In June, 1947, a farm supervisor named William Brazel discovered a very strange wreckage in a field about 50 kilometres north of the town of Roswell, New Mexico. It consisted of tin foil, smokey-gray rubber strips, sticky tape, tough paper and sticks, and a “flying disc”! Local police & military personnel got involved in the clean up / “cover-up”. By July, the Roswell Army Air Field put out a press release revealing that it had recovered a “flying disc” from the field, and that it was safely in government hands. The story hit the newspapers, although “recovered” became “captured” and “flying disc” became “flying saucer”. The object was then transported to a military base in Fort Worth, Texas, where it was announced to be a weather balloon. And the incident largely disappeared…
That is, until some UFO researchers in the 70s and 80s pored over documents (via the Freedom of Information Act, or leaked by “insiders”) and conducted interviews of anyone claiming to have been remotely involved (30 years before). The researchers reached the following conclusions: (1) at least one alien spacecraft crashed near Roswell, (2) they had recovered alien bodies, and (3) a huge government cover-up had taken place. The story grew and grew. Conspiracy theories grew increasingly bold with details and events – the wilder the tale the bigger the book sales. Then followed documentaries, films, and television shows. By the mid-1990s, most Americans believed aliens had crash landed near Roswell.
And there we were – at the International UFO Museum and Research Centre in the small farming town of global fame. Check out the tops of the town’s lamp posts.
One key point about this incident is that it happened in the late 1940s. There’s no video footage or live reporting from the scene, as we’d expect to have today. There was a lot of research and some detailed analysis, but everything seemed quite scattered. Here are a few examples:
The result can be a little uninspiring, although they attempt to spice things up with dramatic reenactments including flashing lights, smoke machines, and eerie sounds. I’m not sure if that really helps.
The town, of course, has taken the theories to heart. Everything has an alien theme – from McDonalds to clothing shops, beer brands to the local baseball team (The Roswell Invaders).
We had a good meal at an alien-themed restaurant called Farleys, followed by drinks and a music performance at a local bar. It had a very small town America-type of feeling.
Roswell (pop: 48,000) is in a pretty conservative part of the country. We popped into a gun store for the first time to see what it looked like. It’s pretty much as expected, except perhaps the extent of the range of different pistols and rifles. The smaller pink-coloured mini-rifle to help kids get started was the most eye-opening.
Our Airbnb was a nice simple home in the suburbs, and we found ourselves doing some pretty simple suburban things – visiting the local Target, discussing politics with the Airbnb host (a vocal Democrat), getting our oil changed at the local Jiffy Lube, and even using a drive-through ATM (the real alien technology here). Waiting for our vehicle service to finish, I picked up a ‘Hunting’ magazine in the waiting room – it turns out that there were 11.5 million hunting licenses issued nation-wide in 2016, down from 17 million in 1982. A declining activity for sure, but still a big number of hunters out there.
At the risk of ruining a good story with the truth, here is what happened. During the 1990s, given the public excitement over the issue, the government instructed the military to investigate the matter. They revealed that the wreckage was debris from something called Project Mogul. In essence, it was a top secret military project that involved microphones hanging from high-altitude balloons used to detect sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests. This was pretty high-tech for 1947. Given the project’s nature, the military simply claimed the wreckage to be a weather balloon, not a Project Mogul device and balloon. Despite the simple explanation, the incident and multiple conspiracy theories had simply become too big and hairy to put back in the box. After all, in the world of conspiracy theory, anything can be challenged by the phrase “that’s what they want you to believe”. Or is this simply what they want you to believe?
We left town a little underwhelmed – the hype didn’t quite match the experience. We headed southeast, through farmlands, headed for the heart of the United States’ oil country – the Permian Basin…
Just a final picture to sum it all up:
