieved. Podcaster and YouTuber Joe Rogan has also become rich by focusing on UFO stories and regularly interviews people like Lazar who, I believe, have also been paid to obscure the truth about covert military projects.
Like you, I’m actually not very interested in this topic at the moment in spite of engaging in this lengthy discussion, as I settled the question of UFOs for myself long ago when I learned that physics precludes their existence. I do find it interesting, tho’, reading your thoughts and seeing how the truth about this subject has been manipulated and by whom. That, in and of itself, has been quite an education!
Nick
Misinformation? Moi? Where exactly?
This IS my final word on silly old Roswell.
Actually there’s a lot of mis/disinformation in your posts on this topic, perhaps because you fell hook. line and sinker for the lies and propaganda of the revisionist history provided by the UFOlogists or perhaps because you wanted to stir up a bit of controversy on your own behalf.
Your reconstructed timeline is based on the writings of the UFO conspiracy nuts and has little to do with the actual events. How do you know Mack Brazel was nobbled by the US Army? That was a daft story concocted by the conspiracy theorists decades after the “Incident”. No mention of him being taken in for interrogation in the contemporary reports. Oh well, I suppose they were censored. And as for Frank Joyce, who you appear to take at his word, the less said the better. Of course his radio station was told NOT to broadcast the interview by the sinister military baddies. Poppycock!
https://youtu.be/xBRsxg9opgI?si=hD0ggQLYow7ktHX0&t=329
“In May 1998 we [Carey and Schmitt] visited Frank Joyce. After preliminary niceties, Joyce turned into a man on a mission. “I’m going to tell you fellows something I’ve never told anyone. Don’t stop me once I get started, or I might realize what I am doing and shut up.” …
Did Brazel find bodies? Even though we consider Joyce to be a credible witness, his testimony needs independent corroboration, particularly with such an important claim. It is one thing to say, as Marcel said many times, that the debris was “not of this Earth.” But adding bodies – also not of this earth – raises the stakes immensely. ”
https://www.nicap.org/rosbraz.htm
Take out Joyce’s nonsense and the FIRST account we have is the Roswell Daily Record Chronicle, July 9 1947 interview with Brazel, in which according to conspiracy theorists he gave a false account due to coercion by the military. Bullshit! Note that according to Brazel there “were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some TAPE WITH FLOWERS PRINTED UPON IT had been used in the construction.” (My emphasis)
I suggest you read this article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180720182643/https://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_roswell_incident_at_70_facts_not_myths
“What rancher W. W. (Mac) Brazel reported finding on his ranch, sixty miles northwest of Roswell, was simply this: Debris consisting of a large number of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance and pieced together with small sticks, much like a kite. And also some pieces of grey rubber. All were small and hardly some high-tech alien flying saucer!
“The reporter should have told readers what we now know (almost certainly) the debris to have been: remnants of a long vertical “train” of research balloons and equipment launched by New York University atmospheric researchers and not recovered—specifically, Flight No. 4. The research team launched NYU Flight #4 on June 4, 1947, from Alamogordo Army Air Field and tracked it flying east-northeast toward Corona. It was within seventeen miles of the Brazel ranch when the tracking batteries failed and contact was lost.
“New York University’s role in launching the “constant-level” research balloons was unclassified. In the 1990s, it was learned that the mission also had a classified purpose, called “Project Mogul,” to learn whether such balloons could take highly sensitive microphones and keep them at a level in the atmosphere (the tropopause) where they might be able to detect acoustic signals channeled round the Earth from Soviet nuclear tests.”
These are your “hieroglyphics”:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180720182643im_/https://www.csicop.org/uploads/images/si/flower-ufo-patterns.jpg
“”Abstract flower-like designs” on toy-factory tape used on the NYU radar targets.”
“[Charles] Moore also provided a new and very telling detail. The reinforcing tape used on the NYU targets had curious markings; UFO believers later described these markings on the debris Brazel discovered as “hieroglyphics,” implying some form of alien writing. In fact, Moore told us the tape had been purchased from a New York City toy factory and the symbols on the tape were “abstract flower-like” designs made to appeal to kids.
“These and other established facts of the Roswell incident will of course never catch up with the charming myth. It is understandable that UFO believers and Roswell city boosters will promote the myth as possible reality (wink, wink), but, as I wrote in my op-ed, “in this day of ‘fake news,’ let’s not be a party to that.”
