Editing Roswell incident (section)

==Explanations==
[[File:Roswell Reports, Volume 1.ogv |thumb|thumbtime=80|alt=Documentary based on the Air Force reports |The Air Force reports identified a military program as the source of the 1947 debris and concluded that other alien crash accounts were likely misidentified military programs or accidents.<ref>{{cite AV media |people=McAndrew, James (writer); Hukle, Don (narrator); Costello, Owen |title=The Roswell Reports |url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?476052-1/the-roswell-reports |via=C-SPAN |publisher=U.S. Air Force |access-date=6 July 2024 |volume=1}} National Archives Identifier: [https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2788598 2788598].</ref>]]

Secrecy around the 1947 debris recovery was due to Cold War military programs rather than aliens.<ref>{{harvnb|Frank|2023|p=622}}</ref> Contrary to evidence, UFO believers maintain that a spacecraft crashed near Roswell,<ref name="Kloor-2019-p52"/> and "Roswell" remains synonymous with UFOs.<ref>{{harvnb|Joseph|2008|p=132}}</ref> B. D. Gildenberg has called Roswell "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".<ref name="Gildenberg-2003-p73">{{Harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|p=73}}</ref> Accounts of alien recovery sites are contradictory and not present in any 1947 reports.<ref name="Gildenberg-2003-p64">{{harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|pp=64, 70}}</ref> Some accounts are likely [[Source-monitoring error|distorted memories]] of recoveries of servicemen in plane crashes, or parachute [[Crash test dummy|test dummies]], as suggested by the Air Force in their 1997 report.<ref name="Broad-1997-p18" /> Karl Pflock argues that proponents of the crashed-saucer explanation tend to overlook contradictions and absurdities, compiling supporting elements without adequate scrutiny.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=223}}</ref> Kal Korff attributes the poor research standards to financial incentives, "Let's not pull any punches here: The Roswell UFO myth has been very good business for UFO groups, publishers, for Hollywood, the town of Roswell, the media, and UFOlogy ... [The] number of researchers who employ science and its disciplined methodology is appallingly small."<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=248}}</ref>

===Project Mogul===
[[File:Mogul balloon train USAF 1995.png|thumb|alt=A vintage military photo shows a string of balloons and reflectors stretching into the sky.|A [[Project Mogul]] array]]

