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46 free Roswell Incident trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Roswell incident trivia separates what happened in July 1947 from the legend that grew up thirty years later. A rancher found tinfoil, rubber, tape and sticks; the local air base announced a captured 'flying disc'; a general held up a weather balloon the next day; and the story died for three decades until a retired intelligence officer told a ufologist the balloon had been a cover story. He was half right: it covered Project Mogul, a top-secret attempt to hear Soviet nuclear tests with balloons. This quiz follows the whole arc: Kenneth Arnold and the summer of the saucers, Mac Brazel and Sheriff Wilcox, Walter Haut's press release, the Fort Worth press conference, Jesse Marcel and his son's 'hieroglyphics', the 1980 book that added alien bodies, the Majestic 12 hoax and Bill Moore's confession, Glenn Dennis and the nurse who never existed, the 1994 and 1997 Air Force reports, crash-test dummies and body bags, Ray Santilli's autopsy footage, Philip Corso and Strom Thurmond, presidents from Clinton to Trump, and the town that turned it all into a festival. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen Independence Day; the expert tier is for skeptics and believers alike. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the incident and its cast, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which US state is Roswell?
New Mexico
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.
Q 02Roswell Army Air Field was renamed as which Air Force base in 1948?
Walker Air Force Base
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.
Q 03What did the Roswell debris actually come from?
A Project Mogul balloon train
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.
Q 04What was Project Mogul intended to detect?
Soviet nuclear tests
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.
Q 05Which rancher found the debris on the land he managed near Corona?
W. W. 'Mac' Brazel
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.
Q 06What did the rancher tell the Roswell Daily Record the debris consisted of?
Rubber strips, tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks
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.
Q 07From which base was the Mogul balloon train launched on 4 June 1947?
Alamogordo Army Air Field
Contact was lost within 17 miles of Brazel's ranch; the Air Force later pinned the debris on Flight No. 4.
Q 08Whose sighting near Mount Rainier on 24 June 1947 set off the flying-saucer craze?
Kenneth Arnold
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.
Q 09What was Roswell Army Air Field notable for in 1947?
It housed the only unit able to deliver nuclear weapons
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.
Q 10Which two officers were sent with the rancher to gather the material from the ranch?
Major Jesse Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt
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.
Q 11Who issued the 8 July 1947 press release announcing the recovery of a 'flying disc'?
Walter Haut, the base public information officer
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.
Q 12Which general identified the material as a weather balloon at a Fort Worth press conference?
Roger Ramey
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.
Q 13A hoax 'crashed disc' days after Roswell, in Twin Falls, Idaho, turned out to be built from what?
Q 21According to the 1980 book, what killed the alien crew?
A lightning strike
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.
Q 22What was 'Majestic 12'?
A purported secret group in faked documents sent to ufologists
The photographs of documents arrived anonymously in 1984; Bill Moore later confessed to feeding fake evidence to researchers.
Q 23Which Air Force disinformation officer admitted feeding fabricated UFO material to researchers from Kirtland AFB?
Parts of a jukebox
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.
Q 14Which 1948 con introduced small grey bodies and super-strong metal to UFO lore?
The Aztec story
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.
Q 15'Hangar 18', where legend says recovered corpses were kept, is supposedly at which Ohio installation?
Wright-Patterson
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.
Q 16Which ufologist rekindled interest by interviewing Jesse Marcel in 1978?
Stanton Friedman
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.
Q 17Which TV series, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, aired Marcel's account in 1980?
In Search of...
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.
Q 18Marcel's son recalled 'purple-hued hieroglyphics' on a beam. What did they match?
Symbols on tape from a New York toy manufacturer
Project Mogul used the toy-company tape; Brazel's daughter remembered foil showing 'pastel flowers'.
Q 19Who wrote the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, the first Roswell conspiracy book?
Charles Berlitz and Bill Moore
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.
Q 20What did The Roswell Incident add to the story that Marcel himself never mentioned?
Extraterrestrial corpses
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.
Richard Doty
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'.
Q 24What was Glenn Dennis's profession when he became Roswell's 'star witness' in 1989?
Mortician
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.
Q 25What happened when researchers checked on the woman Glenn Dennis said had witnessed the autopsy?
No such person existed, and he admitted inventing her name twice
Naomi Self became Naomi Sipes; leading ufologists concluded no bodies were recovered at all.
Q 26Which TV programme's 1989 Roswell episode was watched by 28 million people?
Unsolved Mysteries
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.
Q 27Which congressman's 1993 inquiry led to the Air Force reports of the 1990s?
Steven Schiff
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.
Q 28Which animated series sent its crew back to 1947 in 'Roswell That Ends Well'?
Futurama
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.
Q 29Which British entrepreneur claimed in 1995 to have footage of an alien autopsy from Roswell?
Ray Santilli
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'.
Q 30Which effects expert said Alien Autopsy misrepresented his view that the footage was an obvious fake?
Stan Winston
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.