ROSWELL, N.M. On July 8, 1947, Lt. Walter Haut, public information officer at the Roswell Army Air Field, issued a press release that stated the air field was in possession of a “flying disc” it had gained through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers.
Thus began one of the most intriguing, perplexing incidents in the history of the West Texas-Southeastern New Mexico region. To this day, 68 years later, what really occurred near Corona, N.M., in 1947 has never been satisfactorily explained.
Haut’s news release, issued on the direct orders of Roswell base commander Col. William Blanchard, read as follows:
“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 flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.
“Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.”
The somewhat earth-shattering announcement that an actual “flying disc” had been located came as a not quite so surprising correction of sorts. About three hours after the first story was released, another story was issued that explained the “flying disc” was nothing more than the radar reflector from a wandering weather balloon that had been misidentified by the first people to see it.
Soon thereafter, Brigadier Gen. Roger Ramey went on a Fort Worth radio station to explain what, he said, had actually happened. A weather balloon, he said, had crashed on the ranch. It was nothing more. So the public’s concern about the “flying disc” that had crashed in New Mexico was supposedly resolved.
Or was it?
According to the story told by rancher William “Mac” Brazel, whatever crashed on his ranch that night occurred during a violent rainstorm, but the sound of the crash was not that of the typical thunder in the Roswell area. It was significantly different. As a result, the next morning Brazel and a young neighbor, 7-year-old Dee Proctor, went out checking for possible damage to fences or windmills.
“No damage to fences or windmills could be found, but something quite unexpected arrested their attention: a field full of bits of pieces of shiny material unlike anything the veteran rancher had ever seen,” stated the book “Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO” by Don Berliner and Stanton T. Friedman.
“According to newspaper reports at the time, Mac gathered some of it up and hid it under a bush or in a shed. He kept a few pieces, one of which he took with him when he drove Dee the few miles back to the home of his parents, Floyd and Loretta Proctor, his nearest neighbors.”
During the next few decades, the military stuck to their official explanation for the crash although very few people apparently accepted it. Brazel had found weather balloons before and he knew and said that the debris on his ranch was not from a weather balloon.
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