Today, July 3 in 1947, Rancher Mack Brazel of New Mexico (left) was out riding with a neighbor kid and ran across a large amount of debris littering one of the fields on the Foster Ranch, where he was foreman.
A couple of days later, Brazel was in the little, nearby town of Corona where he reported his find to the sheriff.
Thus began a series of events that are now known as the "Roswell Incident."
The name Roswell got involved because Roswell is the nearest "big" town near Corona. It was also the location of an important Army Air Field that became important to the story. And there was a second debris field found near Roswell itself.
Strange things happened during this incident, including the detention of Mac Brazel for several days, following which he changed elements of his story.
He wasn’t the only one.
The Army initially put out a press release saying that they’d found the wreckage of a "flying saucer." Yes! That’s right! The Army really did claim to have found a flying saucer.
Of course, this was only two weeks after pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting that gave us the term "flying saucer." It wasn’t yet a fixed part of saucer mythology that they were from other worlds. At the time, many might reasonably have thought they were classified aircraft we or the Germans or someone had come up with in or immediately after WWII.
On the right is the front page of the Roswell Daily Record for July 8, 1947, with the lead story based on the Army press release. HERE’S A LINK TO THE TEXT.
The story was also carried by numerous papers around the world, including THE TIMES OF LONDON.
The saucer story was the government’s first account of what happened at Roswell.
But they immediately changed their story.
The government’s second story was that it was a weather balloon that had crashed. In Ft. Worth, Texas Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey (left) displayed alleged wreckage from the weather balloon.
The third story came out in 1994, when the government conceded that what crashed wasn’t a weather balloon. They still claimed it was a balloon, though–part of PROJECT MOGUL–a covert Cold War project using high-altitude balloons in an attempt to monitor distant nuclear tests being done by Russia.
GET THAT VERSION OF THE STORY.
That didn’t explain the "alien bodies" people reported seeing at Roswell, though.
Enter the fourth story: In 1997 the government issued a report, which claimed that the alleged alien bodies were really crash test dummies like the one pictured on the right, which was donated to and is on display at the Roswell UFO Museum.
Problem is: These dummies weren’t in use in 1947. They were in use something like ten years later. The Air Force has countered that the alleged witnesses’ memories suffer from "time compression"–that is, they’re misremembering when they saw dummies by almost a decade.
There are some fascinating theories about what happened at Roswell, including some that have nothing to do with aliens. One is really shaking up the UFO community right now. I’ll mention more about that in the near future.
In the meantime, the Roswell Incident continues to be debated and continues to have a strong presence in popular culture through countless movies, films, and books.
The real explanation for what happened is the stuff of which debates are made.
Fortunately, I happen to know what the Truth behind Roswell is.
I was delighted to see that this Roswell-related post concluded with a link to that classic episode of “DS9.” Yay!
I also know the truth of what happened there, but if I told you I would have to kill you.
By the way, its well into July 4th. here – 2.06 pm to be precise, so –
Happy Independence Day, Americans!
No, Jimmy, the REAL truth of the Roswell incident was told in the “Futurama” episode “Roswell That Ends Well.”
Read something recently pointing out that UFO sightings have declined in recent years. It argued that it was most likely due to an increased ability on the part of the military to hide their testing, either to improved knowledge at hiding them or due to planes being able to fly at higher levels.
I really don’t doubt that our military was allowing people to believe in “flying saucers” rather than provide even the slightest information about their development of new systems.
My nephew’s girlfriend’s grandfather (how’s that for a degree of separation!) worked at Area 51. All he would say, or all he’d say that he’s allowed to say, is “It’s what you think but it’s not what you think.”
I’m inclined to think the Roswell thing is kinda the same. If we knew the real truth, we’d either say, “that’s cool,” or yawn.
And the DS9 version has gotta be way more fun than the truth! 😉