THE FLAWS AND CONTRADICTIONS IN THE U.S. AIR FORCE’S ROSWELL REPORTS

by Spartacus01

In an effort to dismiss the Roswell incident as a mere case of misidentification and public hysteria, the United States Air Force released two official reports: The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert (1994) and The Roswell Report: Case Closed (1997). At first glance, these reports may appear to provide a definitive resolution to the Roswell mystery. However, a more thorough examination reveals numerous contradictions, factual errors, and logical inconsistencies that ultimately undermine their credibility. This analysis will therefore critically assess the inconsistencies within the official explanations presented in these two reports, demonstrating why they fail to account for the available evidence.

PROJECT MOGUL AND ROSWELL

According to the 1994 Air Force report, the Roswell debris originated from a Top Secret project, known as Project Mogul. Project Mogul was a classified operation carried out in the 1940s, intended to monitor Soviet nuclear tests by detecting the sound waves generated by high-altitude detonations. To achieve this, the project utilized long strings — or “arrays” — of high-altitude balloons equipped with various instruments, including microphones, radios, and radar reflectors called “rawin targets.” These arrays were massive and complex, sometimes stretching hundreds of feet in length, and were made up of several weather balloons linked together, with components made of neoprene, balsa wood, tape, and metallic foil. The Air Force report states that what crashed near Roswell was one of these arrays — specifically, a balloon train launched on 4 June 1947, known as Flight No. 4. The report claims that this flight was carried out from Alamogordo, New Mexico, and drifted toward the Roswell area before crashing on the Foster Ranch, and claims that the debris discovered by Mack Brazel was in fact composed of the radar reflectors, foil sheets, balsa wood sticks, and other components of the balloon array.

However, several issues undermine the credibility of this explanation. Most significantly, there is no conclusive evidence that Flight No. 4 was ever launched. The personal diary of Dr. Albert Crary, the scientific leader of Project Mogul, indicates that the scheduled launch for that day was canceled due to overcast weather conditions.

Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 [midnight] and 06 this am. No balloon flights again on account of clouds. Flew regular sono buoy up in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver of the ground but poor on plane. Out with Thompson pm. Shot charges from 1800 [6:00 p.m.] to 2400 [midnight].

While Crary did mention the release of balloons on 4 June, the entry makes it clear that this was not a full-scale Mogul flight, but rather a limited test involving a sonobuoy carried by a simple cluster of balloons. This rudimentary configuration lacked the defining features of a complete Mogul array — it did not contain radar reflectors, rawin targets, acoustic sensors (aside for the sonobuoy itself), or the intricate rigging typical of standard launches. Therefore, even if some equipment was briefly airborne, it could not have resulted in the sort of debris later described by Major Jesse Marcel and other witnesses. According to the official project records, the first documented Mogul flight was Flight No. 5, launched on 5 June 1947. Unlike the mysterious and undocumented Flight No. 4, Flight No. 5 was an operational mission with a known trajectory and documented construction. However, it too lacked certain components — namely, rawin radar reflectors. Furthermore, Flight No. 5 did not pass near the area of the Foster Ranch, eliminating it as a plausible source for the debris discovered by Brazel.

The Air Force’s 1994 report attempted to retroactively designate the balloon activity on 4 June as “Flight No. 4” and then attributed the Roswell debris to it. Yet this contradicts Crary’s own account, which stated that no full balloon flights occurred that day. The notion that a hastily assembled sonobuoy test — which did not include radar reflectors or other standard Mogul hardware — could have produced large metallic-looking fragments is not supported by the documentation or physical descriptions given by eyewitnesses. Thus, the foundation of the 1994 Air Force report rests on a speculative and unsubstantiated assertion: that a non-existent or partial test flight produced a debris field consistent with a full Mogul array. Since the array described in the report did not exist, and since no other Mogul flights match the circumstances, the explanation provided in 1994 collapses under scrutiny.

Some skeptics, recognizing the issues with Flight No. 4, have instead proposed that Flight No. 9, launched on 3 July 1947, might be the real Roswell culprit. This alternative theory was first proposed by Roswell skeptic Karl Pflock in his monograph Roswell in Perspective. Pflock hypothesized that Flight No. 9 could be the true source of the debris, as it was the only official Mogul flight that was never recovered. Since its final location was unknown, he speculated that it could have come down near Roswell. However, this hypothesis was later disputed by Pflock himself. As he explained in his book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, he definitely abandoned the Flight No. 9 hypothesis after having a detailed conversation with Charles Moore — Albert Crary’s assistant — concerning the 3 July flight.

