Page 21 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition

They’re Balloons Dammit Not Alien UFOs!
Rob McConnell: “I Told
You So!
They’re Balloons Dammit
NOT
Alien UFOs!”
On July 6, 1947, foreman William Brazel
was patrolling the Foster cattle ranch, 50
kilometres outside the town of Roswell,
New Mexico, when he noticed some
strange debris strewn across the ground.
The debris was composed of a strange,
silvery metallic substance, parts of which
were covered in strings of mysterious
symbols resembling Egyptian
hieroglyphs. The following day, Brazel
contacted the nearby Roswell Army Air
Field, who immediately dispatched a
team to inspect and recover the debris.
On July 8, Walter Haut, the airfield’s
public information officer, issued a press
release announcing that the Army Air
Force had recovered a “flying disc” from
a nearby ranch. This statement was
quickly retracted and replaced with
another explaining that the debris was
merely the remains of a weather balloon.
But it was too late. The first
announcement was quickly picked up by
multiple news outlets and spread like
wildfire around the country, touching off
a cultural obsession with flying saucers,
alien visitations, and government
coverups that persists to this day. But
while UFO skeptics are quick to point out
that the Roswell “flying saucer” was
merely a weather balloon, the truth of the
matter is actually far more interesting.
For the debris that fell on Foster ranch
that July day in 1947 was, in fact, part of
a top-secret Air Force effort to spy on the
Soviet Union using high-altitude
balloons.
Balloons have a long and illustrious
military history stretching back to the
wars of the French Revolution, when they
were used to direct the movement of
soldiers and artillery on the battlefield.
Balloons continued to be used for
battlefield reconnaissance until the end of
the First World War, when this role was
taken over by more capable aircraft.
However, balloons saw limited use
during the Second World War as
offensive weapons, particularly by
Imperial Japan. Lacking long-range
bomber aircraft with which to attack the
mainland United States, the Japanese
instead turned to unmanned high-altitude
balloons. Known as Fu-Go, these
21
weapons consisted of a 10-metre- governments took over Hungary and
diameter mulberry paper envelope filled Poland, in 1948 the Soviet Union
with hydrogen, below which were blockaded Berlin, and in 1949 Mao
suspended various high-explosive and Zedong’s communists won the Chinese
incendiary bombs. Launched from Japan, Civil War and the Soviets tested their
the Fu-Go rose to an altitude of 9,100 own atomic bomb years ahead of western
metres and were carried 8,000 kilometres predictions. To counter this mounting
across the Pacific Ocean by the high- communist threat, the U.S. Government
altitude Jet Stream. After three days, a needed reliable intelligence from behind
timer ignited a flash bomb to destroy the the Iron Curtain. This was easier said
envelope, dropping the payload onto the than done. The Soviet Union and the
target. As the hydrogen in the envelope People’s Republic of China were closed
would expand during the day and societies, making the infiltration of
contract at night, causing the balloon’s human spies almost impossible. And
altitude to fluctuate, the weapons carried while U.S. Air Force aircraft regularly
a simple but effective altitude control flew reconnaissance missions along the
system that automatically released ballast borders of the Soviet Union and its
if the balloon sank too low and vented satellite states, none dared cross into
hydrogen from the envelope if it rose too Soviet territory for fear of being shot
high. Though aiming at specific targets down and setting off an international
was impossible, the balloons were crisis. Faced with a veritable black hole
intended to spread terror and ignite forest of information regarding Soviet military
fires in the Pacific Northwest, depleting and nuclear capabilities, the U.S. Army
strategically-vital stocks of timber. Over Air Force, like the Japanese before them,
9,000 Fu-Go were launched between turned to high-altitude balloons as a
November 1944 and April 1945, but due possible solution.
to unpredictable weather over the Pacific
only around 10% made it to North (Continued on Page 22)
America, causing negligible damage and
killing six picnickers near Bly, Oregon on
May 5, 1945. But while the Fu-Go
offensive was a dismal strategic failure,
the balloons’ ability to maintain their
altitude over great distances was noted
with great interest by U.S. Intelligence,
and would prove very useful in the
immediate post-war years.
In the late 1940s the United States and
the western world faced an ever-
escalating series of international crises.
In 1946 and 1947 communist