RANCHMAN
Finds Shiny Junk
In New Mexico, But It
Won't Solve Riddle.

Army Identifies Kite-Like
Wreck As Wind Target
Flown Under Balloon.

Fort Worth, Tex., July 8 -- (AP) -- The discovery of a “flying disc” reported by an Army public relations officer proved a dud today when the object was identified as a weather balloon.

Warrant Officer Irving Newton, a forecaster at the Army's Eighth Air Force weather station here, said the object found near Roswell, N. Mex., was a ray wind [sic, Rawin] target used to determine the direction and the velocity of winds at high altitudes.

He said there were some 80 weather stations in the United States using this type of balloon and that it could have come from any one of them.

“We use them because they can go much higher than the eye can see,” Newton explained. A radar set is employed to follow the balloon, and through a process of triangulation the winds aloft are charted, he added.

When rigged up, Newton stated, the object looks like a six-pointed star, is silvery in appearance, and rises in the air like a kite, mounted to a 100-gram balloon.

Newton said he had sent up balloons identical to this one during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistics information for heavy guns.

Maj. Gen. Roger M. Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force, with headquarters here, also said in a radio broadcast tonight that the “flying disc” was a weather balloon. Earlier it was announced that he would broadcast over the National Broadcasting Co., but this was not done.

The weather device had been found three weeks previously by a New Mexico rancher, W. W. Brazell [sic, Brazel], on his property about 85 miles northwest of Roswell.

Brazell, whose ranch is 30 miles from the nearest telephone and has no radio, knew nothing about flying discs when he found the broken remains of the weather device over a square mile of his land.

He bundled the tinfoil and broken wooden beams of the kite and the torn synthetic rubber remains of the balloon together and rolled it under some brush, according to Maj. Jesse A. Marcel, Houma, La., 509th Bomb Group Intelligence officer at Roswell, who brought the device to Fort Worth.

On a trip to town to Corona, N. Mex., Saturday night, Brazell heard the first reference to the “silver” flying disc, Major Marcel related.

Brazell hurried home, dug up the remains of the kite and balloon on Sunday and Monday headed for Roswell to report his find to the Sheriff's office.

This resulted in a call to Roswell Army Air Field and to Major Marcel being assigned to the case. Marcel and Brazell journeyed back to the ranch, where Marcel took the object into the custody of the Army.

After Col. William H. Blanchard, 509th commanding officer, reported the incident to General Ramey, he was ordered to dispatch the object in Ft. Worth Army Air Field immediately.

At that time, Lt. Warren Haught [sic, Walter Haut] public information officer at the Rowell Field, announced that a “flying disc” had come into possession of the Army Air Forces.

Lieutenant Haught said in a statement that “the many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the Sheriff's office.”

[Photos captions:]
-Association Press Wirephoto
Above. Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey, left, and col. T. J. Dubose examine the supposed flying disc found near Roswell, N. Mex. It proved to be the wreckage of a "high-altitude weather recording machine," the same as several found recently in Ohio. At right, Mrs. Sherman Campbell is holding one of two such devices picked up on her farm near Circleville, Ohio.

Wright Raps Saucers As War Propaganda

Dayton, Ohio, July 8 -- (AP) -- Orville Wright, who invented the airplane, said today that the flying saucer craze was a government campaign to get us into another war.

The 75-year-old scientist said “It is more propaganda for war to stir up the people and excite them to believe a foreign power had designs on this nation.” He said it was “dished by the government to support the current state Department campaign to get us into another war.”

Wright criticized the publicity given to the saucers stories and said there was no scientific basis for the existence of the phenomenon supposedly seen by hundreds.