Editing Roswell incident (section)

==UFO conspiracy theories (1947–1978)==
{{broader|UFO conspiracy theories}}
The 1947 debris retrieval remained relatively obscure for three decades.<ref name="ABC-News-2005-p1">{{harvnb|ABC News|2005|p=1}}</ref> Reporting ceased soon after the government provided a mundane explanation,<ref name="Goldberg 2001 193">{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|p=193}}</ref> and broader reporting on flying saucers declined rapidly after the [[Twin Falls saucer hoax]].<ref>{{harvnb|Wright|1998|p=39}}</ref> Just days after stories of the Roswell "flying disc", a widely reported crashed disc from Twin Falls, Idaho, was found to be a hoax created by four teenagers using parts from a [[jukebox]].<ref>{{harvnb|Weeks|2015|loc=ch.&nbsp;17}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Deseret News|1947}}</ref>

Nevertheless, belief in a UFO cover-up by the US government became widespread in this period.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|pp=33, 251}}</ref> Hoaxes, legends, and stories of crashed spaceships and alien bodies in New Mexico emerged that later formed elements of the Roswell myth.<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=13}}</ref> In 1947, many Americans attributed [[flying saucers]] to unknown military aircraft.<ref name="Olmsted-2009-p183"/> In the decades between the initial debris recovery and the emergence of Roswell theories, flying saucers became synonymous with [[Extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis|alien spacecraft]].<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|p=251}}</ref> After the [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]] and the [[Watergate scandal]], trust in the US government declined and acceptance of conspiracy theories became widespread.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|p=166, 205, 245}}</ref> UFO believers accused the government of a "Cosmic Watergate".<ref>{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|pp=208, 253–255}}</ref> The 1947 incident was reinterpreted to fit the public's increasingly conspiratorial outlook.<ref>{{harvnb|Olmsted|2009|pp=173, 184}}</ref><ref name="Harding-p273">{{harvnb|Harding|Stewart|2003|page=273}}</ref>

===Aztec crashed saucer hoax===
[[File:Aztec-hoax-pic.png|alt=Three men demonstrate the Aztec hoax claims using an inverted bowl to represent Earth and a copy of Frank Scully's book to represent a magnetism-powered flying saucer.|thumb|Author Frank Scully (right) and confidence man Silas Newton (center)<ref>{{harvnb|Severson|1952}}</ref>]]
The [[Aztec, New Mexico crashed saucer hoax]] in 1948 introduced stories of recovered alien bodies that later became associated with Roswell.<ref name="Saler-p13" /><ref name="Clarke-2015-chpt13">{{harvnb|Clarke|2015|loc=ch.&nbsp;13}}: "It appeared the Aztec story was destined to join the Aurora airship crash and the Roswell weather balloon as a flash in the ufological pan, quickly to be forgotten. In hindsight all three provided the basic template for what became the modern crashed saucer legend."</ref> It achieved broad exposure when the con artists behind it convinced ''Variety'' columnist [[Frank Scully]] to cover their fictitious crash.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|pp=48–50, 251}}</ref> The hoax narrative included small grey humanoid bodies, metal stronger than any found on Earth, indecipherable writing, and a government coverup to prevent public panic{{snd}}these elements appeared in later versions of the Roswell myth.<ref name="Saler-p13">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=13–14}}</ref><ref name="Peebles-1994-p242">{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|pp=242, 251}}</ref> In retellings, the mundane debris reported at the actual crash site was replaced with the Aztec hoax's fantastical alloys.<ref>{{harvnb|Smith|2000|p=99}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=14, 42}}</ref> By the time Roswell returned to media attention, [[grey alien]]s had become a part of American culture through the [[Barney and Betty Hill incident]].<ref>{{harvnb|Levy|Mendlesohn|2019|p=136}}: "However, it is the Betty and Barney Hill abduction account that brings the grays fully into public consciousness [...] As knowledge of the Hills' experiences spread, so too did sightings of grays. This included the addition of grays to popularized accounts of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident."</ref> In a 1997 Roswell report, Air Force investigator James McAndrew wrote that "even with the exposure of this obvious fraud, the Aztec story is still revered by UFO theorists. Elements of this story occasionally reemerge and are thought to be the catalyst for other crashed flying saucer stories, including the Roswell Incident."<ref>{{harvnb|McAndrew|1997|pp=84–85}}</ref>

