Photo By Krissy Krummenacker / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images Friedman giving a talk about UFOs in 2007. While interest in flying saucers and UFOs went from strength to strength, Roswell disappeared from the narrative. It’s hard to imagine these elite personnel – many of whom were familiar with weather balloons – being fooled in this way.īut post-war America was very different from today, and in that calmer, more trusting-of-authority era, the weather balloon explanation was almost universally believed. This is especially true given that the 509th Bomb Group was the only atomic bomb-capable squadron anywhere in the world at the time. Nowadays, with the 24/7 news cycle, internet, social media and an activist community of UFO researchers, such a claim – followed by such an about-turn – would no doubt cause controversy and conspiracy theories on a massive scale. The news sent shockwaves around the world, but it’s the iconic front page headline of the local Roswell Daily Record that’s best-known: 'RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region'.Īt Fort Worth Army Air Field on 8 July 1947, Brigadier General Roger M Ramey (left) and Colonel Thomas J Dubose, identify metallic fragments found at Roswell as pieces of a weather balloon. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters." "Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home.
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Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.
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"The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. "The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County. The military base’s public information officer, Walter Haut, worked with a local journalist to release a newswire report about the event: He’d brought some samples of the debris, and when the sheriff contacted the nearby Army airbase, intelligence officer Jesse Marcel went to the crash site with Brazel and recovered more debris.Ĭourtesy, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Photograph Collection, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library, Arlington, Texas Thinking there might be a connection and guessing something might have crashed during a recent storm, he alerted the authorities. He’d found it days earlier but hadn’t thought much of it until the stories about flying saucers emerged. On 7 July a local rancher named ‘Mac’ Brazel contacted the sheriff in Roswell to say he’d discovered strange debris spread over the ranch. More reports were received, suggesting these sightings were commonplace but had previously gone unreported.Īs this ‘summer of the saucers’ progressed, media coverage intensified to a point of near-hysteria, until matters came to a head and it seemed the mystery might be resolved.
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This wasn’t the first sighting of what we now call a UFO (unidentified flying object), but it was the first to capture the public imagination, making news headlines around the world. Credit: KTSDesign / Science Photo Library The term 'flying saucer' has now entered our common vocabulary.