{"id":32762,"date":"2022-06-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=32762"},"modified":"2022-07-12T14:57:55","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T14:57:55","slug":"where-are-all-the-aliens-roswell-at-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/2022\/06\/16\/where-are-all-the-aliens-roswell-at-75\/","title":{"rendered":"Where are all the aliens? Roswell at 75"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nick Pope <\/strong>looks at back at the most famous UFO story of all, and why more people are reporting strange sights in the sky<\/p>\n\n

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Stranger things: since the Roswell incident, bizarre UFO-related stories have emerged from across the world, including the alien abduction of cattle <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

This summer sees the 75th anniversary of the Roswell incident, where believers say an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed in the New Mexico desert, with debris \u2013 and possibly alien bodies \u2013 being recovered by the US government, marking the beginning of a decades-long cover-up. What really happened, and why does this mystery still attract such interest and controversy, decades later? <\/p>\n\n

On 24 June 1947, a pilot, Kenneth Arnold, was flying over the Cascade Mountains of Washington State in the US, helping to search for a crashed military aircraft. He saw nine crescent-shaped objects flying in formation at a height of around 3km (10,000ft) and an estimated speed of approximately 1,900km\/h: seemingly impossible at the time. Arnold described the jerky movement of the objects as being, \u201c…like a saucer would if you skipped it over water\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

The mystery begins <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

The media got hold of the story, coined the phrase \u2018flying saucer\u2019 and a modern mystery was born. It wasn\u2019t the first sighting of what we now call a UFO (unidentified flying object), but it was the first to capture the public imagination, making news headlines around the world. More reports were received, suggesting these sightings were commonplace but had previously gone unreported. As this \u2018summer of the saucers\u2019 progressed, media coverage intensified to a point of near-hysteria, until matters came to a head and it seemed the mystery might be resolved. <\/p>\n\n

On 7 July a local rancher named \u2018Mac\u2019 Brazel contacted the sheriff in Roswell to say he\u2019d discovered strange debris spread over the ranch. He\u2019d found it days earlier but hadn\u2019t thought much of it until the stories about flying saucers. Thinking there might be a connection and guessing something might have crashed during a recent storm, he alerted the authorities. He\u2019d brought some samples of the debris, and when the sheriff contacted the nearby Army airbase, intelligence officer Jesse Marcel went to the crash site with Brazel and recovered more debris. <\/p>\n\n

The military base\u2019s public information officer, Walter Haut, worked with a local journalist to release a newswire report about the event: <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019s office of Chaves County. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cAction was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher\u2019s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

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Life, but not as we know it: Roswell continues to celebrate its historic link with UFOs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The news sent shockwaves around the world, but it\u2019s the iconic front page headline of the local Roswell <\/em>Daily <\/em>Record <\/em>(right) that\u2019s best-known: \u2018RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region\u2019. <\/p>\n\n

Within 24 hours there was a stunning development. In a complete reversal of their position, the US military said a mistake had been made, and that the \u2018flying saucer\u2019 was a crashed weather balloon. The Roswell <\/em>Daily <\/em>Record <\/em>printed a follow-up story that read \u2018Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer\u2019 \u2013 General Roger Ramey being the Commander of the Eighth Air Force, to whose Fort Worth headquarters the debris had been flown. A series of photos were published showing Ramey, Marcel, and other military personnel holding some of the debris. Sure enough, it looked pretty uninspiring and was entirely consistent with the \u2018tinfoil\u2019 mentioned by the military in their explanation. <\/p>\n\n

Nowadays, with the 24\/7 news cycle, internet, social media and an activist community of UFO researchers, such a claim \u2013 followed by such an about-turn \u2013 would no doubt cause controversy and conspiracy theories on a massive scale. This is especially true given that the 509th Bomb Group was the only atomic bomb-capable squadron anywhere in the world at the time. It\u2019s hard to imagine these elite personnel \u2013 many of whom were familiar with weather balloons \u2013 being fooled in this way. But post-war America was very different from today, and in that calmer, more trusting-of-authority era, the weather balloon explanation was almost universally believed. While interest in flying saucers and UFOs went from strength to strength, Roswell disappeared from the narrative. <\/p>\n\n

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Breaking news: in July 1947, the Roswell Daily Record generated a media frenzy about a \u2018flying saucer\u2019 captured by the US military <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
A voice from the past <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

The story of the Roswell UFO crash was rediscovered in 1978 by nuclear physicist-turned-ufologist Stanton T Friedman, who was tipped off that a retired military man had an interesting story to tell: none other than Jesse Marcel. Marcel told Friedman the weather balloon explanation had been a cover story and that the photos had been staged, with weather balloon debris being substituted for the real wreckage. He claimed that everyone involved in the retrieval was clear the object had indeed been an extraterrestrial spaceship. <\/p>\n\n

Over the next few years, researchers dug deeper into the mystery, tracking down many of the key players, locating additional witnesses and trying to piece together what happened. A number of retired military personnel who\u2019d been based at Roswell corroborated some elements of the crashed spacecraft narrative and added their own details.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Sceptics argued that they were simply telling the researchers what they wanted to hear, writing themselves into the story either as a prank, or because they were seeking attention. Either way, books were written, documentaries, drama series and a movie were made, and the idea of a UFO crash became so embedded in pop culture that even if people had no particular interest or belief in UFOs, there was a good chance they had heard of Roswell.<\/p>\n\n