A 1994 USAF report identified the crashed object from the 1947 incident as a [[Project Mogul]] device.<ref name="Mogul"><!--There have been recurring discussions on the talk page going back decades on whether the sources allow Wikipedia to call it a balloon or not. Reliable sources indicate that [a] the debris was from a balloon, [b] the debris was from a US military project, [c] the USAF correctly identified the source of the debris as Project Mogul, and [d] the specific object was most likely Flight No. 4 launched on June 4, 1947. -->The Roswell material has been attributed to a top secret military balloon by astrophysicist [[Adam Frank]], historian Lt Col James Michael Young, science writer [[Kendrick Frazier]], folklorist Thomas Bullard, historian Kathryn Olmsted, Project Mogul meteorologist B.D. Gildenberg, journalist Kal Korff, skeptical UFO researcher [[Philip J. Klass]], and intelligence officer Captain James McAndrew among others:
* {{harvnb|Frank|2023|p=551}}: "The weather-balloon story was indeed a lie. Instead, what crashed on Brazel's ranch was Project Mogul, a secret experimental program using high-altitude balloons to monitor Russian nuclear tests.
* {{harvnb|Young|2020|p=27}}: "[L]aunch #4 on June 4, 1947, captured the public's attention when a local rancher recovered the balloon debris. Noting unusual metallic objects attached to the debris and suspecting they belonged to the military, the rancher turned the material and objects over to officers at Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF)."
* {{harvnb|Frazier|2017a}}: "[...] what we now know the debris to have been: remnants of a long train of research balloons and equipment launched by New York University atmospheric researchers [...]"
* {{harvnb|Bullard|2016|p=80}}: "the Air Force [...] concluded that the wreckage belonged to a Project Mogul balloon array that had disappeared in June 1947."
* {{harvnb|Olmsted|2009|p=184}}: "When one of these balloons smashed into the sands of the New Mexico ranch, the military decided to hide the project's real purpose."
* {{harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|p=62}}: "One such flight, launched in early June, came down on a Roswell area sheep ranch, and created one of the most enduring mysteries of the century."
* {{harvnb|Korff|1997|loc=fig.&nbsp;7}}: "Unbeknownst to Major Marcel, the debris was actually the remnants of a highly classified military spy device known as Project Mogul."
* {{harvnb|Klass|1997b|loc=fig.&nbsp;3}}: "[...] the debris was from a 600-foot long string of twenty-three weather balloons and three radar targets that had been launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field as part of a 'Top Secret' Project Mogul [...]"
* {{harvnb|McAndrew|1997|page=16}}: "The 1994 Air Force report determined that project Mogul was responsible for the 1947 events. Mogul was an experimental attempt to acoustically detect suspected Soviet nuclear weapon explosions and ballistic missile launches."
</ref> Mogul{{snd}}the classified portion of an unclassified [[New York University]] atmospheric research project{{snd}}was a military surveillance program employing [[high-altitude balloon]]s to monitor [[nuclear test]]s.<ref>{{harvnb|Frazier|2017a}}</ref> The project launched Flight No. 4  from [[Alamogordo Army Air Field]] on June 4. Flight No. 4 was drifting toward Corona within 17 miles of Brazel's ranch when its tracking equipment failed.<ref name="Frazier-2017b">{{harvnb|Frazier|2017b|pages=12–15}}</ref> The military, charged with protecting the classified project, claimed that the crash was of a weather balloon.<ref name="Olmsted-2009-184quote">{{harvnb|Olmsted|2009|page=184}}: "When one of these balloons smashed into the sands of the New Mexico ranch, the military decided to hide the project's real purpose."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|p=9}}: "... the material recovered near Roswell was consistent with a balloon device and most likely from one of the MOGUL balloons that had not been previously recovered."</ref> Major Jesse Marcel and USAF Brigadier General Thomas DuBose publicly described the claims of a weather balloon as a cover story in 1978 and 1991, respectively.<ref name="Pflock-2001-p33">{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=33}}</ref> In the USAF report, Richard Weaver states that the weather balloon story may have been intended to "deflect interest from" Mogul, or it may have been the perception of the weather officer because Mogul balloons were constructed from the same materials.<ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|pages=27–30}}</ref> Sheridan W. Cavitt, who accompanied Marcel to the debris field, provided a [[:File:Sheridan Cavitt Testimony.jpg|sworn witness statement for the report]].<ref>{{harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|pp=62–72}}</ref> Cavitt stated, "I thought at the time and think so now, that this debris was from a crashed balloon."<ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|p=160}}</ref>

Ufologists had considered the possibility that the Roswell debris had come from a top-secret balloon. In March 1990, [[John Keel]] proposed that the debris had been from a Japanese balloon bomb launched in World War II.<ref>{{harvnb|Gulyas|2016}}: "Numerous explanations have arisen, ranging from Japanese 'Fugo' balloons [...]"</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Gulyas|2014}}: "[...] from John Keel, who advocated a solution to the Roswell question which credited Japanese Fugo balloons as the 'mysterious craft,' to Nick Redfern, whose ''Body Snatchers in the Desert'' [...]".</ref> An Air Force meteorologist rejected Keel's theory, explaining that the [[Fu-Go balloon bomb|Fu-Go balloons]] "could not possibly have stayed aloft for two years".<ref>{{harvnb|Huyghe|2001|p=133}}: "Edward Doty, a meteorologist who established the Air Force's Balloon Branch at nearby Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico beginning in 1948, calls the Japanese Fu-Go balloons 'a very fine technical job with limited resources.'  But 'no way could one of these balloons explain the Roswell episode,' says Doty,'because they could not possibly have stayed aloft for two years.'"</ref> Project Mogul was first connected to Roswell by independent researcher Robert G. Todd in 1990.<ref name="Saler-p27">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=27}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|p=167}}: "The Army Air Force had seen what the Japanese had done with long range balloons; although not effective as weapons, they did initiate the long-range balloon research which led to use of balloons for the detection and collection of debris from atomic explosion."</ref>  Todd contacted ufologists and in the 1994 book ''Roswell in Perspective'', Karl Pflock agreed that the Brazel ranch debris was from Mogul.<ref name="Saler-p27"/><ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|page=28}}: "Most interestingly, as this report was being written, Pflock published his own report of this matter under the auspices of FUFOR, entitled Roswell in Perspective (1994). Pflock concluded from his research that the Brazel Ranch debris originally reported as a "flying disc" was probably debris from a MOGUL balloon"</ref> In response to a 1993 inquiry from US congressman [[Steven Schiff]] of New Mexico, the [[Government Accountability Office|General Accounting Office]] launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the [[United States Secretary of the Air Force]] to conduct an internal investigation.<ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|page=11}}</ref><ref name="Frazier-2017b" /> Air Force declassification officer Lieutenant James McAndrew concluded:

