66th anniversary of the Roswell incident

[Saru]

Today marks precisely 66 years since the infamous UFO crash took place at Roswell, New Mexico.

Conspiracy theorists have claimed that US military had captured a crashed alien aircraft outside Roswell in July 1947, but authorities insisted that the incident merely involved the recovery of debris from a top secret surveillance balloon.

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[Taun]

The one thing about that event that still makes me disbelieve the official story, is that Maj Marcel could not identify it... The guy was an Intel Officer in an Aviation Unit... He had probably seen thousands of military and civilian balloons... And I'm pretty sure just putting some aluminum foil on it would not have made it so unrecognizable....

I have no idea what it actually was... but I'm pretty sure if it had been any form of balloon - or made of any form of balloon material... it would have been instantly recognized as such...

Edited July 8, 2013 by Taun

[Keith10284]

According to the story, he was coerced into saying that balloon was what he saw. What he actually saw was quite different according to his son and a few others. I dare say they all got the threats from the government & what not, but after so many people have been silenced & the alleged crash covered up, those who speak out aren't going to be taken seriously anyway. I saw a documentary about it some time back with statements from people who were there & what they said made a lot of sense, if it were true.

Just my opinion, anyway.

[itsnotoutthere]

On or around Independence Day, 1947, during a severe thunderstorm near Roswell, New Mexico, an Air Force experiment using high altitude balloons blew apart and fell to the earth. This minor event in the history of reconnaissance turned out to be the Big Bang of UFOlogy. UFO enthusiasts have come to see that 4th of July as the day an alien spaceship crashed on Earth. Some UFOlogists claim that aliens were taken away by the U.S. Air Force and other government coconspirators for an interrogation or an autopsy. Some claim that all our modern technology was learned by analyzing and copying the technology of the aliens.

The actual crash site was on the Foster ranch 75 miles north of Roswell, a small town doing a big business feeding the insatiable appetite of UFO enthusiasts. Roswell has a UFO museum, The International Museum & Research Center, and hosts an annual alien festival. Shops cater to this curious tourist trade, much as Inverness caters to the Loch Ness crowd. This seems a bit unfair to Corona, New Mexico, which is actually the closest town to the alleged crash site. Roswell is the nearest military base, however, and that is where the remains of the alien craft and its occupants were allegedly taken. Why the aliens were not taken to a superior medical facility remains a mystery.

William "Mack" Brazel, foreman of the Foster Ranch, along with 7-year-old Dee Proctor found the most famous debris in modern history. They had never seen anything like it before. Millions now agree: the stuff was strange. Actually, it was pretty mundane stuff, including a piece of reinforcing tape whose flower-like design was taken to be alien hieroglyphics. But the Air Force was not consistent in describing the debris and has suggested that ardent UFOlogists have had a little trouble with their source memory. Perhaps what people are recalling as a single event is actually a mixture of several events that occurred in different years (such as weather balloon and nuclear explosion detection balloon tests, airplane crashes with burned bodies, and dumping of featureless dummies from airplanes). The likelihood that Roswell is a reconstruction involving many events over many years is supported by the fact that Roswell was ignored by UFOlogists until Charles Berlitz and William Moore published a book on the subject in 1980, more than thirty years after the event.

The National Enquirer also brought Roswell to the forefront in 1980 with a story featuring Jesse Marcel, the Army Major who, in 1947 may have been responsible for a press release that claimed our military had possession of parts of a flying disk, the kind that Kenneth Arnold had reported seeing just a couple of weeks earlier. (Others say the press release came from Walter Haut.) Roswell was one of hundreds of such "sightings" reported shortly after the news media spread the word of Arnold's "flying saucers." The success of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) probably also contributed to the atmosphere that led to the rising of Roswell like the Phoenix from alien ashes to the top of the UFO myth list some three decades after the alleged fact.

UFO buffs trust Berlitz and others with fantastic stories based on 30-year-old memories. That the government made errors and was inconsistent is taken as sufficient evidence that there is a massive conspiracy by the government and mass media. They are trying to conceal the truth from the general public that the aliens have landed. Some even believe that the U.S. government has signed a treaty with the aliens.

Skeptics agree that something crashed near Roswell in 1947, but not an alien craft. Skeptical explanations have varied from weather balloons to secret aircraft to espionage devices. Current conventional wisdom among skeptics is that what was found on the Foster ranch was part of Project Mogul, a top secret project testing giant, high-flying balloons to detect Soviet nuclear explosions.

