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Case closed: reflections on the 1997 Air Force Roswell report - Roswell, New Mexico - Special Section: The Aliens Files - Cover Story
Skeptical Inquirer, May-June, 1998 by Bernard D. Gildenberg, David E. Thomas
The Air Force "crash dummy" explanation of the Roswell "bodies" was not a desperate attempt to preserve the Roswell coverup, as UFO promoters would have us believe. Rather, clues that anthropomorphic test dummies may have been mistaken for "aliens" came from testimonies of the Roswell "alien body," witnesses themselves. The 1997 Air Force Case Closed report, and new findings presented in this article, provide intriguing speculations on the origin of various parts of the Roswell legend.
The second United States Air Force (USAF) Roswell report, Case Closed (MacAndrew 1997), was released in the summer of 1997 to considerable initial criticism. In fact, the report provides important new information and rational explanations for claims of so-called "alien bodies" and other elements of the Roswell myth.
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The first USAF Roswell report (Weaver and MacAndrew 1995) focused on the actual events of 1947 and, in particular, on a June 1947 New York University balloon experiment (part of secret Project Mogul). The debris from that experiment is widely regarded as the best explanation for the "Roswell incident" (Thomas 1995).
After the 1995 report, however, the Air Force was criticized for failing to interview witnesses who claimed to have seen actual bodies of aliens, even though reports of alien bodies did not surface until decades after the original event and are not mentioned in any original accounts from 1947(1) [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].
In response to the criticism, the USAF examined the alien-body stories. The result, Roswell Report: Case Closed, presents some new explanations for the alien bodies and many other elements of the myth built up around Roswell. The Air Force said that reports of bodies and mysterious autopsies could have had several sources, including high-altitude drops of anthropomorphic test "dummies" and one particularly severe military aircraft accident.
This article provides some new information and updated material obtained by coauthor B. D. Gildenberg. Gildenberg contributed to Case Closed and served as a meteorologist, engineer, and scientist for thirty years at the Holloman Air Force Base Balloon Branch in Alamogordo, New Mexico (1951-1981). Holloman AFB, which lies to the west of Roswell near the White Sands Missile Range, has been the prime sky-hook (high-altitude) balloon launch site for classified Department of Defense programs. The Balloon Branch at Holloman is under the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, now known as Phillips Laboratory. Gildenberg was also involved in Project Bluebook, the Air Force's official investigation of unidentified flying objects (closed down in 1969).
Case Closed was introduced to the media and the public in a poorly executed Pentagon briefing on June 24, 1997. The high-ranking officer who gave the solo presentation had not been briefed on any of the material until the night before. And the report's knowledgeable and dedicated author, Captain James McAndrew, was nowhere to be seen. Slow initial distribution of the report was also a problem. But that did not stop some critics from rushing to judgment before they actually read the report. The UFO community was quick to sound the attack, with comments along the lines of "Dummies? The only dummies are the Air Force people who thought we'd buy this yarn!" The fact that the dummy drops did not occur until several years after the actual incident in 1947 was also widely criticized.
Air Force researchers, however, did not come up with "crash dummies" in a desperate attempt to preserve the Roswell coverup, as the UFO promoters would have us believe. Rather, the dues that dummies may have been mistaken for aliens came from the Roswell "alien body" witnesses themselves. And the time gap problems of the Air Force explanation pale in comparison to those of both witnesses and authors of popular books on Roswell.
The Case Closed report, and new findings presented in this article, provide some intriguing new speculations on the origins of various parts of the Roswell legend. The evidence that corroborates these explanations is not conclusive by any means, but it does lend support to a rational explanation of the Roswell mystery.
Clues from Witness Testimonies
Anthropomorphic dummy drops were performed in support of Air Force projects High Dive and Excelsior from 1954 to 1959. These projects culminated in Captain Joseph W. Kittinger's heroic world record parachute jump of 102,800 feet, on August 16, 1960, over White Sands Missile Range. The anthropomorphic dummies were flown by the Holloman AFB skyhook launch center, with remote command pilot Gildenberg steering the giant high-altitude skyhook balloons to their target destinations.
Over the course of the projects, a total of sixty-seven dummies were ejected from skyhook balloons at altitudes of up to twenty miles. A number of the dummies wound up in the vicinity of Roswell, Holloman's favorite downwind parking lot. Their conversion into part of the alien scenario was not dreamed up by the USAF researchers. The "witnesses" themselves, speaking out of the pages of the Roswell books, gave it away.
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