{{Blockquote|When the civilians and personnel from Roswell AAF [...] 'stumbled' upon the highly classified project and collected the debris, no one at Roswell had a 'need to know' about information concerning MOGUL. This fact, along with the initial mis-identification and subsequent rumors that the 'capture' of a 'flying disc' occurred, ultimately left many people with unanswered questions that have endured to this day.<ref>{{harvnb|Weaver|McAndrew|1995|page=316}}</ref>}}

===Anthropomorphic dummies===
{{multiple image
 | direction = vertical
 | image1 = Roswell_Report_1997_McAndrew_USAF_Gurney.jpg
 | alt1 = Anthropomorphic dummy in insulation bag
 | image2 = Roswell_Report_1997_McAndrew_USAF_Body_Bag.jpg
 | alt2 = Anthropomorphic dummies with gurney
 | footer = Anthropomorphic dummies were transported on medical gurneys and sometimes inside black insulation bags visually similar to "body bags" used for [[cadaver]]s<ref name="McAndrew-1997-pp35-36">{{harvnb|McAndrew|1997|pp=35–36}}</ref>
}}

The 1947 Roswell accounts did not mention alien bodies.<ref name="Frazier-2017b"/>  None of the primary eyewitnesses mentioned bodies.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=70}}</ref> Jesse Marcel dismissed the reports when asked,<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|pp=186, 198}}</ref> and Roswell authors interviewed only four people with supposed firsthand knowledge of alien bodies.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=118}}:  "These are Frank Kaufmann, who also claimed to have seen a crash survivor; the late Jim Ragsdale; a Lt. Col. Albert Lovejoy Duran; and one Gerald Anderson, who, like Kaufmanno told not only of seeing bodies but also a survivor, this at a third alleged crash site on the Plains of San Agustin in Catron County, about two hundred miles west-northwest of Roswell."</ref> The claims of alien bodies{{snd}}made decades later by elderly witnesses, sometimes as death-bed confessions{{snd}}contradict each other in basic details such as the location of the crash, the number of extraterrestrials, and the description of the bodies.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|loc=ch.&nbsp;3, pp.&nbsp;92, 104–105}}</ref>

The 1997 Air Force report concluded that the alleged "bodies" reported by later eyewitnesses came from memories of accidents involving military casualties and memories of the recovery of [[Crash test dummy|anthropomorphic dummies]].<ref name="Broad-1997-p18">{{harvnb|Broad|1997|p=18}}</ref> Military programs, such as the 1950s [[Operation High Dive]], released test dummies from high-altitude balloons above the New Mexico Desert.<ref name="Broad-1997-p18"/> The Air Force concluded that the number of accounts of body retrievals suggested an explanation other than dishonesty, and that the retrieval process for their dummies resembled the body retrieval stories in many aspects.<ref>{{harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|p=70}}</ref> The dummies were transported using [[stretcher]]s, casket-shaped crates, and sometimes insulation bags that resembled [[body bag]]s.<ref name="McAndrew-1997-pp35-36"/> Descriptions of "weapons carriers" and a "jeeplike truck that had a bunch of radios" matched the [[Dodge M37]] used for 1950s test retrievals.<ref>{{harvnb|McAndrew|1997|pp=65, 72}}</ref> Eyewitnesses described the purported bodies as bald, "dummies", resembling "plastic dolls", and wearing flight suits. These attributes were consistent with Air Force dummies used in the 1950s.<ref>{{harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|p=71}}</ref>

