The Roswell UFO incident took place in the U.S. in June or July 1947, when an airborne object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Explanations of what took place are based on both official and unofficial communications. Although the crash is attributed to a secret U.S. military Air Force surveillance balloon by the U.S. government, the most famous explanation of what occurred is that the object was a spacecraft containing extraterrestrial life. Since the late 1970s, the Roswell incident has been the subject of much controversy, and conspiracy theories have arisen about the event.

The United States Armed Forces maintains that what was recovered near Roswell was debris from the crash of an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to what was then a classified (top secret) program named Mogul. In contrast, many UFO proponents maintain that an alien craft was found, its occupants were captured, and that the military engaged in a massive cover-up. The Roswell incident has turned into a widely known pop culture phenomenon, making the name "Roswell" synonymous with UFOs. Roswell has become the most publicized of all alleged UFO incidents.

On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) public information officer Walter Haut, issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disk", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell. Later that day, the press reported that Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force Roger Ramey had stated that a weather balloon was recovered by the RAAF personnel. A press conference was held, featuring debris (foil, rubber and wood) said to be from the crashed object, which seemed to confirm its description as a weather balloon.

Subsequently the incident faded from the attention of UFO researchers for over 30 years. In 1978, physicist and ufologist Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel who was involved with the original recovery of the debris in 1947. Marcel expressed his belief that the military covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft. His story spread through UFO circles, being featured in some UFO documentaries at the time. In February 1980, the National Enquirer ran its own interview with Marcel, garnering national and worldwide attention for the Roswell incident. Additional witnesses added significant new details, including claims of a large-scale military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis put forth a detailed personal account, wherein he claimed alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base.

In response to these reports, and after United States congressional inquiries, the General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the United States Secretary of the Air Force to conduct an internal investigation. The result was summarized in two reports. The first, released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from Project Mogul. The second report, released in 1997, concluded reports of recovered alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, innocently transformed memories of the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Operation High Dive conducted in the 1950s, and hoaxes perpetrated by various witnesses and UFO proponents. The psychological effects of time compression and confusion about when events occurred explained the discrepancy with the years in question. These reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible. But at the same time, several high-profile UFO researchers discounted the possibility that the incident had anything to do with aliens.

On July 7, 1947, an object crash landed on a ranch, approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell, leaving a large field of debris. The local air base at Roswell investigated after the rancher first reported it to Roswell authorities on July 7. On July 8, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) announced it had recovered a "flying disk". A few hours after the initial "flying disk" press release, U.S. Army Air Force officials stated that it was not a UFO, but a weather balloon. When the question of what crashed was revived in the early 1980s, the "Roswell Incident" became a focus of conspiracy theorists, "abductees," and UFO investigators. It is believed the crashed UFO's were used for reverse engineering, explaining the rapid advancement in technology since that time.

During the first week of July 1947, rancher William "Mack" Brazel discovered a large amount of unusual debris scattered widely over his ranch about 75 miles northwest of Roswell. Neighbors told him about the new "flying disk" phenomenon and suggested he go to Roswell to report his find. Brazel informed the local sheriff in Roswell, George M. Wilcox, that he may have found a "flying disk" and Wilcox then contacted the local USAAF airbase in Roswell.

The base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, sent his head Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel, with the head of the Roswell Army Counterintelligence Corps, Sheridan Cavitt, to investigate. Marcel and Cavitt went with Brazel to his ranch, retrieved some of the debris and returned with it to the Roswell base on the evening of July 7. Some debris was later flown to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, home of the USAF's aeronautical research labs. The next afternoon, July 8, Col. Blanchard issued an official USAAF press release from Roswell reporting that a "flying disk" had been found "sometime last week" by a local rancher and that it had been recovered by the Intelligence Office at the base for transfer to "higher headquarters". United Press also reported that residents near the ranch saw "a strange blue light several days ago about 3 a.m."

July 8, 1947

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer. According to information released by the department, over authority of Maj. J. A. Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff Geo. Wilcox, here, that he had found the instrument on his premises.

Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk, it was stated. After the intelligence officer here had inspected the instrument it was flown to higher headquarters. The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer's construction or its appearance had been revealed.

Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who saw what they thought was a flying disk. They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. last Wednesday night at about ten o'clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed. Wilmot called Mrs. Wilmot's attention to it and both ran down into the yard to watch. It was in sight less then a minute, perhaps 40 or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated.

Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500 feet high and going fast. He estimated between 400 and 500 miles per hour. In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like two old type washbowls placed, together in the same fashion. The entire body glowed as though light were showing through from inside, though not like it would inside, though not like it would be if a light were merely underneath.

From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked to be about 5 feet in size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must have been 15 to 20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess. Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs. Wilmot said she heard a swishing sound for a very short time. The object came into view from the southeast and disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity of six mile hill.

Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about it. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen.

Marcel and Ramey's then chief of staff, Brigadier General Thomas Dubose (ret.), would later claim that the weather balloon was a cover story to get the press off their backs. Gen. Dubose, in fact, stated he personally received the order from Washington to start the coverup. Both said they were acting under Ramey's orders when they made statements to the press about the object being a weather device. Supporting this to some extent was another quote attributed to Marcel from 1947 by AP saying that the balloon debris was "scattered over a square mile," inconsistent with the small amount of balloon material that was publicly displayed. Another quote inconsistent with what was shown oddly came from Ramey himself, who was quoted by the Washington Post, United Press, Associated Press, and others saying that the "box kite" covered with foil would have been "about 25 feet in diameter" if reconstructed.

Gen. Ramey also had one of his intelligence officers, Major Kirton, make statements on his behalf, starting about two hours after the initial press release. Kirton changed Ramey's 25-foot "box kite" to the balloon being "20 feet" in size when speaking to the Dallas FBI office and Reuters news agency. Kirton also told both the FBI and Dallas Morning News that the object was a weather balloon and attached radar reflector. However, he told the Morning News that the identification was definite and the flight to Wright Field was cancelled. (Morning News story) Contradicting the public statement, the FBI was instead told that the object was still being transported to Wright Field. Wright Field also stated that they disagreed with the weather balloon assessment. (FBI telegram) ABC News also contacted Wright Field and was told by officials there that they expected "the so-called flying saucer to be delivered there, but that it hasn't arrived as yet." (ABC News radio broadcast)

After Ramey brought in a weather officer for definitive identification, the weather balloon story became official three hours after the first press release of a "flying disk" from Roswell base. Soon after this, Brazel showed up in Roswell at the local newspaper for an interview. Two reporters at the scene later related he was accompanied by military officers. The base provost marshal, Col. Edwin Easley, likewise later confirmed that they were holding Brazel at the base. (A number of other witnesses also testified to seeing Brazel in military hands or hearing him complain bitterly afterwards about his treatment by the military.) Initially Brazel seemed to be describing a balloon crash of some kind.

According to the story published the next day, Brazel said he found five pounds of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper, and sticks. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in its construction. The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been about 12 feet long, he felt. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter.

But at the end of his interview, Brazel seemingly recanted his earlier balloon description stating that, "...he had previously found two weather balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these. 'I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon, but if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.'"

Also contradicting the initial balloon story, Brazel said at the start of his interview that he "whispered" to Sheriff Wilcox that "he might have found a flying disk." (Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947) (However, some skeptics argue that there was no contradiction since Brazel allegedly found a different type of balloon device from the weather balloons he had previously found.)

Sheriff Wilcox was also quoted in other stories.

According to United Press Wilcox claimed that Brazel came in saying that he thought he had found a "weather meter." This contradicted Brazel's denial that he had found any type of weather balloon and he instead told Wilcox that maybe he had found a "flying disk."

Wilcox did say that Brazel also said the object "more or less seemed like tinfoil" and was about 3 feet across. However, when Associated Press asked Wilcox for more details about the object's description, they reported he declined to elaborate saying "I'm working with those fellows at the base." Various Wilcox family members would later claim that he was threatened by the military.

A number of UFO researchers charge that the change in the military's story from flying saucer to weather balloon was disinformation and that the U.S. government was withholding or suppressing information. Whether Ramey showed the actual debris and whether Brazel and Marcel's newspaper statements accurately describe what was actually discovered remain highly contentious to this day in debates between advocates and skeptics. Also hotly debated is whether there really was a coverup and whether some witnesses like Brazel and Wilcox were coerced.

