On 8th July 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued the most important press release of the century. The headlines read:
"RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region"
"Army Declares Flying Disc Found"
"Army Finds Air Saucer on Ranch in New Mexico"
They claimed to have found a crashed flying saucer on a sheep ranch near Corona, 120 km from Roswell, New Mexico. Later that same day, they denied it and it was not talked about for 30 years. Was this the start of the UFO cover-up?
INVESTIGATING THE INCIDENT
In 1978, nuclear physicist Stanton FRIEDMAN met a television station manager in Louisiana while waiting to be interviewed about his work on UFOs. The station manager directed him to a man named Jesse MARCEL, who had apparently handled pieces of a flying saucer when he was in the military. MARCEL had been the Intelligence Officer at the RAAF IN 1947 when a flying saucer was supposed to have crashed.
FRIEDMAN partnered with UFOlogist William MOORE to give the events a time frame. MOORE found newspapers from 8th July 1947, at the University of Minnesota Library, covering the Corona-Roswell event. The papers gave names for the rancher, the sheriff, the RAAF personnel and a time frame. By 1980, two years on, FRIEDMAN and MOORE had met with Lieutenant HAUT, who shared a base year book with them, and they talked to 62 people concerned with the event, including Bill BRAZEL, son of the rancher who found the wreckage, and others who handled some debris, such as Loretta PROCTOR, and Jesse MARCEL's son, Jesse junior.
By 1986, FRIEDMAN and MOORE had spoken to 92 people and published six papers. TV show Unsolved Mysteries ran a segment about Roswell in their NBC-TV programme, enabling FRIEDMAN to seek other witnesses.
In August 1989, while filming in Roswell, FRIEDMAN met with mortician Glenn DENNIS. He had worked for the Ballard Funeral Home, which provided mortuary services to the base. DENNIS spoke about strange activity he witnessed at the Army base hospital in 1947. He stated that the public had just gone through a World War and news of a flying saucer would have been too much to deal with.
DENNIS believes alien bodies were recovered in the crash. He claimed to have met with a nurse at the base who told him about 'very smelly' bodies she had seen being autopsied by two doctors. The bodies had brownish-grey skin, no hair, big heads with slits or holes for nose, ears and mouth, and four slender fingers with no thumb. After meeting with DENNIS a few times, the nurse apparently moved to England. But when he tried to contact her again, DENNIS' mail was returned, stamped 'DECEASED'.
ANOTHER CRASHED UFO?
Despite some of the unverifiable details of the Crash, the broadcast of Unsolved Mysteries in September 1989 was a great success, being seen by 28 million people in the US, followed by a rush of books, TV shows and attacks by debunkers. By now, the researchers had separated into two tribes - while they all agreed that at least one UFO had crashed on sheep ranch, one group of researchers, which included FRIEDMAN, believed there had been a second crash on the plains of San Augustin, New Mexico.
The second-crash theory relies on the testimony of two key witnesses; Gerald ANDERSON and Grady 'Barney' BARNETT. ANDERSON contacted FRIEDMAN after seeing a 1990 re-run of the Unsolved Mysteries documentary.
Sadly, BARNETT had died, but he had told his story to two friends, LaVerne and Jean MALTAIS. Independently, both men relayed BARNETT's story of alien bodies in or around saucer debris, and according to ANDERSON, one of the aliens survived the crash.
Many UFOlogists express reservations about the crash at San Augustin because BARNETT could not be questioned about what he saw.
The facts surrounding the Corona crash, however, have become almost universally accepted and by the time FRIEDMAN's book, Crash at Corona (co-written by aviation science writer, Don BERLINER) was published in 1992, most of the blanks in the story had been filled in.
THE WHOLE STORY
The story of the Roswell crash began on 2nd July 1947, when sheep rancher Mac BRAZEL heard a powerful explosion in the middle of an electrical storm. The following morning, BRAZEL, who operated the Foster ranch, went to check on a water pump.
