Corsicana Daily Sun
9 July, 1947

Disc Craze Continues
Army Disk-ounts
New Mexico Find
As Weather Gear

FORT WORTH, July 9. – (AP) – An examination by the Army revealed last night that a mysterious object found on a lonely New Mexico ranch was a harmless high-altitude weather balloon – not a grounded flying disc.

Excitement was high in disk-conscious Texas until Brig Gen. Roger M. Ramey, commander of the Eight Air Forces with headquarters here cleared up the mystery.

The bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams and rubber remnants of a balloon was sent here yesterday by army air transport in the wake of reports that it was a flying disc.

But the general said the objects were the crushed remains of a Ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes.

Warrant Officer Irving Newton, forecaster at the Army Air Forces weather station here, said “We use them because they go much higher than the eye can see.”

(Photo caption)

NOT A FLYING DISK – Major Jesse A. Marcel of Houma, La., intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell, New Mexico, inspects what was a identified by a Fort Worth, Texas, Army Air Base weather forecaster as a ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes. Initial stories originating from Roswell, where the object was found, had labelled it a “flying disc” but inspection at Fort Worth revealed its true nature. (AP Wirephoto)

Photograph taken by James Bond Johnson, 1926-2006