===Roswell as modern myth and folklore===
The mythology of Roswell involving increasingly elaborate accounts of alien crash landings and government cover-ups has been analyzed and documented by [[Social anthropology|social anthropologists]] and skeptics.<ref name="Frazier-2017b"/> [[Anthropologist]]s Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart highlight the Roswell Story was a prime example of how a discourse moved from the fringes to the mainstream, aligning with the 1980s ''[[zeitgeist]] of'' public fascination with "conspiracy, cover-up and repression".<ref name="Harding-p273" /> Skeptics [[Joe Nickell]] and James McGaha proposed that Roswell's time spent away from public attention allowed the development of a mythology drawing from later UFO folklore, and that the early debunking of the incident created space for ufologists to intentionally distort accounts towards sensationalism.<ref>{{harvnb|Nickell|McGaha|2012|pp=31–33}}</ref>

Charles Ziegler argues that the Roswell story exhibits characteristics typical of traditional folk narratives.<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=34}}</ref> He identifies six distinct narratives<ref>Zeigler's six narratives, summarized in the table below, are identified as: ''Roswell Incident'' (1980), the Majestic 12 hoax, ''UFO Crash at Roswell'' (1991), ''Crash at Corona'' (1992), ''Roswell in Perspective'' (1994), and ''The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell'' (1994), with the "prototypical Aztec story" influencing all of the narratives.</ref>  and a process of transmission through storytellers, wherein a core story was formed from various witness accounts and then shaped and altered by those involved in the UFO community.<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=34, 36}}</ref> Additional "witnesses" were sought to expand upon the core narrative, while accounts that did not align with the prevailing beliefs were discredited or excluded by the "gatekeepers".<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=1, 34–37}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
|+Roswell Incident timeline
! scope="col" |
! scope="col" |Debris
! scope="col" |Site
! scope="col" |Bodies
|-
! scope="row" |Documented historical events<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=4–6}}</ref>
|
* Foil
* Sticks
* Durable paper
* Rubber strips
|Found near Corona, New Mexico on Brazel's ranch
|None
|-
!Aztec hoax<ref name="Saler-p13"/>
|
* Super-strong metal
* Alien writing
* Crashed spaceship
|Crashed near Aztec, New Mexico
|16 small humanoid alien corpses in crashed saucer
|-
!''Roswell Incident'' (1980)<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=16–17}}</ref>
|
* Super-strong lightweight metal sheets
* Alien writing
|
* Craft struck by lightning near Alamagordo, New Mexico
* Crashed on the Plains of San Agustin
|Small humanoid alien corpses near San Agustin
|-
!MJ-12 hoax<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=18–19}}</ref>
|
* Pieces of a "short-range reconnaissance craft"
* Alien writing
|
* Exploded north-west of Roswell
* Scattered debris over a large area
|4 badly decomposed humanoid corpses near Roswell
|-
!''UFO Crash at Roswell'' (1991)<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=20–21}}</ref>
|
* Super-strong lightweight metal sheets
* Alien writing
|
* Crashed once near Corona, New Mexico on Brazel's ranch
* Crashed completely 2 miles southeast of Brazel's ranch
|4 decomposed and partially eaten humanoid corpses near Roswell
|-
!''Crash at Corona'' (1992)<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=22–24}}</ref>
|
* Super-strong lightweight metal sheets
* Alien writing
|
* Landed once near Corona, New Mexico on Brazel's ranch
* Exploded near Corona, New Mexico
|
* 4 humanoid corpses in escape pods near Roswell
* 3 humanoid corpses near San Agustin
* 1 surviving extraterrestrial humanoid near San Agustin
|-
!''Roswell in Perspective'' (1994)<ref>{{Harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pages=25-26}}</ref>	
|
* Fragments with symbols	
* Super-strong lightweight metal sheets
* A narrow craft with "bat-like wings" north of Roswell
|	
* Landed once near Corona, New Mexico, on Brazel's ranch	
* Struck a cliff 35 miles north of Roswell
|
* 3 humanoid corpses north of Roswell	
* 1 living humanoid pilot north of Roswell
|-
!''The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell''  (1994)<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=24–26}}</ref>
|
* Super-strong lightweight metal sheets
* An intact craft with "bat-like wings"
|
* Landed once near Corona, New Mexico on Brazel's ranch
* Crashed once near Brazel's ranch
* Crashed completely into cliff north of Roswell
|
* 3 humanoid corpses in the craft
* 1 surviving extraterrestrial in the craft
|}