On the way, he discovered debris scattered across a 1 km long area. He could fold the metallic debris several times and it would unfold spontaneously. There were also pieces of what was described as small I-beams with very unusual light purple coloured symbols along the inside of the I. The beams had the weight of balsa wood (craft/hobby wood) but could not be broken or burned.
On Sunday, 6 July, BRAZEL transported the wreckage in his pickup truck to the Roswell Sheriff, George WILCOX. WILCOX contacted the Army base and spoke with the Intelligence Officer, Major MARCEL. The Roswell base commander, Colonel William BLANCHARD, instructed MARCEL and Sheridan W. CAVITT, a Counter Intelligence Officer, to follow the rancher out and collect the rest of the debris.
FINDING THE WRECKAGE
MARCEL sumised, judging from the wreckage, that something exploded above ground while travelling at a high speed and, being familiar with air activities, stated "it was not a weather balloon, nor was it a plane or a missile."
The men took as much of the debris as they could hold, leaving a lot of it behind, and on the way back the Roswell base, MARCEL stopped off at his home to show his wife and their son, Jesse junior.
The next morning, Colonel BLANCHARD ordered the area near Corona sealed off. A large group of soldiers and military police were sent to the ranch and a detailed search was made of the area. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Walter HAUT, Public Information Officer at the RAAF issued a press release at noon indicating that a flying disc had been captured. However, because of the time differences in the US, it was too late for most morning papers except the last edition of the Los Angeles Herald Express. The local newspapers were inundated with queries from the media and the public.
MARCEL was instructed to get a B-29 crew to take him and the wreckage to Wright Field (now known as Wright Patterson Air Force Base) in Ohio, where the US Army stockpiled captured enemy equipment. On the way, he stopped at Fort Worth, Texas, head quarters of the Eighth Air Force.
By this time, the Acting Director of Strategic Air Command in Washington, General Clemens McMULLEN, contacted Colonel Thomas Jefferson DuBOSE, the Chief of Staff at Fort Worth and told him to create a cover story and hand over the running of the incident to General Roger RAMEY, the base commander.
When MARCEL arrived In Fort Worth, weather-balloon wreckage and a radar reflector, made of foil and wooden sticks, were brought in by Irving NEWTON, the base meteorologist. MARCEL posed with the bogus wreckage and the press were informed that a mistake had been made, that it was not a flying saucer, but a radar reflector. RAMEY told MARCEL not to say anything, he was sent back to Roswell and the cover story went out about 5pm central time. The next day, Headlines read "Reports of Flying Saucers Dwindle: New Mexico "Disc" is only Weather Balloon" with the subtitle 'General Believes it is Radar Weather Gadget'. Pictures of the wreckage appeared in many papers in the days that followed, but nothing more was heard for 30 years.
ALIEN BODIES FOUND
In 1990, Stanton FRIEDMAN interviewed an Army Air Force's photographer who was stationed at the Anacostia Naval Air Station, Washington D.C. (wishing to be known only as FB) who claims to have seen bodies in the field near Corona.
The clean-up of the Foster ranch and surrounding area took one week. The search for debris was expanded and, after two days, the main body of the saucer was found close to the Foster ranch. And just over 1.6 km from the craft, dead alien bodies were found.
FB said he and a fellow photographer were ordered to fly to the RAAF and when they arrived at Roswell, they were taken to a tent in a field and told to photograph its contents. They photographed four bodies with heads appearing too large for their small bodies.
ALIEN AUTOPSY
Since January 1995, a supposed alien autopsy video has been watched all over the world. While the alien in the film appears similar to a eyewitness descriptions, the supposed cameraman claims to have taken the footage on 31 May 1947 near Socorro, New Mexico.
According to Ray SANTILLI, the music producer who claims to have bought the film from the cameraman, a number of military personnel from 1947 recognize the alien as the creature recovered from a saucer crash in New Mexico. But can this footage shed new light on the real events in July 1947? Could there have been a third UFO crash?