Beyond dispute is that a number of military and civilian witnesses, including Marcel, Dubose, and Brazel's son, gave very different accounts of the events and debris many years later, reviving interest in the case. Instead of flimsy weather balloon material, the debris allegedly possessed highly anomalous physical properties. Some material resembled dull aluminum or lead foil yet, when crumpled, straightened back up leaving no creases or wrinkles, similar to a shape memory alloy.

Other debris bore some resemblance to balsa wood in lightness and color. But like the foil material, witnesses claimed that it could not be burned, cut, or otherwise damaged. All debris was said to be extremely light in weight. Some, including metallic-looking "I-beams," was said to be covered with strange writing or "hieroglyphics." witness debris descriptions.

Even more controversial than the debris descriptions were stories to emerge later of an intact "disc" and even alien bodies being recovered, primarily second-hand accounts from friends and family members of those involved, such as the Wilcox family. Not surprisingly, no mention of bodies was made in newspaper accounts from 1947. If anything, Gen. Ramey made a big point that the object was "too lightly constructed to have carried anyone" and "scoffed at the possibility that the object could have been piloted." However, it is pointed out that another of Ramey's 1947 statements of the foil-covered "box kite" (or radar target) being about 25 feet across if reconstructed would be consistent with later testimony from two eyewitnesses of seeing a damaged craft about 25 feet in size.

There is also a current contention that the telegram held by Gen. Ramey while being photographed with the weather balloon does speak specifically of "the 'disc'" and "the victims of the wreck" (enlargement of message above right). However, some skeptics claim the text is not clear enough to be read with any certainty. The USAF similarly claimed in their 1994 summary report that they had submitted the message to a photo-analysis lab of "a national level organization" and then claimed that nothing could be read. However, the Air Force has never identified the organization or provided the actual report of the lab to document their claim, despite prolonged efforts to obtain this information using FOIA.

The Roswell Incident briefly received national and even international attention in 1947, but after it was reported that the crash was of a weather balloon and not a "flying disk", the event faded from public view for over 30 years as most people simply took the government's word at face value. It did, however, occasionally receive passing mention, such as in a special article on UFOs published in Look magazine in 1967.

The Roswell incident received little mainstream attention until 1978, when researchers Stanton T. Friedman and William L. Moore compared notes from a series of interviews each had conducted independently.

Friedman and Moore interviewed Lydia Sleppy, a teletype operator who worked at an Albuquerque, New Mexico, radio station in 1947, and United States Air Force Lt. Colonel Jesse A. Marcel (ret.), chief intelligence officer at Roswell base in 1947. Sleppy claimed that the FBI had stopped their teletype story of "the crashed flying disk with bodies" from being transmitted after a Roswell radio reporter had phoned in the story. Marcel reported gathering highly unusual materials near Brazel's ranch, which he said were "not of this Earth." He was then ordered to fly the recovered debris to Wright Field, first stopping in Fort Worth, Texas, to see Brigadier General Roger Ramey, head of the 8th Air Force there. Marcel also stated that the weather balloon explanation subsequently put out by Gen. Ramey was a cover story.

Impressive testimony about the Roswell Incident came from retired Air Force Brigadier General Arthur Exon, as related by ufologists Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt. In 1947, Exon was stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. In recorded interviews, Exon said that shortly after the reports of the saucer crash, strange material was shipped to Wright Patterson. Though it was very thin and lightweight, Exon said, the metal could not be bent, dented or scorched. He also said he heard reports of bodies being recovered. Further, there was a national level effort to cover the whole thing up and the White House was involved. Exon added, "Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space."

By 1961, Exon had been promoted to general, and was Wright-Patterson's base commanding officer from 1964 to 1966. Another statement of Exon's was that other UFO crash recoveries staged out of Wright-Patterson occurred during his tenure as base chief, though he wasn't privy to details. However, critics charge that Exon's knowledge was mostly secondhand, as Exon himself stressed in interviews and in a letter to Randle and Schmitt.

In order to have access to U.S. government classified information, one must have both the proper level of security clearance as well as a need to know the information. In consequence, Exon was denied access to areas of the base where UFO-related studies were ongoing, and was never officially briefed regarding their findings. Thus it is claimed his reported statements decades later may have reflected rumor or opinion not based on personal knowledge. Against this, he also stressed that he spoke to firsthand witnesses to both the debris and bodies, people he personally knew.

