46 Fun Facts About Roswell Incident

In which US state is Roswell?

Roswell is a city in southeastern New Mexico; the debris was found about 75 miles away near Corona, but the air base that handled it was in Roswell.

Roswell Army Air Field was renamed as which Air Force base in 1948?

Roswell Army Air Field became Walker Air Force Base in 1948, named for Brigadier General Walker, a bomber commander killed over Rabaul in 1943; the base closed in 1967.

What did the Roswell debris actually come from?

The debris came from a Project Mogul balloon train: a string of neoprene balloons carrying radar reflectors and acoustic sensors, which the Air Force identified as Mogul Flight No. 4.

What was Project Mogul intended to detect?

Project Mogul was meant to detect Soviet nuclear tests by lofting microphones to catch low-frequency sound from distant blasts; it was dropped in early 1949 for seismic and air-sampling methods.

Which rancher found the debris on the land he managed near Corona?

W. W. 'Mac' Brazel managed the Foster ranch near Corona; he found the scattered debris in mid-June and, after hearing 'flying disc' talk in early July, took pieces to the sheriff.

What did the rancher tell the Roswell Daily Record the debris consisted of?

The rancher told the Roswell Daily Record the debris was rubber strips, tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks, and the paper added that no engine, propeller or metal parts had been found.

From which base was the Mogul balloon train launched on 4 June 1947?

Contact was lost within 17 miles of Brazel's ranch; the Air Force later pinned the debris on Flight No. 4.

Whose sighting near Mount Rainier on 24 June 1947 set off the flying-saucer craze?

Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot, reported nine shiny objects skimming past Mount Rainier at an estimated 1,200 mph; the press coined 'flying saucer' from his description of their motion.

What was Roswell Army Air Field notable for in 1947?

Roswell Army Air Field housed the only unit able to deliver nuclear weapons: the 509th Bomb Group, which had dropped the atomic bombs on Japan two years earlier.

Which two officers were sent with the rancher to gather the material from the ranch?

Major Jesse Marcel, the base intelligence officer, and Captain Sheridan Cavitt of the Counter Intelligence Corps went out to the ranch; Cavitt later swore he had thought from the start it was a balloon.

Who issued the 8 July 1947 press release announcing the recovery of a 'flying disc'?

Walter Haut, the base public information officer, put out the release on the base commander's orders; decades later he co-founded Roswell's UFO museum with Glenn Dennis and Max Littell.

Which general identified the material as a weather balloon at a Fort Worth press conference?

Brigadier General Roger Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force, displayed the debris in his Fort Worth office and declared it a weather balloon with a radar reflector.

A hoax 'crashed disc' days after Roswell, in Twin Falls, Idaho, turned out to be built from what?

The Twin Falls disc was built from parts of a jukebox by four teenagers and exposed within days; the summer's wave of saucer reports faded soon after.

Which 1948 con introduced small grey bodies and super-strong metal to UFO lore?

The Aztec story, a con by Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer set near the town of Aztec, was sold to Variety columnist Frank Scully, whose 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers spread it.

'Hangar 18', where legend says recovered corpses were kept, is supposedly at which Ohio installation?

Legend puts Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton; the Air Force says no such hangar exists, and the tale echoes the 1968 novel The Fortec Conspiracy.

Which ufologist rekindled interest by interviewing Jesse Marcel in 1978?

Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist based in Canada, interviewed the retired officer in 1978 after a tip in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; his work relaunched Roswell as a UFO story.

Which TV series, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, aired Marcel's account in 1980?

The 1980 account aired on In Search of..., the documentary series hosted by Leonard Nimoy from 1977 to 1982, and put Roswell in front of a mass audience.

Marcel's son recalled 'purple-hued hieroglyphics' on a beam. What did they match?

Project Mogul used the toy-company tape; Brazel's daughter remembered foil showing 'pastel flowers'.

Who wrote the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, the first Roswell conspiracy book?

Charles Berlitz and Bill Moore wrote The Roswell Incident (1980); Berlitz was already known for The Bermuda Triangle, and the book was the first to treat the crash as a cover-up.

What did The Roswell Incident add to the story that Marcel himself never mentioned?

The book added extraterrestrial corpses, said to have been seen by Grady Barnett on the Plains of San Agustin, some 150 miles west of the debris field; the intelligence officer never claimed any bodies.

According to the 1980 book, what killed the alien crew?

The 1980 book says a lightning strike hit the saucer during a thunderstorm, scattering debris over the ranch; the crippled craft was then said to have come down on the Plains of San Agustin.

What was 'Majestic 12'?

The photographs of documents arrived anonymously in 1984; Bill Moore later confessed to feeding fake evidence to researchers.

Which Air Force disinformation officer admitted feeding fabricated UFO material to researchers from Kirtland AFB?

Richard Doty, an Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent at Kirtland, admitted passing fabricated UFO material to researchers, including the 1981 'Aquarius' document that first mentioned 'MJ Twelve'.

What was Glenn Dennis's profession when he became Roswell's 'star witness' in 1989?

Glenn Dennis was a mortician at Roswell's Ballard Funeral Home; he claimed the base had phoned him about small caskets and that a nurse described an alien autopsy to him.

