Comment People were worried about the war when rancher WW Brazel walked into the sheriff’s office in Corona, NM, on a hot, dusty day 75 years ago to report a “flying saucer” he may have found on his property, about 100 miles northwest of Roswell. Army Airfield. The next day – July 8, 1947 – the public information officer at the base issued a news release stating that the US Army Air Forces had recovered a “flying saucer” at the ranch. While military brass quickly retracted the statement, it was too late: Roswell’s legend as the “UFO Capital of the World” had already soared — as had the countless bright objects many Americans claimed to have seen in the sky that summer. The event we know today as the “Roswell Incident” gave birth to the modern UFO sighting movement, along with the alien science fiction genre. The men claimed they were abducted by aliens. In Mississippi, the police believed them. “For centuries, people have seen things they can’t explain,” said Roger Launius, historian and retired curator of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “In previous generations they were referred to as angels, demons, deities or whatever. That changed with the scientific revolution, where people began to wonder if the bright spots they were seeing were extraterrestrial in nature.” The fertile ground for Roswell was sown under the dark mushroom cloud of the nuclear age. World War II had ended less than two years earlier, and the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be on the precipice of another global conflict. The term “Cold War” was coined by George Orwell in a 1945 essay and entered modern consciousness when Bernard Baruch, an adviser to President Harry S. Truman, said it in a speech in the spring of 1947. Amid this heightened concern came the first news of “flying saucers” — and the first mention of the term in print, according to the Oxford English Dictionary — on June 24. Media around the country reported that a civilian pilot named Ken Arnold said he had spotted bright objects crossing the sky at supersonic speeds near Mount Rainier in Washington. Some officials have suggested that the fast-moving lights may have been missiles or jets being tested by the military. Nevertheless, public hysteria broke out in the following weeks, with more than 800 similar sightings reported across the country – many of them deemed “fakes” by law enforcement and military officials. “When Ken Arnold sees these things, it’s said in an exaggerated tabloid way,” Launius said. “It gets advertised in the press and builds from there. If this doesn’t tell you that Americans love conspiracies, I don’t know what does. It was no different in 1947.” While all this was happening, an unsuspecting Brazel was tending to the sheep and cattle on his ranch in New Mexico. With no radio or newspaper, he was cut off from the outside world. The rancher thought nothing of the unusual debris he found scattered around his pastures. On July 5, Brazel headed to Corona on Saturday night and found out what everyone else was talking about. He began to wonder if there was a relationship. On Monday, he collected the strange material and traveled back to town to inform local officials of his discovery. The sheriff visited Brazel’s ranch and then contacted the trooper. The debris was taken to Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas, where military experts said it was from a crashed weather balloon. However, before this announcement was broadcast in Roswell, the New Mexico base sent out the news bulletin about the finding of a “flying saucer.” Lt. Walter Haut, Roswell’s public information officer, later claimed that base commander Col. William H. Blanchard ordered him to use that description. For a few days, the world’s attention was focused on Roswell, NM, but most people seemed satisfied with the military’s explanation, and the story faded quickly. It would not be blown up again until 1978, when the National Enquirer published an article about the incident. Suddenly, new versions of the event emerged – some from the original participants – with reports of an actual spaceship, alien bodies and a government cover-up adding new layers to the myth. “The story seems to get better with every iteration,” Launius said. “Initially, there was no talk of alien bodies. That somehow gets wrapped up in it as part of the original incident, even though there’s nothing about it in the sources of the time.” They claimed to have hit a creature from outer space on a Georgia highway. People were excited. The story unfolded in a seemingly endless series of articles, books, movies and documentaries about what “really happened” in the New Mexico desert. In 1993, television audiences were introduced to the long-running series “The X-Files,” whose fictional stories of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley tracking down alien abductions and an international conspiracy added fuel to the fire. Many involved in the incident have changed their accounts of the events over time, including the government. In 1947, the CIA and the military were concerned that these “flying saucers” were actually new technology being used by the Soviets. When the Army Air Force retracted its first statement, it was not at all known about the origin of the debris – probably because it was hiding a secret. “The weather balloon was a cover,” Launius said. “The best evidence suggests it was a Project Mogul listening device of which they discovered pieces.” Project Mogul was a military program designed to intercept Russian radio messages via high-altitude balloons that would eventually deflate and fall to Earth. Several crash sites have been identified across the country. In 1994, a US Air Force report identified the top-secret project as the likely source of the debris found in New Mexico. Launius said the UFO sightings in the summer of 1947 were the result of a world gripped by the fear of an apocalypse. The remains of a “vampire” were found about 30 years ago. Now the DNA is giving it new life. “In the United States alone between 1947 and 1960, there were a total of 6,523 UFO reports,” he said. “There seems to be a direct relationship between the public’s perception of the reality of space travel and these UFO sightings. I am convinced that the rapid increase in the number of UFOs reported in the early Cold War era was the result of heightened tensions as everyone watched the skies for warnings of a nuclear attack.” But even if the Roswell incident could be explained by a military program, the subsequent events in the skies remain a mystery. On July 19, 1952, almost exactly five years after Brazel reported the strange debris on his ranch, a series of UFO sightings occurred over Washington, D.C. Airline pilots reported seeing flashes of light cross the sky, and radar operators became confused from the fast moving blips on their screens. The Air Force scrambled with jets to intercept the objects, which disappeared and never returned. The event 70 years ago was never explained. As the poster in Mulder’s office says in “The X-Files,” “I want to believe.”