To skeptics, Roswell is a classic example of what D.H. Rawcliffe called retrospective falsification. An extraordinary story is told, then retold with embellishments and remodeled with favorable points emphasized while unfavorable ones are dropped. False witnesses put in their two cents, such as mortician Glen Dennis (Gildenberg 2003). In the case of Roswell, we also have a few unreliable characters who add their delusions, such as Whitley Strieber, Budd Hopkins and John Mack (see the alien abduction entry). There is also Robert Spencer Carr, the high school graduate who liked to be called "Professor Carr." Carr is a hero in the UFO literature, but his stories of flying saucers and alien creatures were all delusions. His son has written: "I am so very sorry that my father's pathological prevarication has turned out to be the foundation on which such a monstrous mountain of falsehoods has been heaped" (Carr 1997). It was that mountain of falsehoods that became part of the UFO memory, fixating conviction in a remarkable tale. It happened at Fatima (during a time when the only aliens thought to be visiting our planet were messengers from some god) and it happened at Roswell. One might think, however, that unlike the belief in our Lady of Fatima and other apparitions from the supernatural world, Roswell might be settled some day since it involves testable hypotheses and refutable claims. Don't count on it. UFO enthusiasts are every bit as devoted to their belief system as religious devotees are to theirs. Evidence and rational argument are of little concern to those who consider science fiction to be a wiser guide than science, logic and reasonable probability.

[Ashotep]

I think Marcel could tell the difference between a balloon and a flying disk. I think its a government cover up. I wouldn't be surprised to find some of our latest and greatest isn't based on UFO technology. That's the only reason I think they wanted to cover it up. Didn't want the Soviets to find out about it. I can understand that but why not now tell the truth.

[smokeycat]

On or around Independence Day, 1947, during a severe thunderstorm near Roswell, New Mexico, an Air Force experiment using high altitude balloons blew apart and fell to the earth. This minor event in the history of reconnaissance turned out to be the Big Bang of UFOlogy. UFO enthusiasts have come to see that 4th of July as the day an alien spaceship crashed on Earth. Some UFOlogists claim that aliens were taken away by the U.S. Air Force and other government coconspirators for an interrogation or an autopsy. Some claim that all our modern technology was learned by analyzing and copying the technology of the aliens.

The actual crash site was on the Foster ranch 75 miles north of Roswell, a small town doing a big business feeding the insatiable appetite of UFO enthusiasts. Roswell has a UFO museum, The International Museum & Research Center, and hosts an annual alien festival. Shops cater to this curious tourist trade, much as Inverness caters to the Loch Ness crowd. This seems a bit unfair to Corona, New Mexico, which is actually the closest town to the alleged crash site. Roswell is the nearest military base, however, and that is where the remains of the alien craft and its occupants were allegedly taken. Why the aliens were not taken to a superior medical facility remains a mystery.

William "Mack" Brazel, foreman of the Foster Ranch, along with 7-year-old Dee Proctor found the most famous debris in modern history. They had never seen anything like it before. Millions now agree: the stuff was strange. Actually, it was pretty mundane stuff, including a piece of reinforcing tape whose flower-like design was taken to be alien hieroglyphics. But the Air Force was not consistent in describing the debris and has suggested that ardent UFOlogists have had a little trouble with their source memory. Perhaps what people are recalling as a single event is actually a mixture of several events that occurred in different years (such as weather balloon and nuclear explosion detection balloon tests, airplane crashes with burned bodies, and dumping of featureless dummies from airplanes). The likelihood that Roswell is a reconstruction involving many events over many years is supported by the fact that Roswell was ignored by UFOlogists until Charles Berlitz and William Moore published a book on the subject in 1980, more than thirty years after the event.

The National Enquirer also brought Roswell to the forefront in 1980 with a story featuring Jesse Marcel, the Army Major who, in 1947 may have been responsible for a press release that claimed our military had possession of parts of a flying disk, the kind that Kenneth Arnold had reported seeing just a couple of weeks earlier. (Others say the press release came from Walter Haut.) Roswell was one of hundreds of such "sightings" reported shortly after the news media spread the word of Arnold's "flying saucers." The success of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) probably also contributed to the atmosphere that led to the rising of Roswell like the Phoenix from alien ashes to the top of the UFO myth list some three decades after the alleged fact.

UFO buffs trust Berlitz and others with fantastic stories based on 30-year-old memories. That the government made errors and was inconsistent is taken as sufficient evidence that there is a massive conspiracy by the government and mass media. They are trying to conceal the truth from the general public that the aliens have landed. Some even believe that the U.S. government has signed a treaty with the aliens.