What happened when researchers checked on the woman Glenn Dennis said had witnessed the autopsy?

Naomi Self became Naomi Sipes; leading ufologists concluded no bodies were recovered at all.

Which TV programme's 1989 Roswell episode was watched by 28 million people?

Unsolved Mysteries, hosted by Robert Stack, aired its Roswell episode in 1989 to an audience put at 28 million; Glenn Dennis came forward after seeing it.

Which congressman's 1993 inquiry led to the Air Force reports of the 1990s?

Congressman Steven Schiff, a Republican from Albuquerque, asked the General Accounting Office in 1993 to find the records, which prompted the Air Force's 1994 and 1997 reports.

Which animated series sent its crew back to 1947 in 'Roswell That Ends Well'?

Futurama's 'Roswell That Ends Well' (2001) strands the Planet Express crew in 1947, where Dr. Zoidberg is mistaken for an alien; it won the 2002 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program.

Which British entrepreneur claimed in 1995 to have footage of an alien autopsy from Roswell?

Ray Santilli, a London music and video producer, sold the 'alien autopsy' film in 1995; in 2006 he admitted it had been staged in a Camden flat, calling it a 'reconstruction'.

Which effects expert said Alien Autopsy misrepresented his view that the footage was an obvious fake?

Stan Winston, the effects creator behind Aliens and Jurassic Park, called the footage an obvious fake and complained that Fox's Alien Autopsy programme misrepresented his view.

Which senator demanded his foreword be removed from Philip Corso's 1997 book The Day After Roswell?

Strom Thurmond had supplied a foreword believing the book was a memoir of Corso's military career; when its alien claims came out he asked the publisher to remove it.

Annie Jacobsen's 2011 Area 51 book claimed the Roswell 'aliens' were child-sized aviators created by whom?

Jacobsen's Area 51 claimed Josef Mengele, for Stalin, had surgically altered children to pose as aliens aboard a Soviet flying-wing craft; the historian Richard Rhodes dismissed the account as error-ridden.

Slides shown as a dead alien at Jaime Maussan's 2015 UFO conference depicted what?

The 'alien' was a mummified Native American child; a deblurred placard in the slide showed it had been displayed at the Chapin Mesa museum in Mesa Verde, Colorado.

Which president said he had 'all the Roswell papers reviewed' to avoid 'gazillions of letters'?

Bill Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel in 2014 that, with the Roswell 50th anniversary approaching in 1997, he had the papers reviewed and found no aliens.

Which 1996 blockbuster reveals a Roswell crash and cover-up, complete with experiments on alien corpses?

Independence Day (1996) reveals the Roswell craft and alien corpses held at Area 51, where Brent Spiner's Dr. Okun has studied them for decades.

In which Deep Space Nine episode do the characters travel to 1947 and trigger the Roswell incident?

'Little Green Men' (1995) sends Quark, Rom and Nog crashing into Roswell in 1947; its director James L. Conway had also made the 1980 film Hangar 18.

Which Air Force captain wrote the 1997 report Case Closed?

Captain James McAndrew wrote The Roswell Report: Case Closed (1997), the Air Force's second and final Roswell study, published fifty years after the incident.

Which rocket pioneer did much of his early work in Roswell in the 1930s?

Robert H. Goddard moved his liquid-fuel rocket experiments to Roswell in 1930 and worked there until 1941; the city's museum recreates his workshop and a high school bears his name.

The 1999–2002 WB teen drama about aliens among small-town teens was based on which books?

The series Roswell was based on Melinda Metz's Roswell High novels; Jason Katims developed it, and it ran for 61 episodes on The WB and then UPN.

Which Roswell sheriff did rancher Brazel inform about the debris, prompting the call to the air field?

The base then sent Major Jesse Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt back with Brazel to gather the material.

At which Ohio base did Colonel Marcellus Duffy identify the flown-in material as balloon equipment?

At Wright Field, near Dayton, Colonel Marcellus Duffy, who knew Project Mogul, recognised the flown-in debris as balloon equipment, but publicly the Army would only call it 'meteorological equipment'.

At which Albuquerque station did teletype operator Lydia Sleppy claim her saucer story was cut off?

Lydia Sleppy worked at KOAT in Albuquerque; she said reporter Johnny McBoyle of Roswell's KSWS was dictating the story when an incoming message ordered her to stop sending.

Which 1991 Randle-Schmitt book became the basis of a 1994 TV film?

UFO Crash at Roswell (1991), by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt, became the basis of the 1994 Showtime film Roswell, with Kyle MacLachlan as the base intelligence officer.

Crash at Corona (1992) raised the saucers to two and the aliens to how many?

Crash at Corona put the alien total at eight across two crash sites; its authors said two of them had survived and been taken into government custody.

In 1990 John Keel proposed the Roswell debris came from what kind of wartime device?

Keel suggested a Japanese balloon bomb, one of the wartime Fu-Go devices launched against North America; an Air Force meteorologist objected that none could have stayed aloft for two years.

Which American Dad! character is an alien who crashed at Roswell?

Roger, the grey alien hiding in the Smith family's attic, crashed at Roswell in 1947 and later saved Stan's life at Area 51, which is why Stan took him in.