Unsolved Mystery of the Roswell UFO Crash

Case File: Roswell UFO Crash
Location: Roswell, New Mexico
Date: July 2, 1947
Description: Founded in 1891, Roswell is a city in the county seat of Chaves County in the southeast New Mexico, United States. The center for irrigation farming, dairying, ranching, manufacturing, distribution and petroleum production, it is also the home of the New Mexico Military Institute. The Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge is located a few miles northeast of the city on the Pecos River, and the Bottomless Lakes State Park is located twelve miles east of Roswell on U.S. 380. In recent years, Roswell has become a mecca for UFO enthusiasts.
History: On the night of June 13, 1947, a violent electric storm swept over the plains of Roswell, New Mexico. As rancher Mac Brazel waited out the storm in his house, he heard an explosion that sounded much different than the usual thunderclap. According to his son, the next morning, Mac went to the nearby fields to see where the rain had hit. While there, he found the debris field of an unknown object, broken beyond identification. The debris field was 3/4 mile long and 200 feet in width. Scattered along the field were pieces of plastic-like metal, about three feet long and as thin as newspaper, and strong flexible beams. Some of the metallic pieces had strange qualities and unusual tensile properties.
Later that day, Mac went to his neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor, who lived about ten miles away. He told them about the debris field and brought one of the pieces with him. Although they tried to do several things to it (such as cutting and burning it), the object was unchanged. The Proctors urged Mac to go to the authorities. He went to the sheriff the next Monday; the sheriff, in turn, informed the local military base.
That afternoon, Mac led two army intelligence officers to the crash site. One of the officers was Major Jesse Marcel Sr., an experienced combat pilot, whose peacetime job was investigate air accidents. Despite his experience, Marcel was unable to identify what kind of craft it was. Marcel died in 1982, but before his death, he was interviewed for a UFO documentary. He said that there was just fragments strewn across an area that was 3/4 mile long and several hundred yards wide. He tried to burn it, bend it, and even hit it with a sledgehammer, but none of that worked. One thing that he was certain of was that it was not a weather balloon, airplane, or any kind of craft he knew.
Late on the night of July 7, Marcel drove back to Roswell, his car loaded down with the unusual remains found at the ranch. Before going to the base, he stopped by his home to show his family what he had found. His son Jesse Marcel Jr. saw and handled the debris that night. He found that on one beam there were strange markings that appeared to be hieroglyphics. However, Marcel Jr. did not believe that they were Egyptian hieroglyphics. He described the symbols as a type of geometric configuration in various designs. It had a violet-type color and was actually an embossed part of the metal itself. The Marcels were convinced that it was not of Earthly origin.
After showing the debris to his family, Marcel Sr. brought it to the Roswell base. The following morning, it is believed that the debris was flown to Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio. Along the way, it apparently stopped at Carswell Air Base in Fort Worth, Texas. That same morning, Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer, went public about the story by Mac Brazel and the UFO that he had located. Second Lieutenant Walter Haut was a public information officer for the 509th Airborne Divison. Colonel Blanchard ordered him to issue a press release, telling the country how the Army had found a flying saucer.
The press release read, in part: The many rumors regarding the flying disk became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Squadron was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disk through the cooperation of a local rancher. Under Blanchard's instruction, Haut took the releases into town to show that they were cooperating with the townspeople. *The story was quickly picked up by media across the country.
That same day, Barney Barnett, an engineer for the Soil Conservation Service, made an astonishing discovery while driving near Socorro. He found an oval-shaped spaceship that had crashed and broken open. There were four deceased beings located on the ground near the craft. Their heads looked larger than normal and they had strange spacesuits on. At that same time, a group of archaeology students arrived at the site after seeing it near their dig.
Shortly afterwards, the military arrived after learning of the second crash site. However, it was too late for them to secure the area. They told Barney and the students to leave the scene and not tell the story to anybody. Barney kept quiet about the story until years later, when he told it to his friend Vern Maltais. To this day, none of the archaeology students have ever been found. Although the story was only told second-hand by Vern because Barney had died in 1969, the circumstantial evidence found makes many believe that the story is credible.
On July 8, 1947, the story of the discovery of a UFO in Roswell hit newspaper stands worldwide. According to some investigators, that same day, a cargo plane carrying the debris arrived at an airbase in Fort Worth, Texas. Soon afterwards, the army received information that another crash site and bodies had been found. Fort Worth Brigadier General Roger Rainey's office issued a new press release soon after, claiming that the wreckage was not a UFO, but instead a US Army weather balloon. Marcel Jr. claimed that his father was certain that the wreckage was not from a weather balloon; however, he had to keep that information to himself at the time due to security reasons.
Meanwhile, some reports said that Mac Brazel was held at the Roswell base until the new cover story was put out. In downtown Roswell, Floyd Proctor saw Mac; however, Mac appeared to be unwilling or unable to acknowledge him. At the time, he was surrounded by several men in military clothing. By the time he returned to his ranch, all traces of the debris had been taken from there to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Investigators believe that some of the bodies and debris were taken to other places after arriving in Ohio, but that others are still there. However, there was only circumstantial evidence to say that something other than a weather balloon crashed into the field in Roswell until thirty years later.