Skeptics agree that something crashed near Roswell in 1947, but not an alien craft. Skeptical explanations have varied from weather balloons to secret aircraft to espionage devices. Current conventional wisdom among skeptics is that what was found on the Foster ranch was part of Project Mogul, a top secret project testing giant, high-flying balloons to detect Soviet nuclear explosions.

To skeptics, Roswell is a classic example of what D.H. Rawcliffe called retrospective falsification. An extraordinary story is told, then retold with embellishments and remodeled with favorable points emphasized while unfavorable ones are dropped. False witnesses put in their two cents, such as mortician Glen Dennis (Gildenberg 2003). In the case of Roswell, we also have a few unreliable characters who add their delusions, such as Whitley Strieber, Budd Hopkins and John Mack (see the alien abduction entry). There is also Robert Spencer Carr, the high school graduate who liked to be called "Professor Carr." Carr is a hero in the UFO literature, but his stories of flying saucers and alien creatures were all delusions. His son has written: "I am so very sorry that my father's pathological prevarication has turned out to be the foundation on which such a monstrous mountain of falsehoods has been heaped" (Carr 1997). It was that mountain of falsehoods that became part of the UFO memory, fixating conviction in a remarkable tale. It happened at Fatima (during a time when the only aliens thought to be visiting our planet were messengers from some god) and it happened at Roswell. One might think, however, that unlike the belief in our Lady of Fatima and other apparitions from the supernatural world, Roswell might be settled some day since it involves testable hypotheses and refutable claims. Don't count on it. UFO enthusiasts are every bit as devoted to their belief system as religious devotees are to theirs. Evidence and rational argument are of little concern to those who consider science fiction to be a wiser guide than science, logic and reasonable probability.

Don't believe everything that you read at 'The Skeptic's Dictionary' web site. They can be just as dogmatic as anyone.

[scowl]

Don't believe everything that you read at 'The Skeptic's Dictionary' web site. They can be just as dogmatic as anyone.

But what they say make sense.

You'd think after 66 years UFOlogists would have given up and moved onto a better case. Oh that's right... there is no better case.

[Junior Chubb]

I just completed the UFO game on the Google homepage. Am I a Ufologist now?

[smokeycat]

But what they say make sense.

You'd think after 66 years UFOlogists would have given up and moved onto a better case. Oh that's right... there is no better case.

I bow to your superior knowledge.

[scowl]

I bow to your superior knowledge.

I don't know anything that everyone else doesn't know!

[smokeycat]

I don't know anything that everyone else doesn't know!

True.

[Fishface]

The Roswell incident is an absolute minefield as far as arguments for and against it having been a UFO event are concerned, and is probably best avoided otherwise it just ends up in a slanging match between skeptics and believers. But something that always strikes me about the matter is that of all the reports of debris that was found at the crash site there is never any mention of string or rubber having been found as would be the case if it had been a downed balloon train of any kind and there would surely have been quite a large amount of it. Strange!

[Spacenut56]

The Roswell incident is an absolute minefield as far as arguments for and against it having been a UFO event are concerned, and is probably best avoided otherwise it just ends up in a slanging match between skeptics and believers. But something that always strikes me about the matter is that of all the reports of debris that was found at the crash site there is never any mention of string or rubber having been found as would be the case if it had been a downed balloon train of any kind and there would surely have been quite a large amount of it. Strange!

That is true. As far as for Roswell, yes, it is a minefield, just as climate change/global warming is as well. There are those in both camps, who believe and who do not. And thats the way they will always be most likely. But you are correct, I have not heard about any string or rubber found period.

[Rafterman]

I think Marcel could tell the difference between a balloon and a flying disk. I think its a government cover up. I wouldn't be surprised to find some of our latest and greatest isn't based on UFO technology. That's the only reason I think they wanted to cover it up. Didn't want the Soviets to find out about it. I can understand that but why not now tell the truth.

Yeah, we're all just a bunch of moronic knuckle draggers who couldn't invent ourselves out of a wet paper bag without ET helping us.

Personally I'd prefer to not spit on the memory of generations of great scientists and engineers by saying they were too stupid to do what they did without help.

[MJNYC]

The Roswell incident is an absolute minefield as far as arguments for and against it having been a UFO event are concerned, and is probably best avoided otherwise it just ends up in a slanging match between skeptics and believers. But something that always strikes me about the matter is that of all the reports of debris that was found at the crash site there is never any mention of string or rubber having been found as would be the case if it had been a downed balloon train of any kind and there would surely have been quite a large amount of it. Strange!

Ohhhhh, now that's smart! You are so very correct! LOL

[little_dreamer]

I just completed the UFO game on the Google homepage. Am I a Ufologist now?

