Almanac of the Gods
Roswell
Photo: Roswell Daily Record · Public domain

Place No. 11 of 44

Roswell

United States (New Mexico) · 33.394° N · 104.523° W

In July 1947 an Army press officer told the world his base had captured a 'flying disc,' then took it back within a day, and the argument has never stopped.

Date of the 'flying disc' press release
July 8, 1947
Distance from Roswell to the debris area
about 75 miles (120 km) northwest, near Corona
Project Mogul flight linked to the debris
Flight No. 4, launched June 4, 1947, from Alamogordo
Years between the event and the revival
about 31 (Marcel's first interview, 1978)
Official US reviews
4 main ones: USAF 1994, GAO 1995, USAF 1997, and the Pentagon's AARO in 2024
Roswell base records GAO found destroyed
administrative records from 1945–1949 and outgoing messages from 1946–1949
International UFO Museum opened
1992

What it is

Roswell is a small city in the high plains of southeastern New Mexico. In the summer of 1947 it was home to Roswell Army Air Field, base of the 509th Bomb Group, the only unit in the world then trained to drop atomic bombs. That fact alone made the region one of the most sensitive military areas in the United States, and it is part of why the events that summer still draw suspicion.

In June 1947 (on the 14th, by his own later account), a ranch foreman named W.W. 'Mac' Brazel found a field of strange scraps on the Foster ranch near Corona, well northwest of Roswell. He described foil-like sheets, rubber, tape and light sticks. After hearing about 'flying saucer' reports in the news, he took some to the local sheriff, who called the air base. Intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel went out to collect the material.

On July 8, 1947, the base put out a press release saying it had recovered a flying disc. Within hours, General Roger Ramey in Fort Worth displayed the debris for reporters and said it was a weather balloon with a radar target. The story faded for about thirty years. In 1978 Marcel told UFO researcher Stanton Friedman that the balloon story had been a cover, and a 1980 book by Charles Berlitz and William Moore turned Roswell into a legend.

Today Roswell is the best-known name in UFO history. The city leans into it with a UFO museum, an annual summer festival, alien-shaped streetlights and themed shops. For Ancient Aliens, Roswell is the bridge between ancient visitors and modern secrecy: the show treats it as proof that governments hide contact and study recovered technology. The US government, after several reviews, says the wreckage was a secret spy balloon.

The ancient-alien case

Theorists start with the base's first words. Army officers, they argue, do not casually announce a captured flying disc at a nuclear bomber base, and the fast switch to a balloon story looks like damage control. Stanton Friedman spent decades interviewing witnesses and argued that Marcel, a trained intelligence officer, would have recognized a balloon. Tom Carey and Don Schmitt later collected hundreds of witness accounts that, they say, point to a second crash site and small bodies.

On Ancient Aliens, Roswell is used to connect old visitors with modern ones. In Beyond Roswell, Giorgio Tsoukalos and others argue that the US quietly recovered crashed craft in the 1940s and tried to copy them. David Childress suggests the visitors came because they were worried about America's new atomic weapons, which fits with Roswell's 509th Bomb Group. Linda Moulton Howe goes further, proposing that crashes may have been allowed on purpose to put technology in human hands.

The show also links Roswell to the space program. NASA's Secret Agenda repeats the claim of the late Philip Corso, a retired Army officer, that recovered Roswell hardware was studied at White Sands and helped Wernher von Braun's team leap ahead in rocketry. Theorists see the rapid postwar jump in technology, from transistors to fiber optics, as a possible fingerprint of that effort.

In The Relics of Roswell, the series turns to physical evidence. Geologist and UFO researcher Frank Kimbler says he found small metal fragments on the old debris field and that lab tests showed odd mixes of elements. Tsoukalos and Howe examine metal said to come from the crash, and journalist George Knapp suggests it may not have been made on Earth. For theorists, surviving scraps would finally move Roswell from testimony to hard proof.

What archaeologists say

The US Air Force says the debris came from Project Mogul, a then-secret program that flew long trains of balloons carrying microphones and radar reflectors to detect Soviet atomic tests. The materials Brazel described, such as foil, rubber, tape and balsa-like sticks, match those balloon trains. The 1947 records that survive also describe a balloon: the base's own July history calls it a radar tracking balloon, and an FBI teletype that day describes a six-sided object hanging from a balloon.

Investigators point out that most witness stories surfaced 30 to 50 years after the event and often changed over time. The Air Force's 1997 report says tales of alien bodies likely blend memories of 1950s tests that dropped human-shaped dummies from high-altitude balloons with a 1956 air crash that killed 11 airmen. In 2024 the Pentagon's AARO reviewed the whole history and found no records showing the government had ever recovered alien craft or remains.

