July 5, 1947: Brazel was routinely riding the ranch property with his neighbor's son Dee Proctor, age 7, and discovered a debris field 300 yards wide and 3/4 of a mile long. He collects a sackful of "stuff".
July 6, 1947: Brazel takes his stuff to Sheriff Wilcox in Roswell; Wilcox calls Intelligence Officer Jesse Marcel at RAAF and Marcel comes into town. Marcel decides to follow Brazel back to the ranch where they stay in a cabin that night.
July 7, 1947: Brazel and Marcel investigate the debris site. Marcel collects some of the debris and, on his way back to the base to meet with his boss, Col. Blanchard, stops by his house and shows his son Jesse Jr, age 11, the material.
Glenn Dennis, working in a local mortuary, gets a call from RAAF inquiring about the availability of child-size caskets in stock, and wanting information on how to preserve bodies that had been exposed to the weather. Later, Dennis returns an injured airman to the base, and saw "strange things" in the back of ambulances. He was told to get out of there immediately, and escorted out by the military with threats to his life.
July 8, 1947: Col. Blanchard, head of RAAF, told his PR officer, Lt. Walter Haut, to issue a press release about the UFO recovery. The military philosophy was to inform the public that the craft had been secured so that the public would not attempt to explore the site.
Jesse Marcel takes some of the debris to Ft. Worth to Gen. Ramey. Gen. Ramey spreads the debris on the floor of his office and then tell Marcel to leave the room. When Marcel returns, the debris has been removed and replaced with weather balloon debris. Ramey tells Marcel not to speak about the incident.
During the period of July 9-12, Brazel is held by the military so they could "inspire" him to modify his story to that of a crashed weather balloon. Brazel was subjected to full body searches, sleep deprivation, and irregular sleep periods.
The mortician, Glenn Dennis, met a friend who was a nurse at RAAF and she drew what she saw - big eyed aliens - on an examining table. She was transferred the next day to England and was declared dead by the military soon after.
July 9, 1947: Gen. Ramey issues a press release to the AP that the saucer story is just a weather balloon.
"Pappy" Henderson, pilot, flies alien bodies (that he saw) from RAAF to Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
Major Edgar Skelley, pilot, flies a second set of bodies to Ft. Worth.
Orville Wright even weighed in on the incident.
Also on the 9th, local radio station KGFL was "encouraged" not to air an interview with Mac Brazel.
In 2002, the University of New Mexico supervised a dig at the crash site, where, among other significant facts, a trench dug across the presumed crash trench revealed soil color and texture differences.
The International UFO Museum and Research Center takes it's work very seriously. There are thousands of documents and photos detailing various aspects of the "alleged" coverup, from deathbed confessions to photographs of trucks and "low boy" trailers leaving the crash site with tarped items the size of Volkswagens. A complete research facility continually searches for documents, letters and photos that might surface from long lost attics and basements. If true, perhaps the most telling display is one of the smallest:
The Museum takes time to poke fun at itself.
The truth? Who knows? After touring the museum, however, and being something of a conspiracy theorist, I find it very easy to believe that the military covered up the incident. Why? Perhaps to prevent panic, perhaps to prevent a fundamental change in the way that we view ourselves. Instead of being residents of a state or a country, with loyalty to that country, we would become "earthlings", and that would reduce or eliminate the one thing that states require: power. Perhaps the coverup was needed to prevent a colossal shift in our religious values that believe we are the sole beings in the universe. Who can say?
If possible, I suggest a visit to Roswell to view all the documentation and make your own decision. But know this: many, many people were involved and not all of them could be crackpots.
After this visit, we returned to the Roswell Army Air Field/Walker Air Force Base.
The Walker Air Museum occupies a small room in the airport terminal, detailing a number of interesting things in the history of the air field. Perhaps the most interesting is an autographed hat worn by Col. Paul Tibbits, the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan in WWII. The Enola Gay was based at Roswell before her historic flight, and returned there after the war.
Our stop in Roswell has been both illuminating and melancholy. The "Roswell Incident" information has piqued our interest, and the short look at the airbase has brought back an interest in finding out more about my father's life. Perhaps both will be pursued in the future.
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