1947 […]
Similarly, it has also been alleged that General Hoyt Vandenberg, Deputy Chief of Staff at the time, had been involved in directing activity regarding events at Roswell. Activity reports […] located in General Vandenberg’s personal papers stored in the Library of Congress did indicate that on July 7 he was busy with a “flying disk” incident; however, this particular incident involved Ellington Field, Texas, and the Spokane (Washington) Depot. After much discussion and information-gathering on this incident, it was learned to be a hoax. There is no similar mention of his personal interest or involvement in Roswell events except in the newspapers.
The above are but two small examples that indicate that, if some event happened that was one of the “watershed happenings” in human history, the US military certainly reacted in an unconcerned and cavalier manner. In an actual case, the military would have had to order thousands of soldiers and airmen, not only at Roswell but throughout the US, to act nonchalantly, pretend to conduct and report business as usual, and generate absolutely no paperwork of a suspicious nature, while simultaneously anticipating that 20 years or more into the future people would have available a comprehensive Freedom of Information Act that would give them great leeway to review and explore government documents. The records indicate that none of this happened (or if it did, it was controlled by a security system so efficient and tight that no one, US or otherwise, has been able to duplicate it since. If such a system had been in effect at the time, it would have also been used to protect our atomic secrets from the Soviets, which history has showed obviously was not the case). The records reviewed confirmed that no such sophisticated and efficient security system existed.
As previously discussed, what was originally reported to have been recovered was a balloon of some sort, usually described as a “weather balloon,” although the majority of the wreckage that was ultimately displayed by General Ramey and Major Marcel in the famous photos […] in Ft Worth, was that of a radar target normally suspended from balloons. This radar target, discussed in more detail later, was certainly consistent with the description of a 9 July newspaper article which discussed “tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks”. Additionally, the description of the “flying disk” was consistent with a document routinely used by most pro-UFO writers to indicate a conspiracy in progress—the telegram from the Dallas FBI office of 8 July 1947. This document quoted in part states: “…The disk is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by a cable, which balloon was approximately twenty feet [6m] in diameter… the object found resembles a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector… disk and balloon being transported…”
Similarly, while conducting the popular-literature review, one of the documents reviewed was a paper entitled “The Roswell Events” edited by Fred Whiting, 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 6 May 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 5 May 1991. “…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 burn. 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 22 September 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 [5–8cm] 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 torn like ordinary aluminum foil can be torn…”
Sally Strickland Tadolini (neighbor of W. W. Brazel; nine years old in 1947). Affidavit dated 27 September 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 well-tanned 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 7 June 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 […] 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? feet [75cm] across the bottom. The rest were in small packages, about the size of a shoebox. 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 shoebox-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 24 May 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