In early 1994, when I was writing Roswell in Perspective, I strongly suspected that the next numbered flight was the Roswell culprit. At that time, no information was available for Flight 9. It was missing from all the NYU/Project Mogul documentation I had gathered. Professor Moore and former Mogul project officer Trakowski told me they could recall nothing about it. However, Moore said he remembered that several flights were “classified out” of the NYU Project 93 reports and reports on subsequent balloon programs in which he was involved. He thought Flight 9 might have been one of those. It was the only flight in the NYU project’s Alamogordo numbered launch sequence of July 1947 that was missing from the project reports, and it seemed likely to have been launched on Friday, July 4, or possibly the day before, making it a good Roswell “saucer” candidate. Moore and Trakowski were firm in their recollections that Friday, July 4, was not a holiday for the NYU and Watson Labs Mogul teams at Alamogordo. Theirs was a crash project, and they worked very long hours, seven days a week. The mystery of Flight 9 is now resolved, as I will explain below.
[…]
Six years ago, I thought NYU Flight 9 was the Roswell culprit. This Mogul service flight is missing from the Project 93 reports on the NYU team’s July 1947 operations, and it seemed likely to have been one of the flights lofted with the new polyethylene balloons, which I thought could account for Major Marcel’s mystery material. Information recorded in the field diary of Alamogordo Mogul group chief Albert Crary deflated this idea.
In the spring of 1994, Professor Moore was able to obtain, from Dr. Crary’s widow, a copy of the portion of the diary covering the period from May 24 through July 15, 1947. He kindly furnished me with a copy and a transcription he had prepared from the handwritten text, offering the following in his cover letter: «The diary provides an explanation for NYU Flight #9 and a reason for its absence from the flight summary. When the need for the instrumented flight vanished with the further postponement of the V-2 firing [due to an accident] at WSPG [White Sands Proving Ground] on the evening of July 3, 1947… the balloon cluster (probably of meteorological balloons) was released without instruments. After the cancellation of the V-2 firing, the balloons inflated for the hastily cobbled-together second flight on July 3 would surely have been stored inside North Hangar for later use if they had been made of polyethylene, since they were in short supply. The fact that Crary recorded they were released with a dummy load suggests to me that those balloons were of the meteorological sounding variety, of which we had a large supply. Crary’s diary and the NYU report both indicate that Flight #8, launched that morning, was tracked somewhat by radar. From these, I would conclude that radar targets were probably also included initially in the devices to be carried by Flight #9. However, I think that we would have removed the radar targets from the flight train if there was to be no tracking.»
Moore told me that this also explained why Flight 9 was not written up in the NYU project reports. Only those flights from which useful performance data were obtained were summarized in those documents. Since no data were gathered on Flight 9, it was ignored. However, a photographic record remains, preserved by Eileen Farnochi. Some of these photos appear in this book. They confirm Moore’s thoughts about the flight. It was a small cluster of neoprene sounding balloons, with no instrumentation and carrying no radar targets. It included nothing unusual or mysterious, used no then-exotic polyethylene. My Flight 9 notion had been shot down.

Thus, whether proponents of the Mogul hypothesis point to Flight No. 4 or Flight No. 9, the same fundamental problems persist: a lack of radar targets, an inadequate volume of debris, and materials that do not match the descriptions provided by the witnesses.

A second major flaw in the Air Force’s explanation concerns the exaggerated level of secrecy attributed to Project Mogul. While the project’s ultimate objective — detecting Soviet nuclear tests — was classified, the balloon launches themselves were not. These balloons, along with their radar reflectors, were released in broad daylight and were frequently observed by the local population. Although the public may not have been aware of their precise purpose, they were certainly cognizant of the military’s frequent balloon launches. Furthermore, the designation “Project Mogul” appears in documents as early as 1946 and was referenced in multiple reports classified only as “Confidential” — a relatively low level of secrecy.

Crary, in his diary, mentions the name “Mogul” more than once. On December 11, 1946, Crary wrote, “Equipment from Johns Hopkins Unicersity [sic] transferred to MOGUL plane.” On December 12, 1946, he wrote, “C-54 unloaded warhead material first then all MOGUL eqpt with went to North Hangar.” On April 7, 1947, Crary, according to his diary, “Talked to [Major W. D.] Pritchard re 3rd car for tomorrow. Gave him memo of progress report for MOGUL project to date…” A report from Wright Field on August 25, 1947, classified only “Confidential”, concerned a suspected hoax crash disc from Illinois sent to them by the FBI for analysis. The term “Project Mogul” was explicitly used, saying that the object had nothing to do with it. Another FBI memo a month later, referencing the Wright Field report, uses the term “Operation Mogul” four times even though this memo also had a low classification.

If a Mogul array had crashed, there would have been no necessity for an elaborate cover-up. Indeed, other Mogul balloons did crash in New Mexico during that same period, yet none of these incidents required suppression. None of them resulted in contradictory official statements, heightened military secrecy, or implausible explanations. Most importantly, none of these crashes occurred within the appropriate timeframe or in the correct location to be associated with the Roswell debris.

