The Roswell incident concerns the alleged recovery in 1947 of at least one alien spacecraft and its
occupants, from Roswell, a small town in New Mexico, USA. For a large number of UFO researchers and
enthusiasts alike, the Roswell ‘incident’ offers us conclusive proof that we are not alone, and that
mankind is being visited by beings not of this world. The very mention of the word Roswell conjures
up images of alien autopsies, cold war spying, government cover-ups, and the recovery of a strange
alien-like material that was seemingly indestructible. 

The discovery of a ‘flying disk’

This fantastic story begins sometime around June 14 1947, when William ‘Mac’ Brazel, the supervisor
of the J. B. Foster Ranch, was out checking sheep after a night of heavy thunderstorms. Brazel was
with his son Vernon when he came across an area strewn with strange and unfamiliar material that was
clearly the wreckage of something that had fallen out of the sky.

However, it was not until almost two weeks later, that Brazel decided to retrieve
some of this debris. On the 7 July, he returned to examine the debris field with 
Major Jessie Marcel and a certain Captain Sheridan Cavitt of the Army Counter-
Intelligence Corps (both key witness to the events that unfolded). They collected
some of the wreckage and took it back to Mac Brazel’s house. Unable to make head-
nor-tail of what they had found, Marcel and Cavitt loaded the wreckage into their
cars and took it back to the nearby US Army Air Force base.

That morning the army released the now famous press release stating they had come into possession of
a flying disk. Around about the same time this was happening, news of this extraordinary discovery reached
the headquarters of the Eight Army Air Force (of which the 509th Bomber Group was a part). The wreckage
was loaded onto a B-29 bomber and immediately dispatched to Fort Worth. Once at the base the debris
was ‘identified’ as that belonging to a weather balloon. 

A short while later, in an interview given to the Roswell Daily Record, Mac Brazel dismissed Fort Worth’s 
’weather balloon’ description of the object. However, by the next day the story was already dying a death.
Typical was the headline in the Los Angeles Times: ‘Grounded Flying Saucer Only a Weather Balloon’. Public
and ufologists alike quickly forgot the incident.

30 years later…

However, this was by no means the end of the story. Interest in the incident was rekindled when in 1978
Stanton Freidmen interviewed Jessie Marcel the only known person to have accompanied the Roswell debris
from the Foster ranch to Fort Worth, it’s last confirmed destination.

Speaking to Stanton Freidmen, Jessie Marcel had a most interesting story to tell. Recalling the events
of over 30 years ago, Marcel claimed that the wreckage was scattered over an area of about three
quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide. Moreover, some of the material displayed strange
qualities. The pieces of metal resembled the tinfoil you would find in a packet of cigarettes, yet Marcel
claimed it was impossible to bend. It was indestructible. Not even a sixteen-pound hammer could dent it. 

By now, Mac Brazel was dead, but fortunately, his friends and family still had recollection of the 
incident. Commenting on the strange debris, Brazel’s son, Bill, confirmed the other-worldly nature of the
material. 'You could wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed its original shape.
Bessie Brazel, Mac’s daughter, recalled strange markings on bits of the wreckage that looked like numbers
and lettering yet no one could make head-nor-tail of it.

The discovery of alien bodies and a crashed UFO 

None of the first-hand witnesses to these strange events mentioned anything about the recovery of bodies,
but subsequently numerous people have come forward to claim to have seen or heard about a large military 
presence in the area and the recovery of alien bodies.










One such person who claimed to have been involved in the transportation of alien bodies in 1947 was Captain
Oliver Henderson. Unfortunately, he died before he could be interviewed, but his widow has since claimed that
before he passed away, Henderson had told her of his part in transporting the wreckage of a UFO from Roswell
to Wright-Patterson AFB.

General Arthur E. Exon, speaking in 1990, and whose illustrious career includes a period as commanding
officer of Wright-Patterson AFB in the 1960s, confirmed that wreckage and bodies from the Roswell crash
had been taken to the base. He also confirmed the existence of two crash sites: the Foster ranch where
Mac Brazel had originally discovered the wreckage and the main crash site some miles to the southwest
where the bodies had been recovered. Exon went on to say that the weather balloon story was a hoax. But
again, this is second-hand evidence. Exon admitted in 1990 that his testimony was based on what he had
heard, rumours that had been circulating at the time.

Glen Dennis, a mortician at the nearby Ballard’s Funeral
Home, claimed to have been contacted by the Roswell base
concerning the supply of three small caskets for three
corpses that had been recovered. The next day, he met up
with a friend who was a nurse on the base. She described
stumbling into an alien autopsy. Some time later, she was
transferred abroad before mysteriously disappearing.

So what really happened?

The evidence for a UFO crash in 1947 is not as clear-cut as some people suggest. It is possible that
the debris found on the Foster ranch may have been deposited there as a result of some form of mid-air
explosion from an extra-terrestrial spacecraft, which then crash-landed somewhere north of Roswell. 
However, the evidence for this is flimsy and seems to be based almost entirely on testimonies from 
second-hand witnesses. Far more likely is the ‘Project Mogul’ theory. The purpose of this highly 
classified programme was to develop ways of detecting Soviet nuclear tests using instruments carried
by very high-altitude balloons. It surely cannot be a coincidence that in July 1947, a team from New 
York University were experimenting with a 600-foot long chain made up of more than twenty linked 
weather balloons. They were operating at a place called Alamagordo in New Mexico - 90 miles south
of the Foster ranch. 

                                 There is strong evidence to suggest that what Mac Brazel and others mistook for
                                 debris from an alien spacecraft, was in fact the remains of one of these balloon
                                 chains. But this explanation does not adequately explain the discovery of material
                                 that was resistant to creasing and practically indestructible. Readers must be aware 
                                 though, that no one has ever produced a sample of this debris so the accuracy of
                                 the descriptions remains an open question. Moreover, the evidence for a second 
                                 crash site and the recovery of alien bodies is based entirely on the accounts of
                                 second-hand witnesses. 

It is tempting to believe this second crash hypothesis, but where is the proof? Speaking in 1995, President
Bill Clinton summed up the confusion surrounding the Roswell incident. Referring to a letter he received
from a thirteen-year-old Belfast boy about the Roswell crash he replied: 'Ryan, in case you’re out there,
here is your answer: No! As far as I know, no extraterrestrial spaceship crashed at Roswell, New Mexico in
1947.’ Then after a pause he went on, ‘If the Air Force really recovered any extraterrestrial bodies, they
did not tell me - and I want to know!'


Sources: N. Redfern ‘A Covert Agenda: The British Government’s UFO Top Secrets Exposed’ (London, 1997);
Lynn Picknett ‘The Mammoth Book of UFOs’ (London, 2001); Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.