While writing up my last post on Roswell meteorology, I noticed that Duke Gildenberg – who presented himself as a UFO arch-skeptic more and more as he got older – appeared to make some assertions about the very first big UFO incident of the 1947 ‘flap’: the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting. Firstly, Gildenberg’s “Roswell Requiem” article in Skeptic magazine [Vol. 10, number 1, 2003] has this right at the start of his claimed Roswell timeline:
June-July [1947]—UFO reports generated by Mogul balloons from Alamogordo AAF, NM, and balloon clusters out of Colorado.
To which you might reasonably respond (as I did), “Colorado, wtf?” No, it clearly wasn’t a typo, because Gildenberg then goes on to say (also on p.62):
Throughout June and July of 1947, Professor Moore’s NYU team launched Mogul balloons from Alamogordo AAF, while another NYU group launched similar balloon clusters out of Colorado (generating more UFO reports).
So, it’s a “another NYU group” who were launching “similar balloon clusters out of Colorado”. He then, in 2004, repeated basically the same claim in his Skeptical Inquirer article, but with a very obvious difference:
There were also sightings in the summer of 1947 in the western and northwestern United States. A 1949 Air Force investigation (Trakowski 1949) could not correlate those sightings with Project Mogul, but the Air Force was unaware of a Navy program launching cluster balloons in Colorado that same summer. Coordination between branches of the military was limited in the years just following World War II. Accordingly, the dilemma of that 1949 report added fuel to a developing UFO mythology.
So… now Gildenberg is saying it’s “a Navy program launching cluster balloons in Colorado that same summer”. So it’s an NYU group (as per his 2003 article) and a Navy program (as per his 2004 article), right? But he concludes his whole thought (in his 2004 article) to reprise the same thing he put at the top of his claimed Roswell timeline, but slightly stronger this time round:
Clusters of weather balloons launched from both New Mexico and Colorado triggered reports of flying saucers sighted in formations throughout the West.
I think the keyword “formations” is the clincher here: Gildenberg’s not just trying to use cluster balloons to explain away Roswell, he’s also trying to use them to explain away Kenneth Arnold’s UFO sighting – arguably the start of the whole 1947 UFO ‘flap’.
Charles Moore on Colorado
In the witness interview with Charles Moore in the Roswell Report, he talks with not a little confusion about an article that appeared in Alamogordo News on the 10th July 1947 (transcribed here on Patrick Gross’ very useful site). This was where Captain Lawrenz (“Larry”) Dyvad and various others pretended that it was they who were doing the Project Mogul launches (and not NYU). Moore specifically mentions that he thought this was a US Army cover-up to try to protect Project Mogul:
This is a coverup right here because they talk about our operations, they talk about our balloons we thought went to Colorado, and they all claim it to be part of Pritchard’s radar operation.
Moore was also bemused because Dyvad and the others seemed to know all his balloon-launching tricks (including his balloon-boiling trick, and his step-ladder trick), which he didn’t think anyone else knew.
If this is correct, the summer 1947 Project Mogul timeline would appear to be something closer to this:
- 28th June 1947 – NYU and AMS people arrive (the “Alamogordo II” project phase)
- This includes the US Navy’s Lt. Harris F. Smith
- Lt. Smith appears to have brought Helios balloon cluster tie-plates with him
- 8th July 1947 – Most of the NYU / AMS project people leave
- 9th July 1947 – Capt Dyvad give a fake interview with the Alamogordo News
- Subsequently, cluster balloons would have been shipped to Colorado
- More cluster balloon tests would have been done in Colorado
As an aside, the McAndrew report transcribes Moore as saying: “There’s Newt Goldenberg, you mentioned him earlier in one of our conversations. That’s one of our altitude controls.” Which I can only really interpret as a mishearing / misreading of “Duke Gildenberg”.
Alamogordo News details…
Incidentally, the Alamogordo News article included some interesting details, such as optimal launch time:
“[…] showed the early morning hours of from five to six to be the most successful to gain the 30 to 40-thousand feet altitudes attained by the device”
Also, it’s probably not hugely relevant but I thought I ought to relay the single mention of Colorado:
“The radar has been successful, he explained, up to 40 miles, while some of the balloon-towed groups have gone as far as Colorado.”
The people listed in the article were:
- Major C. M. Mangnum
- Lt. S. W. Seigel
- Major W. D. Pritchard
- Capt. L. H. Dyvad
Charles Moore admitted to knowing Captain Larry Dyvad (a pilot who worked for the Army’s Air Materiel Command, and who was based at Alamogordo), but claimed not to have heard of the others. Yet Albert Crary’s journal mentions meeting Pritchard twelve times betwen December 1946 and April 1947, e.g. the entry for 7th April 1947:
“Talked to [Major W. D.] Pritchard re 3rd car for tomorrow. Gave him memo of progress report for MOGUL project to date…”
“Major C. M. Mangum” would appear to be Cledous Mathew Mangum, who I found a reference to as the 1951 author of “Paperclip or Project 63 Personnel” at the Environmental Division, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. He was Deputy for Operations at Holloman in 1952, and retired in 1959.
Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 UFO sighting
Where was I going with all this? My point was that I can’t help but conclude that Duke Gildenberg set out to shovel a bit of skeptical dirt at Kenneth Arnold’s famous 24th June 1947 UFO sighting.
Arnold’s sighting was of “a diagonally stepped-down echelon formation” of nine shiny things, that he thought were moving terrifically fast. Intriguingly, similar light formations were reported by other people close to the same location: L. G. Bernier of Richland, WA; Ethel Wheelhouse of Yakima, WA; a member of the Washington State forest service; and Sidney B. Gallagher.
What Gildenberg appears to have tried to do was dismiss these as early cluster balloon sightings. Yet it’s not so easy to make these phenomena historically line up. The first documented actual Project Helios balloon flight was from September 1947; while for Project Mogul, there were very few Helios-configuration balloons – #7, #8, #9 according to Charles Moore, but only #7 according to the table in the McAndrew report.
To be fair, I can see how the lifter cluster (the top part) could possibly fly away, let loose by the 35,000 feet detonator, never to be seen again. But that would surely only be for polyethylene balloons? A neoprene balloon lifter cluster would surely have burst relatively quickly?
Finally, it seems likely to me (from Charles Moore’s description) that the NYU group did launch more cluster balloon tests from Colorado later in the year. But these could only have been much later than the Kenneth Arnold sighting, so it’s extraordinarily unlikely to have been the cause of that.
So, all in all, I’d say that it appears Gildenberg may have been trying a bit too hard to play to the skeptical gallery here.
Nick, I think some allowance has to be made for the usual things which create apparent inconsistencies in historical accounts – poor expression, accidental omissions, corrections made by others, fading memory and so on.
Not all errors are ill-motivated or deliberate. As hypothetical example suppose someone who read the 2003 article told Gildenberg he’d been mistaken and the Colorado group were actually part of a naval program.
I’m not arguing the case; only suggesting that changes of mind or of recollection aren’t necessarily evidence of dishonest motives.
Interesting post.