The Roswell UFO Crash: A History, the Claims"The most important UFO encounter of our century!"
"The presence in New Mexico of very strange substances from the wreckage of the two [UFO] crashes has been testified to by so many people that it is virtually proved."
According to widely held public opinion, the United States government successfully recovered the remains of a crashed flying saucer and its extraterrestrial occupants near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. In what is now popularly known as the Roswell incident, the U.S. military is said to have quickly covered up the affair and continues to shroud it in secrecy at the highest levels today.
If these events surrounding Roswell in 1947 actually ever took place, as claimed in virtually every single book ever written on this subject and reported in countless media programs, it would not only constitute the story of the millennium but easily be the greatest government-sponsored cover-up of all time. Indeed, should irrefutable evidence ever surface that any government on this Earth possessed the physical remains of either an extraterrestrial spacecraft or its occupants, it is certain to say that such a revelation and expose would fundamentally transform humanity as we know it.
What does one do with the numerous claims about Roswell that have surfaced over the years? How does one possibly begin to determine the truth about what really happened in 1947? In short, how does one separate the real facts from the overwhelming amount of fiction and hoaxes that are now an integral part of Roswell's legacy and continue today?
The Roswell incident, and all that surrounds it, is a complex web of events, not easily understood or explainable until examined fully and in painstaking detail. To try to determine the truth, let's begin by reviewing the timeline history of Roswell and its widely promoted alleged UFO-related events.
In constructing this Roswell timeline, I have combined all the divergent claims that are cited in the nine major popular or best-selling books that have been written about this topic. These titles, in addition to major uncritical and often inaccurate television specials over the years, such as Showtime's
Roswell and NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries," for all practical purposes, are chiefly responsible for nearly 100 percent of the global public's opinions about Roswell today-right or wrong. This is especially true in the United States of America, where Roswell has now become an integral part of its popular urban myth-based culture, right up there with sightings of Elvis.
These published works are:
The Roswell Incident, by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore (MJF Books, 1980).
UFO Crash at Roswell, by Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt (Avon Books, 1991).
The Roswell Report: A Historical Perspective, by (The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, 1991).
Crash at Corona, by Stanton T. Friedman and Don Berliner (Paragon House, 1992).
The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, by Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt (Avon Books, 1994).
Roswell UFO Crash Update--Exposing the Military Cover-Up of the Century, by Kevin D. Randle (Global Communications, 1995).
Top Secret/MAJIC, by Stanton T. Friedman (Marlowe & Company, 1996).
Beyond Roswell, by Michael Hesemann and Philip J. Mantle (Marlowe & Sons, 1997).
The Day After Roswell, by Philip J. Corso and William H. Birnes (Simon and Schuster, 1997).
In this book we shall examine critically all the significant claims each of these books makes in its collective statements, as well as review those important and relevant remarks made in various other media, including television, and on the Internet.
To make our examination of these numerous stories as systematic as possible, each major claim has been listed below in chronological order, using our Roswell timeline of events.
ALLEGED ROSWELL-RELATED TIMELINE OF EVENTSTuesday, July 1, 1947While watching radar screens at Roswell Army Air Base, White Sands, and Alamogordo, New Mexico, military personnel observe a "strange object" whose speed and flight maneuvers indicate that it cannot be from this planet. Subsequent checks of the radar tracking equipment reveal "no malfunction that would account for the [unusual] display."
Wednesday, July 2, 1947At approximately 9:50 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot of Roswell, New Mexico, observe from their front yard an oval-shaped object that looks like "two inverted saucers faced mouth to mouth." Described as self-luminous, the craft flies over their house heading in a northwest direction, toward Corona, New Mexico. The duration of the Wilmots' UFO sighting is an estimated forty to fifty seconds.
Thursday, July 3, 1947Radar installations located at White Sands, New Mexico, continue to track the mysterious object as it "flashes" through the atmosphere. Frank Kaufmann, a military radar expert, watches the tracking screens for nearly twenty-four hours.
Friday, July 4, 1947William M. Woody and his father, working at night on their farm, see a bright light with a "flame-like" tail streaking across the sky. The Woodys observe the object for some twenty to thirty seconds before it disappears below the horizon, some "forty miles north of Roswell."
Between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m., two Catholic nuns, Mother Superior Mary Bernadette and Sister Capistrano, at Saint Mary's Hospital in Roswell, record in a logbook entry seeing "a brilliant light plunge to Earth." The location of the object is north of Roswell, and the nuns believe it to be a disabled aircraft.
During the "worst lightning storm he had ever seen," William W. "Mac" Brazel, who operates the J.B. Foster ranch, hears an "odd sort of explosion, not like ordinary thunder, but different."
At 11:27 p.m., the radar sites operated by military personnel continue to track the UFO that has befuddled them for three days now. The object seems to "pulsate" repeatedly, then explodes in a "starburst." The military believes that the object it has been tracking has suddenly crashed.
Jim Ragsdale and Trudy Truelove are out camping in the New Mexico desert roughly forty miles northwest of Roswell. Suddenly a "flaring bright light" from an object "roars" over their heads and crashes within seconds into the ground roughly one mile from their campsite.
Ragsdale convinces Truelove to join him in a search for the downed mystery object. After driving across the desert in Ragsdale's Jeep, they arrive at the edge of a cliff. Using only a flashlight with batteries that are running low, the two see a craft stuck in the side of a small slope. Observing no activity, they decide to return the next day after the sun is up.
Copyright © 2000 by Kal K. Korff. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