===Hangar 18===
"[[Hangar 18 (conspiracy theory)|Hangar 18]]" is a non-existent location that many later conspiracy theories allege housed extraterrestrial craft or bodies recovered from Roswell.<ref>{{harvnb|Nickell|McGaha|2012|p=33}}</ref> The idea of alien corpses from a crashed ship being stored in an Air Force morgue at the [[Wright-Patterson Air Force Base]] was mentioned in Scully's ''Behind the Flying Saucers'',<ref name="Baker-2024">{{harvnb|Baker|2024}}</ref> expanded in the  1966 book ''[[Incident at Exeter]]'', and became the basis for a 1968 science-fiction novel ''[[The Fortec Conspiracy]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Fuller|1966|pp=87–88}}: "There have been, I learned after I started this research, frequent and continual rumors (and they are only rumors) that in a morgue at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio, lie the bodies of a half-dozen or so small humanoid corpses, measuring not more than four-and-a-half feet in height, evidence of one of the few times an extraterrestrial spaceship has allowed itself either to fail or otherwise fall into the clutches of the semicivilized Earth People."</ref><ref name="Smith-2000-p82">{{harvnb|Smith|2000|p=82}}</ref> ''Fortec'' was about a fictional cover-up by the [[National Air and Space Intelligence Center#Foreign Technology Division|Air Force unit charged with reverse-engineering]] other nations' technical advancements.<ref name="Smith-2000-p82"/>

In 1974, science-fiction author and conspiracy theorist [[Robert Spencer Carr]] alleged that alien bodies recovered from the Aztec crash were stored in "Hangar 18" at Wright-Patterson.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|p=242}}</ref> Carr claimed that his sources had witnessed the alien autopsy,<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|p=244}}: "[[Leonard H. Stringfield|Stringfield]] described the evidence Carr had collected on the Aztec 'crash.' Carr said he had found five eyewitnesses to the recovery. One (now dead) was a surgical nurse at the alien's autopsy. Another was a high-ranking Air Force officer."</ref> another idea later incorporated into the Roswell narrative.<ref>{{harvnb|Disch|2000|pp=53–34}}: "Even the Roswell case [...]  has its component of science-fictional fraud. Robert Spencer Carr became famous, briefly, in the '70s when, in a radio interview, he concocted the still-current story of aliens' autopsied and kept in cold storage at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio. Carr."</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://aadl.org/node/198259 |title=Air Force Freezes Ufo Story |via=Ann Arbor District Library |newspaper=Ann Arbor Sun |date=November 1, 1974 |agency=Zodiac News Service}}</ref> The Air Force explained that no "Hangar 18" existed at the base, noting a similarity between Carr's story and the fictional ''Fortec Conspiracy''.<ref>{{harvnb|Jones|1974}}</ref>  The 1980 film ''[[Hangar 18 (film)|Hangar 18]]'', which dramatized Carr's claims, was described as "a modern-day dramatization" of Roswell by the film's director [[James L. Conway]],<ref name="Erdmann-p287" /> and as "nascent Roswell mythology" by folklorist Thomas Bullard.<ref>{{harvnb|Bullard|2016|p=331}}</ref> Decades later, Carr's son recalled that he had often "mortified my mother and me by spinning preposterous stories in front of strangers... [tales of] befriending a giant alligator in the Florida swamps, and sharing complex philosophical ideas with porpoises in the Gulf of Mexico."<ref>{{harvnb|Carr|1997|p=32}}</ref>