For four long days before the fateful crash of a flying
disc near Roswell, New Mexico, military radar instal-lations tracked a
mysterious object as it flitted about in the southern skies, periodically
vanishing from radar screens, but always returning. Most UFO historians
set July 2, 1947 as the official date of the crash, but it was not until
July 4, Independence Day, that the unidentified blip disappeared from radar
for good. Two full days before rancher Mac Brazel would alert the
local sheriff to the metallic debris littering his field, Roswell Army
Air Force officials knew the object was down, somewhere north of town.
They had, from their safe radar haven, watched it crash.
William Woody watched the crash with his own eyes. He
described a bright white light with red streaks in it, spinning silently
and slowly downward. His father joined him in a search for the crash
site, but they found highway 285 already blocked by military personnel.
By afternoon, July 5, great flatbed trucks had arrived
at the site. Every visible scrap of debris, including the bodies
of five extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs), was loaded up and
transported to the base at Roswell. Camouflage experts were brought
in to eliminate all traces of the crash from the natural environment.
Within hours of the EBE bodies reaching the Roswell base,
town mortician Glen Dennis received a series of strange telephone calls.
Did he have a number of small, child-sized coffins in stock? Could they
be hermetically sealed? How might badly burned and decomposing bodies
be preserved without altering their chemical make-up? Certain some
terrible disaster had occurred, Dennis offered to help in any way that
he could. He was told the questions were for future reference only.
There was no disaster.
Glen Dennis wound up at the Roswell base hospital that
day, anyway – in that small community, he was the local ambulance driver
as well as the mortician. Called to transport an injured airman for
treatment, Dennis found the hospital parking lot blocked by a line of military
field ambulances loaded with metallic debris. Some pieces were inscribed
with what looked like Egyptian hierogly-phics.
Guessing a plane had crashed, he again offered his help,
only to find himself roughly escorted off the base by two MPs. A gruff,
red-haired captain warned him:
"There was no crash here. You did not see anything. You
don't go into town. You don't tell anybody you saw anything. If you
do... somebody'll be picking your bones out of the sand."
THE STRANGE DEBRIS
Meanwhile, Mac Brazel, a Corona, New Mexico ranch-er,
was scratching his head in bewilderment before what would paradoxically
become known as the "first site" (the
"second site" being the location where the bodies were
recovered). His pasture was thick with metallic debris, as far as
the eye could see.
On Sunday, July 6, he loaded a box with samples of the
strange material and headed for Roswell. Sheriff George Wilcox could not
identify the metal fragments, but guessed from Brazel's description of
the sheer quantity of debris scattered across his land that a military
plane, or even a secret weapon, must have crashed there. He telephoned
the Intelligence Officer for Roswell's 509th Bomb Group, Major Jesse Marcel.
Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt drove together to
the Brazel ranch. At first light, July 7, they visited the crash
site, finding debris spread out over an area approximately three quarters
of a mile long, and several hundred feet wide. Samples held over a cigarette
lighter would not burn. Pieces as light as a feather could not be
broken or cut with a knife. They loaded the truck with debris, and Marcel
ordered Cavitt to drive back to the base.
Alone in the field, he then filled a box with the strange
material, and raced home to show his family what he was convinced were
pieces of a flying saucer. Three decades later, Major Marcel’s son,
Jesse Marcel, Jr., would undergo hypnosis to more clearly remember that
night. He described seeing silver foil which, when crumpled, quickly
expanded again to its original, wrinkle-free shape. He remembered
I-beams etched with strange, purple writing and different geometric shapes,
leaves, and circles. He helped his father load the debris back
into the family car. Major Marcel returned to base.
THE PRESS RELEASE
Public Information Officer Lieutenant Walter Haut turned Marcel's report into a military press release, and, on July 8, The Roswell Daily Record broke the story:
The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer.
Evening papers across the country pulled the story off
the wire service and announced the "invasion" to the world. Telephones
at the sheriff's office, the Roswell Daily Record newsroom, and RAAF headquarters
went crazy with demands for confirmation.
Major Marcel was ordered to fly to Fort Worth, and then
to Wright Field in Ohio to meet with a General Ramey concerning the incident.
Marcel spread chunks of debris across the general's desk, and demonstrated
the material's special properties for the general and his staff.
THE COVER-UP
Ramey took Marcel down a long hallway to have him mark
the crash site on a large map. When they returned to the office,
the mysterious debris was gone, and the twisted pieces of a weather balloon
were laid out on the office floor.
Public Information Officer Major Charles Chashen took
two photos of Marcel crouching next to the balloon, and the Fort Worth
Star Telegram was fed the now official story that no flying disc had been
recovered. In his excitement, the revised account stated, Marcel
had merely misident-ified one of the hundreds of Project Skyhook weather
balloons launched daily from the Roswell base.
A press conference was held, at which several weather
officers verified the new version of the story. The crashed disc
rumors died almost overnight.
Soon after, Mac Brazel was escorted by military officers
to the broadcast booth of KGFL radio, where they waited nearby as he publicly
recanted his original version of the crash story. Then they escorted
him out.
Frankie Rowe was 12 years old in 1947. Her father,
a lieutenant in the fire department, had handled pieces of the debris and
had shown them to his daughter. Soldiers came to their house, threatening
their lives.
Sheriff Wilcox was warned to keep silent.
It was suggested that Robert Dennis, a fighter pilot
and the brother of Glen Dennis, might suffer should the mortician speak
out.
THE EBE BODIES
Eager to discover the truth, Dennis contacted a nurse
he knew at the base. She agreed to meet him at the officer's club.
"I can't believe what I've just seen," she told him,
face pale, her hands shaking. “This is the most horrible thing I've ever
seen in my life."
She took out a small prescription pad and sketched one
of the "foreign bodies" she had helped autopsy. She described the
unbearable stench of the operating theater, the inhuman anatomy of the
creatures.
Still shaking, she excused herself to return to the base
before her absence was noticed. She was never seen again.
MARCEL SPEAKS OUT
Major Jesse Marcel returned to Roswell and his military
career. But many years later, from 1978 until his death in
1986, he finally broke his public silence on the incident, speaking out
against the ridiculous weather balloon hoax in which he was compelled by
his commanding officers to participate, and making it clear that the debris
he gathered from Mac Brazel's field that fateful summer was the remains
of nothing constructed on this Earth. "It came to Earth," he told
reporters, "but not from Earth!"