Roswell: The ‘Flying Disc’ Press Release That Started It All (1947)

What happened

On 8 July 1947, Lt. Walter Haut, the public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field, issued a press release: “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County.” The Roswell Daily Record put it on the front page.

Within about a day, Gen. Roger Ramey, Col. Thomas DuBose and weather officer Irving Newton had identified the material in Fort Worth as pieces of a weather balloon. For roughly thirty years, most people forgot about it.

The footage

No film of the 1947 debris recovery exists in the record. The only film tied to Roswell is Ray Santilli’s 1995 “alien autopsy,” which Santilli later admitted in 2006 was a staged “reconstruction.” Contemporary evidence consists of photographs, such as Marcel posing with debris in Fort Worth on 8 July 1947, and documents.

Timeline

• 4 June 1947: Researchers at Alamogordo Army Air Field launch a long train of Project Mogul balloons and lose contact within 17 miles of the ranch Brazel managed (Wikipedia, citing USAF).
• June to early July 1947: Rancher W. W. “Mac” Brazel finds debris and later reports it to Sheriff George Wilcox. Maj. Jesse Marcel and Capt. Sheridan Cavitt collect it.
• 8 July 1947: Haut’s “flying disc” release, the Fort Worth weather-balloon identification, and an FBI teletype.
• 9 July 1947: The Roswell Daily Record reports that no engine or metal parts were found.
• 1978: Stanton Friedman interviews Marcel, who now says the debris was extraterrestrial.
• 1993–1995: Rep. Steven Schiff asks GAO to search for records. The USAF publishes The Roswell Report (1995), and GAO reports on 28 July 1995.
• 1997: USAF publishes The Roswell Report: Case Closed.
• February 2024: AARO Historical Record Report, Volume I.

What witnesses reported

Brazel told the Record the debris was rubber strips, “tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks.” He also said: “I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon.” In Fort Worth, Marcel called the wreckage “parts of the weather device.” In a later television interview, Marcel said Ramey “told the newspapers, I mean the newsman, what it was, and to forget about it.” Brazel, Marcel, Haut and the officers are named here because they are public figures in the official record.

What the research found

The FBI teletype. The FBI Vault’s Roswell file holds the 8 July 1947 teletype. According to GAO, it states “that the military had reported that an object resembling a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector had been recovered near Roswell.”