Skeptics also note that the 'Alien Autopsy' film was admitted to be a staged remake, that the FBI memo about three saucers is a secondhand tip the Bureau never investigated, and that fragments tested by UFO researchers have shown ordinary industrial metals. Critics such as Jason Colavito point out that the 1995 GAO report did confirm that some base records were lost, which is why the case never fully closes for believers.

Timeline

  1. June 4, 1947New York University researchers launch Project Mogul Flight 4, a long string of balloons and radar targets meant to listen for Soviet nuclear tests.
  2. Late June 1947Mac Brazel finds scattered debris on the ranch he manages near Corona, New Mexico.
  3. July 8, 1947Roswell Army Air Field announces it has a 'flying disc'; General Ramey calls it a weather balloon the same day.
  4. 1978–1980Jesse Marcel speaks to Stanton Friedman; Berlitz and Moore publish The Roswell Incident, the first book on the case.
  5. 1994After a request from Congressman Steven Schiff, the Air Force reports that the debris came from Project Mogul.
  6. 1995The GAO finds that many Roswell base records were destroyed without a stated authority; the 'Alien Autopsy' film airs and is later admitted to be a staged recreation.
  7. 1997A second Air Force report ties stories of alien bodies to test dummies dropped from balloons in the 1950s and to later air accidents.
  8. 2011The FBI posts a 1950 memo about three 'flying saucers' in New Mexico on its online Vault, and it goes viral as a Roswell document.
  9. 2024The Pentagon's AARO historical review finds no evidence that the US government recovered alien craft or bodies at Roswell or anywhere else.
  10. 2026Roswell holds its annual UFO Festival around the anniversary in early July, one of the city's biggest tourist events.

Still unanswered

  • Why did the base announce a 'flying disc' at all, and who approved the press release?
  • Who destroyed the base's administrative records and outgoing messages from 1946–1949, and under what authority?
  • Did the debris come from Flight 4 specifically, since records do not clearly show that flight was recovered?
  • Where exactly was the reported second crash site that some researchers describe, and did it exist?
  • What are the metal fragments collected by modern researchers, and can any be tied to 1947 at all?

Did you know?

  • The Roswell base was home to the 509th Bomb Group, the unit that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.
  • The debris was not found in Roswell at all, but on a ranch near the village of Corona, much closer to that town.
  • The first book on the case did not appear until 1980, more than three decades after the event.

On Ancient Aliens

  • S10E02 NASA's Secret Agenda Repeats Philip Corso's claim that von Braun studied the recovered Roswell craft to build American rockets.
  • S11E13 Beyond Roswell Uses Roswell as the starting point for other 1940s crash-retrieval stories and claims that craft were reverse-engineered.
  • S15E02 The Relics of Roswell Follows researchers who say they found and tested metal fragments from the 1947 debris field.

Episode numbers follow Wikipedia's episode list; History and some reviewers number a few seasons differently.

Visiting

Getting there. Roswell, New Mexico, about three hours southeast of Albuquerque by car; the city also has a regional airport.

What you can see. The International UFO Museum and Research Center on Main Street is the main stop and holds exhibits on the 1947 case. The debris field and claimed crash sites are on private ranch land and are not open to the public. The old air base, later Walker Air Force Base, is now a civil air center and industrial park.

Tip. Plan around the UFO Festival in early July if you want the full show, or avoid it if you want a quiet museum visit.

Sources

  1. Roswell incident (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
  2. GAO report NSIAD-95-187 on Roswell records (FAS mirror) sgp.fas.org
  3. AARO Historical Record Report, Volume 1, Section 4 (Wikisource) en.wikisource.org
  4. List of Ancient Aliens episodes (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Review of Ancient Aliens 'Beyond Roswell' (Jason Colavito) jasoncolavito.com
  6. Review of Ancient Aliens S15E02 'The Relics of Roswell' (Jason Colavito) jasoncolavito.com
  7. Review of Ancient Aliens 'NASA's Secret Agenda' (Jason Colavito) jasoncolavito.com
Research notes: what we could not confirm
  • The old entry said 'Beyond Roswell' (S11E13) cites the 1950 FBI Hottel memo; Colavito's review of that episode says the memo is not mentioned, so that claim was dropped.
  • The old entry listed S1E5 'The Return', S17E3 'Top Ten Alien Cover-Ups', and S13E1, S13E6 and S13E11 as Roswell episodes; I did not confirm their Roswell content.
  • The distance from Roswell to the debris area is an approximate figure; accounts of the exact spot vary.
  • I could not open a 2026 source with festival attendance figures, so no numbers are given.