Another report about the events at Roswell came from retired Air Force officer Brigadier General Thomas J. Dubose. In 1947 he was a colonel and Gen. Ramey's chief of staff. In recorded interviews, Dubose said the whole Roswell matter was conducted in the strictest secrecy and even involved the White House. One such secretive event involved a shipment of debris by "colonel courier" from Roswell to Washington D.C., first stopping at Fort Worth. Dubose handled the high-level phone communications and said he personally received the order from Gen. Clemence McMullen in Washington to cover up what happened at Roswell. He said McMullen told him the matter was so highly classified that it went "beyond top secret". He also confirmed Marcel's account that the weather balloon explanation put out by Gen. Ramey was the cover story to get the press off their backs. Dubose affidavit and audio.

Adherents to the UFO theory point to other witnesses in the Roswell case. Family and friends of Capt. Oliver Henderson, a senior pilot at Roswell, stated that he told them of flying the remains of a flying saucer to Wright Field and seeing small alien bodies. Lewis Rickett, a member of the Army Counter Intelligence Corp at Roswell base, confirmed that the metallic debris was highly anomalous and that the military engaged in a large and highly secretive recovery operation at the Brazel ranch.

Bill Brazel, Jr., Mack Brazel's son, independently corroborated Major Marcel's descriptions of anomalous debris, the large, linear debris field, and his father's finding of the debris after hearing a tremendous explosion. Both Rickett and Brazel, Jr., described what appeared to be a linear impact groove, as did Gen. Exon, who overflew the site later.

Brazel, Jr., also said the military detained his father at the base; this seems to have been corroborated by the base provost marshal, Major Edwin Easley. When pressed for details of his involvement, Easley said he had sworn an oath not to talk about what had happened. Family members also claim that on his deathbed Easley spoke of the "creatures" at Roswell, though Easley never mentioned this in interviews with researchers.

Project Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, though not a direct witness, has also stated on numerous occasions that Roswell was a real alien event based on his high-level contacts within the government. "Make no mistake, Roswell happened. I've seen secret files which show the government knew about it but decided not to tell the public."

Mitchell has also spoken about bodies: "A few insiders know the truth . . . and are studying the bodies that have been discovered." St. Petersburg Times article, Feb. 18, 2004

Another high-level, indirect witness was Senator Barry Goldwater, himself a retired Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, a 1964 Presidential nominee, and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Goldwater many times told the story of trying to get into the area at Wright-Patterson where alien artifacts were rumored to be kept.

When he brought the subject up with his good friend General Curtis LeMay, USAF Chief of Staff, Goldwater claimed LeMay swore at him, told him never to bring up the subject again, and finished by saying that even he did not have clearance to get in.

Retired Brigadier General Stephen Lovekin (North Carolina State Guard) similarly claimed to have received a Pentagon briefing on a 1947 New Mexico crash when he was a young tech specialist stationed at the White House in the U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1959 to 1961. Those briefed were allegedly shown some of the anomalous debris and were also told that alien bodies were recovered.

Skeptics state that some witnesses, whose testimony at first might have seemed compelling, have since been largely or entirely discredited. A notable recent example was Frank Kaufmann, who claimed to have been a member of an exclusive team in charge of the craft and body recovery. After his death it was found that he had hoaxed documents about the crash and about his background in intelligence.

Another important witness whose credentials were recently challenged was Stephen Lovekin. Roswell researcher Kevin Randle originally claimed that he could find no evidence to support Lovekin's rank of brigadier general and also questioned whether he would have been old enough to have served in the White House when he said he did. However, Randle's research has since been shown to be incomplete and some of his statements inaccurate.

Documents released by Lovekin and posted at The Disclosure Project website would seem to verify Lovekin's claimed credentials, most importantly having served in the White House Army Signal Agency when he said he did. Documents Randle has since printed a retraction. (Randle's blog) However, it would also be misleading to claim Lovekin as a high-level military witness, since his current brigadier general rank is only in the State Guard. Lovekin retired from active duty in the U.S. Army as only a sergeant.

A further common criticism is that the bulk of testimony on Roswell, particularly on the subject of bodies, is secondhand or even further removed from the actual events. Witnesses like Exon, Goldwater, and Lovekin would largely fall into this category.Some other witnesses, though probably sincere, are contended to suffer from various types of memory distortions such as senility, false memory, or retrospective falsification. Counterarguments are that "faulty memories" are speculative and also not equally applied to witnesses supporting the skeptical point of view.