Case · UFO Afrinews No 17, February 1998 (cover); masthead printed as January 1998
ROSWELL CRASH, New Mexico, USA, 1947
1947 · Roswell, New Mexico, United States
Outside the region. Hind reprinted this case from elsewhere; it has a file here but no place on the map.
What was reported
Hind briefly sets out the Roswell story for readers, offering a free précis by post to anyone unfamiliar with it. Something is alleged to have crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947; after a broadcast admitting a crashed disc, the Army Air Force called it a 'Raudive' balloon (as printed), later revised to a top-secret Mogul balloon for detecting Soviet nuclear tests. She adds an overlooked official suggestion that it was a small Japanese balloon bomb launched in early 1945, prompted by strange writing on I-beams shown to Jesse Marcel's young son. The 1997 explanation, that the bodies were 6 ft 3 in parachute-test dummies, was ridiculed even by sceptic Philip Klass because the dummies date from 1953 and the reported bodies were about 4 ft tall.
What Hind made of it
Hind thinks the US government's shifting explanations have become a joke, greeted with laughter at MUFON, and asks whether it is time the government admitted it does not know what happened; she credits Stanton Friedman's research for showing something momentous occurred.
Explanation offered
'Raudive' (weather) balloon; Mogul balloon; Japanese balloon bomb; 1953 parachute-test dummies
In their words
-
isn't it time the United States government admit that they too don't really know what's going on?
Cross references
- Editorial in this issue
- MUFON 1997 Symposium, Grand Rapids