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52 The Aliens Never Left Roswell, NM

In 1947, A High-Altitude

Balloon Crash Landed in

Roswell. The Aliens Never

Left

Despite its persistence in popular
culture, extraterrestrial life owes
more to the imagination than reality

Smithsonian.com

In Roswell, New Mexico, on or about July 8,
1947, the first little green men arrived...or so
they want us to believe.
Let’s start closer to the beginning. On
June 14, 1947, a rancher named W.W. “Mac”
Brazel and his son Vernon were driving across
their ranchland some 80 miles northwest of
Roswell when they encountered something
they’d never seen before. It was, in Brazel’s
words, “a large area of bright wreckage made up
of rubber strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper,
and sticks.”
The metallic-looking, lightweight fabric
was scattered, shredded across the gravel and
remarkably unusual events underscoring the
sagebrush of the New Mexico desert. Brazel
situation at hand.
didn’t know what to do with the newfound
Everywhere you looked in 1947, the
items, or how they had landed on the property,
global, social and political chessboard was
so on July 4 he collected all of the mysterious
being re-divided. The Soviet Union began to
wreckage he could find. On July 7, he drove it
claim eastern European nations for itself in a
all to Roswell, delivering the goods to Sheriff
George Wilcox. new post-war vacuum. Voice of America started
broadcasting in Russian to the eastern bloc,
Wilcox, too, was confounded.
peddling the principles of American democracy.
Seeking answers, he contacted Colonel
The U.S. sent V2 rockets carrying payloads of
“Butch” Blanchard, commander of the Roswell
corn seeds and fruit flies into outer space. The
Army Airfield’s 509th Composite Group,
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the
located just outside of town. Blanchard was
“Doomsday Clock” ticking, and the Marshall
stymied. Working his way up the chain of
Plan was in the making to rebuild war-torn
command, he decided to contact his superior,
Europe. Small wonder that in the heat of
General Roger W. Ramey, commander of the
8th Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas. summer that year, flying saucers became all the
rage.
Blanchard also sent Major Jesse Marcel,
On June 21, Navy Seaman Harold Dahl
an intelligence officer from the base, to
claimed to have seen six unidentified flying
investigate more thoroughly. Accompanied by
objects in the sky near Maury Island in A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
the sheriff and Brazel, Marcel returned to the
Washington state’s Puget Sound. The next with KEVIN RANDLE
site and collected all of the “wreckage.” As they
morning, Dahl said he was sought out and www.XZBN.net
tried to ascertain what the materials were,
debriefed by “men in black.”
Marcel chose to make a public statement. On
Three days after the Dahl sighting, an
July 8, Marcel’s comments ran in the local
afternoon newspaper, the Roswell Daily amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold said he
had spotted a flying saucer in the sky by Mount
Record, alongside a headline stating “RAAF
Rainer, Washington.
Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell.”
“UFOs aren’t unusual,” Launius says.
The body of the story contained a
“They’re simply unidentified things you see in
dramatic, memorable sentence: “The
the sky. We’ve all probably seen them. And, if
intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment
you look long enough, you’ll probably
Group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at
eventually figure out what it is you’re looking
noon today, that the field has come into the
at. It’s not extraterrestrials.”
possession of a Flying Saucer.”
“Apparently, it was better from the Air By the end of 1947, mass hysteria had
seized the global mindset, with more than 300
Force’s perspective that there was a crashed
alleged “flying saucer” sightings in the last six
‘alien’ spacecraft out there than to tell the truth,”
months of that year alone.
says Roger Launius, the recently-retired curator
“Not that there was ever any credible
of space history at the Smithsonian’s National
evidence to support the sightings,” Launius
Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
adds.
“A flying saucer was easier to admit
than Project Mogul,” Launius adds, a chuckle in
(Continued on Page 55)
his voice. “And with that, we were off to the
races.” “The only difference between a dream and CONNECTING WITH COINCIDENCE
It was after the close of World War II, a reality, is just doing it.” with DR. BERNARD BEITMAN, MD
time when nuclear weapons cast a long shadow. Rob McConnell - The ‘X’ Zone Radio Show www.XZBN.net
Truth-telling was not a priority, and there were