U.S. Finds ’47 UFO Incident to Be Full of Hot Air

There’ll be no convincing some people, but the Air Force says--again--the thing that hit the ground near Roswell, N.M., in 1947 was not the proof that UFOs exist. But it did prove that a crashing balloon could make a 47-year mess.

There were no secret autopsies on space aliens who couldn’t fly too well. No flying saucer pieces under guard on an air base. No big conspiracy.

It was just a balloon.

One of ours.

Sorry.

It took eight months to reach that conclusion, and the Air Force hopes now to put to rest talk in UFO circles that military authorities covered up a grand extraterrestrial event.

The Air Force began the investigation in January after Rep. Steven H. Schiff (R-N.M.) asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to press the Pentagon to declassify documents relating to Roswell.

Air Force officials tracked down principals, combed archives, and even sent some old news photos to the CIA for analysis--all to try to deflate the persistent rumors of a massive government conspiracy to hide the truth.

The effort produced a 25-page report, released Thursday, in which Col. Richard Weaver concludes that the debris a rancher found probably came from a top-secret balloon designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

Of the UFO theories, Weaver had this to say:

“What is uniquely lacking in the entire exploration and exploitation of the Roswell Incident is official positive documentary or physical evidence of any kind that supports the claims of those who allege that something unusual happened.”

However, Weaver predicted “pro-UFO” elements simply would dismiss his report as part of the cover-up.

Indeed, Walter Haut, a volunteer at the UFO Museum at Roswell, a center devoted to gathering information on this and other suspected UFO incidents, wasted no time in rejecting the Air Force conclusions.

“I feel very strongly about it,” Haut said. Referring to those who made the original UFO claim, he said: “We’re not talking about flaky people.”

In July, 1947, the owner of a ranch near Roswell picked up debris that included scattered foil-coated fabric, sticks, rubber and some small I-beams with strange markings.

Maj. Jesse Marcel, the Army Air Force intelligence officer who brought in the wreckage, was reported to have recovered a “flying disc.” A local headline screamed that the Air Force “Captures Flying Saucer.”

Days later a higher-ranking officer identified the material as the remains of a weather balloon. But the seed of what became known as the Roswell Incident had been planted.