On this day in history, June 24, 1997, the U.S. Air Force released a 232-page report titled “The Roswell Report: Case Closed,” about a mysterious incident near Roswell, New Mexico, that some believe was a UFO crash-landing on Earth.
The report was the second part of the government’s official disclosure about what was found in rural New Mexico in the 1940s. Back in 1994, the government published, “The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert.”
“The ‘Roswell Incident’ has assumed a central place in American folklore since the events of the 1940s in a remote area of New Mexico,” noted the foreword of the 1997 report, written by Secretary of the Air Force Sheila A. Widnall.
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The details are as follows: On June 14, 1947, a rancher named W.W. (“Mac”) Brazel made an unusual discovery on his ranch, about 80 miles northwest of Roswell.
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Brazel described the scene as “a large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper, and sticks.“
Sheriff George Wilcox had no idea what Brazel had come across, so he in turn reached out to Colonel “Butch” Blanchard, the commander of the Roswell Army Airfield’s (RAAF) 509th Composite Group, which was located near the city.
Many people were skeptical about the Roswell incident, thinking that the government engaged in some sort of cover-up regarding extraterrestrial life. (Getty Images)
Blanchard, too, had no idea what the strange discovery might be, so he contacted General Roger W. Ramey, his superior.
Ramey was a commander of the 8th Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas, nearly 500 miles away from Roswell, said the Smithsonian.
“The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today that the field has come into the possession of a Flying Saucer,” the story claimed.
Roswell is home to both the International UFO Museum and Research Center and the UFO Festival. (Getty Images)
The revelation that the RAAF had an extraterrestrial object in its possession set off a bit of a frenzy.
“Apparently, it was better from the Air Force’s perspective that there was a crashed ‘alien’ spacecraft out there than to tell the truth,” Roger Lanius, former curator of Space History at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, told Smithsonian Magazine.
The following day, the military made a valiant albeit fruitless effort to walk back the flying saucer story, and the Roswell Daily Record published a story headlined, “Army Debunks Roswell Flying Disc as World Simmers with Excitement.”
The Army claimed the debris found on Brazel’s ranch was a high-altitude weather balloon, said the Smithsonian.
Jesse Marcel, the head intelligence officer who initially investigated and recovered some of the debris from the Roswell UFO site, poses with some of the wreckage found near Roswell. (Getty Images)
Eventually, it was revealed that the strange wreckage was actually part of Project Mogul, noted the Smithsonian.
Roswell, meanwhile, has fully embraced the UFO craze.
The city of 48,000 features an alien on its official seal, while a “Welcome to Roswell” sign erected in 2017 features a cow being abducted by a flying saucer, notes the website Roadside America.
The tourism website “See Roswell,” operated by the city, sells “official merchandise” featuring flying saucers and other extraterrestrial motifs.