Me too. That nuclear watering can was very helpful.

[Junior Chubb]

Me too. That nuclear watering can was very helpful.

Glad to meet another Alien who made it back home...

Yup, it took me a while to find the watering can, not only that but I needed my 8 year old son to point out that the rope and horseshoe might be able to lassos part of the saucer.

Got there in the end though.

[scowl]

Yeah, we're all just a bunch of moronic knuckle draggers who couldn't invent ourselves out of a wet paper bag without ET helping us.

Yeah, there really weren't any miraculous inventions after Roswell so it's odd that people keep making this baseless statement. You'd think an extraterrestrial spaceship would have enough technology to start a scientific revolution but it never happened. Even travelling to the Moon decades later was crude brute-force technology. Thanks for the help, aliens.

Personally I'd prefer to not spit on the memory of generations of great scientists and engineers by saying they were too stupid to do what they did without help.

A lot of these smart people work anonymously for corporations or governmental institutions now so they don't get popular recognition like the Einsteins and the Oppenheimers did.

[Space Commander Travis]

I see Go Ogle have a rather alaborate interactive thingy about it. It seems to involve the adventures of an Alien who's trying to get himself back home, although as with all these things I can never work out exactly what you're supposed to do. Anyway, it is rather cute.

[Space Commander Travis]

Don't believe everything that you read at 'The Skeptic's Dictionary' web site. They can be just as dogmatic as anyone.

Their name does rather suggest that they're not primarily interested in being even-handed and prepared to consider that there migth possibly be something in it, doesn't it.

[Junior Chubb]

I see Go Ogle have a rather alaborate interactive thingy about it. It seems to involve the adventures of an Alien who's trying to get himself back home, although as with all these things I can never work out exactly what you're supposed to do. Anyway, it is rather cute.

Go straight down and get the first part of the UFO, continue down and go left, untie the cow to get the rope, drop down the hole the cow leaves after eating the grass, pick up the radio-active watering-can, water the plant, climb up the plant and out. Head to the right, climb the ladder to get the horseshoe, pick up the bag of grain, use the horse-shoe and lasso to get the second part of the UFO, continue to the right. Feed the chicken with the grain, pick up the feather she leaves, water the tree with the watering-can, climb the tree, tickle the sleeper with the feather, get the last piece of UFO and fly away so that nobody ever knows that a UFO ever crashed there, do all this before midnight local time for no reward whatsoever.

I really had to much spare time today...

Edited July 8, 2013 by Junior Chubb

[Space Commander Travis]

Go straight down and get the first part of the UFO, continue down and go left, untie the cow to get the rope, drop down the hole the cow leaves after eating the grass, pick up the radio-active watering-can, water the plant, climb up the plant and out. Head to the right, climb the ladder to get the horseshoe, pick up the bag of grain, use the horse-shoe and lasso to get the second part of the UFO, continue to the right. Feed the chicken with the grain, pick up the feather she leaves, water the tree with the watering-can, climb the tree, tickle the sleeper with the feather, get the last piece of UFO and fly away so that nobody ever knows that a UFO ever crashed there, do all this before midnight local time for no reward whatsoever.

I really had to much spare time today...

I tried climbing the tree but didn'ty seemt o get any further. so that's what you're supposed to do with the rope is it? Well, it's always useful for learning something around here.

[Almagest]

Just like JFK, 9/11 and the Moon Landings, I doubt we're ever going to hear the end of the conspiracies. I think a major problem with Roswell is that so much has been added to the story over the years, it's impossible to tell fact from fiction. When I first heard/read/saw the story there were two witnesses - Jesse Marcel Jr. who claimed that his father brought home parts of the wreckage that displayed bizarre characteristics, but was otherwise described as balsa wood and aluminium foil(not exactly the sturdiest materials for building a space ship), and the town coroner/doctor who reported that there were bodies. Since then everyone who was related to someone who lived within a hundred kilometres of Roswell seems to have come forward with something new to add. I don't find any of the explanations particularly convincing, but I find the extraterrestrial explanations way less convincing than the weather balloon ones.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Almagest

[Junior Chubb]

I tried climbing the tree but didn'ty seemt o get any further. so that's what you're supposed to do with the rope is it? Well, it's always useful for learning something around here.

It reminded me of a polished Spectrum 48k game, pick up an object, use it find another. I think experience got me through.

[Wyverna]

Happy Roswell Day, I guess.

This case is 66 years old. I seriously doubt we'll get the answers people want so long after the incident. I think it's just time to move on to other things.

An intriguing case but one that's done its run.