Quote:
Originally Posted by astrophotographer
You were doing so well until you stated these things. One of the biggest myths about Roswell is that the AF keeps changing their story. This is not true but UFO groups want everyone to believe it. You have just joined the club of many people who have fallen for this line. I will, once again, recount this myth.
1. The Roswell AF base originally stated they had found the remains of a crashed disc. Not a spaceship, not a ufo, not an unknown aircraft but a crashed disc. If you look at what a flying disc was being reported as in July 1947, you will discover that it had to be shiny so people can see it when it was airborne and that it was in the sky. During the first half of July, many people reported finding crashed discs. Many of them turned out to be......
2. The "crashed disc" was sent to Wright field via HQ at Fort Worth. There, the commanding general took one look at it and saw it for what it was. A radar reflector and weather balloon materials. He verified this by calling in a weather officer to identify the materials. Photographs were taken, the debris disposed of and the story died away. In July 1947, the only thing that had "flip-flopped" was the fact that RAAF had misidentified what the debris was. Considering the fact they did not posess such reflectors on their base and they were somewhat new to the military inventory (as was radar), it is not unexpected for this to have happened.
3. Thanks to UFO groups congress brought pressure onto the USAF to investigate the matter in the early 1990s. As a result, the actual source of the weather balloons and reflectors was identified as coming from project MOGUL. They did not change the story, they just clarified where the materials came from.
4. In 1997, the USAF issued a second report in response to further complaints by UFO groups claiming that they did not address the reports of alien bodies in the 1994 report. The 1997 report is an addendum that only talks about the alien body side of the legend. It did not change any findings from the 1994 report. All they did was say a lot of the stories sounded like recovery operations that had occured in the area in the 1950s involving parachute testing at high altitudes. They could have called some of the individuals liars (which it turns out some of them were - i.e. Anderson and Dennis) but they gave them an "out" by saying they confused the events.
I am not sure what flip-flopping has been done by the government on the Zamora case. They could not identify the source and that is where it has stood as far as the USAF is concerned.
Area 51 is what it is because of legal reasons and security. It is not because of secret alien bases. However, I can see why people don't trust the government because of the base's checkered past.
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The weather balloon idea is the accepted reason for what was seen; however about 2 years ago I saw a special (I think it was on the scifi channel with Bryant Gumbel-- not sure of their veracity) where documents were released (with sensitive parts blacked out of course) indicating that it was some military black project. Its curious that so many of these incidents are in the SW--where many of our AFB are located.
Concerning the Zamora incident, I've heard a defense analyst lay out an interesting hypothesis: that it was an experimental military aircraft and the two men the police officer saw were actually the pilot and copilot of the craft-- a retired military officer actually told him that such an experimental craft had been launched that day from a nearby base. All of this is, of course, much more plausible than the ETH. This was on the history channel, a bit more believable than their "UFO Hunter" shows.
I do find it interesting that quite a few of the people on "the disclosure project" are retired astronauts or military personnel.
Concerning Area 51: they have good reason to keep it secret for legal reasons: I've heard theyve been dumping hazardous waste there (Clinton passed a law exempting them from EPA regulations), as well as the black projects they are supposedly conducting there. The defense analyst who I spoke of earlier indicated that he had evidence that the Aurora Project was very much alive, and used a satellite image for evidence: you could see a jet streak originating in the region and make its way due east (almost in a straight line!) to Europe at speeds of around Mach 6. Although I've also heard that Area 51/ Groom Lake is being phased out (too much attention perhaps) and operations are being moved to a different AFB in Nevada.