“All these facts, and many more supporting details, have been widely available since the mid-to-late 1990s in various scholarly publications…
“The NYU balloon flight assemblages were huge. The diagram Moore supplied in his talk for flight 2, similar to flight 4, and published in the above-mentioned Skeptical Inquirer article (Figure 2 here), requires three vertical columns to display all the components. They include three radar reflectors, various measuring instruments, and twenty-four separate balloons. Charles Moore told us the whole interconnected array extended a vertical distance of 700 to 800 feet. So the common explanation of “weather balloon” is quite the understatement.”
You say however:
“My own belief is that one of the first things the US Army people did was check to see if the debris in the field found by Mack Brazel might have been from (their own) Project Mogul. And then when they found it wasn’t, I believe that they planted details to make it look as though it might have been. Either way, I think it’s clear that they spoke with someone on the Project Mogul team (perhaps even Charlie Moore, why not?), and that was where the flowered paper tape and the earlier date came from.
“If that’s right, then the second cover story in the US Army’s evolving smorgasbord of cover stories was: ‘it was a Project Mogul high-altitude balloon‘. Of course, it wasn’t that at all, but here we are.
So, years later, when Charlie Moore is looking at the US Army’s Part 2 version of events, he can say – hand on heart – that it looks like a Project Mogul balloon (because of the planted flower tape detail) and the timing is kind of consistent with one of the missing Project Mogul balloons (because of the planted date shift). But this is, of course, fake logic, because the whole lot is built not on the (real) Part 1 narrative but instead on the (fake) Part 2 narrative.”
Are you SERIOUS?
Watch the Roswell Reports video provided on the Wikipedia page about Project Mogul,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul#Roswell_incident
It’s a bit jingoistic, especially at the end, but if you believe the debris COULDN’T have been anything to do with Project Mogul then you are wrong.. Maybe you are confusing the balloons with the equipment they were carrying.
Anyway, perhaps more will be revealed when Trump opens the files on aliens and UFOs:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g57gqqln1o
I wonder if Andrew Battenberg-Wooster has anything else to be worried about. When I met King (then Prince) Charles in the early ’70s he did come out of the sky in a flying object, although that was a helicopter in which he landed on the school playing field. He seemed to be human, and friendly enough, but these damn pesky aliens might be very convincing.
AT
Yes, but I spelt Jacobsen’s name wrong!
This is an interesting, recently uploaded “lost” video featuring Kinky Friedman talking abut Roswell:
https://youtu.be/J5iFI_HLA4A?si=RJJTJjo3GnR0rSl3
Don’t really have any more to say about the topic. Still, it made a change from Somerton Man. The debate there has completely stalled – just look at Bozo’s and Cramer’s blogs. Eugh!
Spaceman Steve: along with disinformation and misinformation, the wild and whacky world of UFOs has bequeathed us a third category of pissinformation. Be careful what you drink out there.
Steve,
Easy to misspell Annie’s last name. I almost did the same thing!
You and Nick have me watching Joe Rogan vids again! Here’s a short one w/ Robert Bigelow. At the beginning of it, he mentions “the mylar balloon event” that he and others witnessed over Area 51. He says that balloon “really bounces the radar signature alot.” Oddly, the “event” he’s referring to dates from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, long after Roswell. Hmmmm . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYhCmfE1a0
Full interview w/ Bigelow is below. It includes a description of another incident he says took place in May ’47, one month before Kenneth Arnold’s supposed sightings and two months before Roswell. It appears to have impacted him greatly as a child and shaped many of his career choices and life decisions. It also seems to have convinced him that aliens are real. As an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur and business man who created his own aerospace co., this makes him an intriguing character. He appears to me to be refreshingly honest, tho’ obviously I believe he’s mistaken in the conclusions he’s come to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPbZ19A03Hw
FWIW, I think that May ’47 event Bigelow describes could have involved experimental aircraft that was being tested somewhere near Groom Lake, tho’ Area 51 supposedly didn’t open until either ’51 (according to Annie J) or ’55, according to Google AI and other sources. Could it have opened earlier? Could the May ‘47 incident Bigelow describes be the reason the CIA/Pentagon found it necessary to roll out the Kenneth Arnold/“flying saucers” story and the many varying Roswell fabrications? All 3 incidents occurred one after another in a 3-month time period. Were the powers-that-be afraid that that earlier crash would become publicized, or that the existence of a secret military base would become known? Perhaps the latter is the real reason for the Roswell obfuscations. It could explain Annie’s strange story and why there seem to be competing dates regarding the origin of Area 51.
