On the night of 4 July 1947, rancher Mac Brazel found strange metal debris across his ranch. On 8 July, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release announcing the capture of a flying disc; six hours later, the military retracted it, calling the object a weather balloon with a radar reflector. In 1978, Major Jesse Marcel publicly stated what he saw was no balloon. In 2020, his private diary was made public, describing foil that could not be cut or burned, drill bits that broke, and a slender I-beam marked with symbols. Over the following decades, multiple military personnel and witnesses claimed to have seen alien bodies and wreckage.
Account
On the night of 4 July 1947, rancher Mac Brazel found strange metal debris scattered across about 400 meters of his ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The foil could not be cut, burned, or crumpled, and bore strange symbols. On 8 July, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release headlined that they had captured a flying disc. Six hours later the military retracted the statement, calling the object a weather balloon with a radar reflector. In 1978, Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who handled the debris, publicly stated that what he saw was no balloon. In 2020, his private diary was made public, describing foil that could not be cut, drill bits that broke against it, and a slender I-beam marked with symbols. Over the following decades, multiple military personnel and witnesses claimed to have seen alien bodies and wreckage. Roswell is now a pilgrimage site for UFO enthusiasts, with an international UFO museum and an annual UFO festival.
Contested
The 1994 US Air Force report admitted that the 1947 statement had been false but explained the debris as wreckage from the top-secret Project Mogul, a high-altitude spy balloon array used to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. A 2011 FBI memorandum mentioning three 90-centimeter alien bodies inside a disc-shaped craft was an unverified secondhand account.
Sources
- US Air Force Roswell Report (1994)
- FBI Blue Book archive memoranda
- Roswell Daily Record (8 July 1947)
- Jesse Marcel private diary (released 2020)