JESSE MARCEL AND ROSWELL

A third critical issue is the testimony of Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who personally handled the debris recovered at the Foster Ranch. Marcel described the material as exhibiting “memory metal” properties and stated that it could not be cut or burned. If the wreckage had consisted of something as mundane as Mylar — which, incidentally, did not exist in 1947 — there is no conceivable way he could have mistaken it for something extraordinary. Marcel was an intelligence officer trained to handle classified military technology. He was widely respected by his peers and superiors. Those who worked alongside him, such as Sheridan Cavitt, described him as highly competent and meticulous in his work. Lieutenant Colonel Payne Jennings, who served as the base operations officer at Roswell Army Air Field, regarded Marcel as one of the most skilled intelligence officers he had encountered. Colonel William Blanchard, Marcel’s direct superior and the commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Group, placed great trust in his judgment, regularly assigning him to handle classified intelligence assessments. Captain Edwin Easley, the base Provost Marshal, confirmed that Marcel was known for his keen attention to detail and ability to identify even the smallest anomalies in recovered materials. Major General Clements McMullen, who oversaw intelligence operations at the time, had sufficient confidence in Marcel’s abilities to later approve his transfer to Washington, D.C., for high-level intelligence work. If the Roswell debris had been nothing more than the remnants of a Mogul array, Marcel would have recognized it immediately. There is no plausible scenario in which an experienced intelligence officer would have mistaken the wreckage of a balloon for something extraordinary.

ALIEN BODIES AND CRASH TEST DUMMIES

The Air Force’s 1997 report sought to address accounts of alien bodies by asserting that the witnesses had mistaken crash test dummies from high-altitude parachute experiments for extraterrestrial cadavers. However, this explanation is riddled with inconsistencies. First, the anthropomorphic dummies used in Project High Dive and Excelsior were not deployed until the 1950s — several years after the Roswell crash.

Operation High Dive (also known as Project High Dive) was a secret project carried out during the 1950s by the United States Air Force. It tested high-altitude parachutes using anthropomorphic dummies. The dummies went into a 200 rpm flat spin, which would be fatal to a human.

Project Excelsior was a series of parachute jumps made by Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force in 1959 and 1960 from helium balloons in the stratosphere. The purpose was to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system intended to be used by pilots ejecting from high altitude. In one of these jumps Kittinger set world records for the longest parachute drogue fall, the highest parachute jump, and the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere. He held the latter two of these records for 52 years, until they were broken by Felix Baumgartner of the Red Bull Stratos project in 2012, though he still holds the world record for longest time in free fall.

The Air Force’s claim that the witnesses confused events from different decades is wholly unconvincing, particularly given that many testimonies describing small, humanoid bodies were provided by individuals who were already adults in 1947. Such individuals would not have mistakenly conflated an event they personally witnessed with unrelated tests conducted years later. Moreover, the dummies utilized in these experiments bore no resemblance to the beings described by the witnesses. They were distinctly human in appearance, outfitted with standard military jumpsuits and harnesses, and did not resemble the smooth-skinned, small-bodied entities described by the witnesses. Additionally, even if one were to entertain the implausible notion that trained military personnel and civilians alike misidentified test dummies as extraterrestrial beings, this would still not explain the military’s concerted efforts to recover and conceal the bodies. Crash test dummies were standard military equipment, and their retrieval would not have necessitated an extensive cover-up operation.

CONCLUSIONS

One might argue that the inconsistencies within the two Air Force reports do not necessarily imply that the object that crashed near Roswell was an extraterrestrial spacecraft. And, in principle, this is a reasonable objection. However, the problem is that there is no alternative scenario — apart from the extraterrestrial hypothesis — that adequately explains why, even after the Cold War had ended, the military persisted in fabricating implausible explanations rather than simply disclosing the truth.

If the debris discovered by Mack Brazel had been the wreckage of some kind of experimental vehicle, why would it still require secrecy to this day? In the immediate aftermath of the incident, it would have been strategically logical for the military to obscure the crash of an experimental vehicle by disseminating both the cover story of a downed weather balloon and that of a crashed flying saucer. However, in the long term, there would have been no rationale for perpetuating this deception by introducing the fabricated Mogul balloon explanation in 1994. By that time, the Cold War had ended, and there was no longer any strategic imperative to manufacture yet another misleading narrative to conceal an event that had long ceased to be relevant. Why continue issuing contradictory official accounts for over sixty years instead of simply revealing the truth? By the 1990s, the U.S. government had already declassified numerous controversial Cold War programs, and an admission that Roswell involved the crash of an experimental aircraft would not have provoked widespread public outrage or disbelief. Thus, if the debris found on the Foster Ranch had been of terrestrial origin, there would have been no reason to maintain the secrecy.

It is only by postulating that the object that crashed near Roswell was a flying saucer of extraterrestrial origin that this logical contradiction is resolved. The extraterrestrial hypothesis remains the only explanation that accounts for the military’s persistent obfuscation and repeated issuance of implausible explanations — long after any potential Cold War concerns had become obsolete.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert by United States Air Force
The Roswell Report: Case Closed by United States Air Force
Roswell in the 21st Century by Kevin Randle
Understanding Roswell by Kevin Randle
There Was No Flight No. 4 by Kevin Randle
The End of Project Mogul by Kevin Randle
Mogul Flight No. 4 - The End by Kevin Randle
Roswell, Sheridan Cavitt and Project Mogul by Kevin Randle
Roswell in Perspective by Karl Pflock
Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe by Karl Pflock
Roswell & Major Jesse Marcel’s Postwar Service Evaluations by David Rudiak
Operation High Dive (Wikipedia page)
Project Excelsior (Wikipedia page)