P.S. Haven’t given up on Charlie yet. Still have a few more thoughts about him I may post soon.
——-
Steve and Nick,
Link below made me laugh. Kinda illustrates my point that if the government doesn’t want you to know, you’re not likely to find out!
https://x.com/RoyalIntel_/status/2024691047742226699?s=20
Would like to retract my recommendation of Annie Jacobsen’s work. Several reviewers have noted that her books are full of errors. Richard Rhodes of “The Washington Post,” e.g., has written a scathing review of “Area 51” in which he attributes her many mistakes to either “extreme gullibility” or “incompetence.” He concludes that the latter is probably responsible. The website of the “History News Network” also examines her mistakes in detail and corrects the record. As a result, her “Operation Paperclip” is coming off my to-read list.
There is, however, a lot of trustworthy info that is now available that may shed light on the UFO mystery. The vid below is a case in point. It traces the history of Jack Northrup’s “flying wing” and is a beautiful, breathtaking, and very moving film. Could this be what Kenneth Arnold saw just 10 days or so before the Roswell event? The similarity between Arnold’s “flying saucers” and Northrup’s “flying wing” is undeniable, as is the resemblance between the “flying wing” and modern US stealth bombers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkhziQF0AiI
Note, also, that it was Arnold’s sighting on June 24, 1947, that ignited the UFO craze, NOT the Roswell event that occurred 10 days or so later!
AT: Richard Rhodes was a thorough and exemplary researcher, I read his eye-opening book “Dark Sun” recently, and also got copies of some material from the special collection holding his papers. Annie Jacobsen… not so much.
Nick,
Yay! Glad we agree.
Just wanted to add that according to a book excerpt I’ve just read, I’m no longer sure about the dates of the Roswell event. Link below suggests that Roswell preceded Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, tho’ IIRC, newspaper reports at the time suggest otherwise.
Starting on p. 64 of the google book link below, both Roswell and Project Mogul are discussed at length. I wonder if those pages could help answer your Project Mogul question. I found that passage both helpful and interesting. Source of the info (author Donald R. Prothero) appears to be as good as it gets. He also mentions others who worked on Project Mogul. Perhaps he or they are still alive and can be contacted (?).
https://books.google.com/books?id=DI8uDwAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false
AT: there’s a big difference between asserting “even though the dates don’t really work, perhaps Roswell was a Project Mogul balloon payload?”, and “because I believe Roswell was a Project Mogul balloon payload, the dates must be wrong.”
Nick,
Not sure who you’re quoting in the post above, as I haven’t read all the lengthy posts on this thread or gone thru all the links. Am afraid my eyes glaze over trying to follow the convoluted thinking and conflicting information that swirls around this topic.
From what I’ve seen and read so far, it seems likely that the Roswell event was simply misreported initially as being a “flying saucer” rather than a “weather balloon.” That mistaken assumption could have occurred because Kenneth Arnold’s “flying saucer” sighting had indeed taken place prior to the Roswell event. Arnold’s sighting on June 24 made the news nationally and was being widely discussed at the time. This, then, could explain the mistaken assumption coming out of Roswell in early July. A subsequent newspaper article on July 8 appeared to correct the initial misreporting in Roswell and accurately pictured the mylar balloon fragments that formed the debris field. The only lie that was told at that time, IMO, was the purpose of the mylar balloons. We now know they were for spying, that they weren’t weather-related, and that lies were told to protect national security.
The government report that was written in the early ‘60s called, “Roswell: Case Closed” takes us thru what occurred step-by-step. It explains that crash(es) of experimental aircraft occurred adjacent to Roswell in the years after ‘47 and later became conflated w/ the earlier event as the decades wore on.
https://media.defense.gov/2010/Oct/27/2001330219/-1/-1/0/AFD-101027-030.pdf
You may not believe the government report above, but I do. If you exclude the purported weather-related purpose of the balloons, I think it accurately depicts what took place and explains how the story became distorted as the decades wore on.
The google book I linked to in the post above may also explain why the Roswell event became conflated w/ later crashes. The author appears to teach at the same college that Michael Shermer does. Shermer not only wrote the intro to Prothero’s book but also the classic, “Why People Believe Weird Things.” Latter has been on my to-read list forever. (Shermer is a friend of a friend, but that’s another story.)