Aliens and UFOs

Thanks for checking out the site - as you can see, this section is filling out nicely… It is dedicated to "Close Encounters" of every kind, and if you have any relevant submissions, please e-mail them to me, quoting "Alien-UFO" as the Subject heading.

Thanks to GeoCities for making this project possible!

 Peet, September 13^th 1999

Unidentified Flying Objects

UFOs through the ages

The ancient Hindu epic, the "Ramayana",tells of four different types of flying craft known as "Vimanas" described as two-deck circular craft with viewing "portholes" and a "dome". They flew with the "speed of the wind" and gave forth a "melodious sound". Another contemporary source translates to the following description: "Bhima flew along in his car, resplendent as the sun and loud as thunder... The flying chariot shone like a flame in the night sky of summer ... it swept by like a comet... It was as if two suns were shining. Then the chariot rose up and all the heaven brightened."

Another famous example is that of the book of Ezikiel (Ez. 1:4 - Ez. 1:28) in the Judao-Christian Old Testament, describing the descent of a huge ornate "wheel" from the sky, stirring up a storm in its wake. From the New Testament, consider also the "Star of Bethlehem" (Matthew 2) which moved through the skies to guide the three wise men. Each generation has interpreted these phenomena in light of its own experience and preconceptions.

During 1896 there was a spate of sightings of "strange craft" in the skies above San Fransisco, California and Cherokee, Butte County U.S.A. - these craft had no wings or propellors, but maneuvered vertically as easily as horizontally and emitted a "great light". Craft of the same description were sighted over Oakland, Ca. on November 23rd of that year, and were assumed to be an "implement of aggression" related to the ongoing Spanish-American War! (For further info. on American incidents in this period, see "The Great Texas Airship Mystery." by Wally Chariton)

In the United Kingdom between 1909 and 1913 there was a spate of sightings of "phantom airships", believed to be the new German Zeppelin aircraft spying on the country prior to an invasion attempt. This belief was widely held despite the fact that before 1911 the Zeppelins were too unreliable to undertake such a long flight, and none of the people who "positively identified" these craft as such had ever seen a Zeppelin! Physical evidence of their passing was provided in the form of "hot coals" falling from the skies, lighting up the night and burning patches of grass in ways strikingly similar to modern reports of UFO phenomena. Contemporary reports even talk of the machines landing to steal cattle!

During the latter part of World War Two, Allied planes filed numerous reports of "Foo Fighters" - balls of blinding orange light which travelled at speeds in excess of 500MPH, performed "impossible" manoeuvers, were generally invisible to RADAR and appeared to be under "intelligent control". Recently published documents suggest that these may have been a Nazi secret weapon, remote controlled and intended to destroy entire bomber squadrons before it could be intercepted. However, the technology described is still beyond our grasp (as far as the public are aware...), and so is unlikely to have been available to the Nazis at that time. (One other flaw is that these machines were said to generate extreme broadband electrical signals to "jam" RADAR - so how did their "remote control" systems get through this?)

In the late 1940s, when the term "Flying Saucer" was coined, the "Cold War" was upon us, and "Flying Discs" were assumed to be some form of secret Soviet spying device - by the late 1950s, the world was obsessed with space - Sputnik 1 had just been launched, and all eyes were turned skyward. Little wonder, then, that this generation interpreted any unexplained lights in the skies as "obviously" being craft from space!

Around this time, there arose a popular connection between these "craft" and another phenomena of "abduction" by small, grey creatures and missing time. Even this was not new, as from medieval times there had been stories of people (mainly children) being abducted by faeries and goblins, then taken inside "faerie mounds", only to be released some considerable time later to find that their parents and friends had aged, while they had not... (for "faerie mound" read "parked saucer", for "goblin" read "grey"...) These stories proliferated throughout Europe, with the same details emerging throughout a wide diversity of cultures (sounds familiar?). These "abduction" phenomenon seems to exist in most times and cultures, but its connection with UFOs can be described as merely circumstantial, in that they sometimes, but not always, occur together.

By the 1980s, the world was becoming obsessed with the environment. At about this time, explanations for UFO activity began to hinge on such phenomena as aggregations of luminous insects, "ball lightning", gas bubbles from beneath the ocean and "stresses in the Earth's crust"... Again, the explainations fitted in with the prevailing belief system of the time.

It seems obvious that whether or not any of the many explainations for these phenomena are true, there is something happening in the skies. Even the most hardened sceptic cannot explain away all the reported sightings, but many still claim that if you can explain 95% of them, then the other 5% must be explainable or deliberate hoaxes! I believe that there probably is a "rational" explaination for these phenomena, but that we haven't discovered it yet.
Peet, May 31^st 1998 

Brazil aliens and UFOs, 1996-1997

Timeline:

Early morning: (the exact time does not appear in any of the reports) NORAD began tracking one or more unidentified objects heading over American airspace. When the object(s) left U.S. airspace, they were travelling towards Brazil. NORAD contacted the Brazilian authorities, and several jets were scrambled to attempt to intercept them. Radar confirmed the existence of one or more objects, tracked heading over Minas Gerias, in the direction of Varginha, a large industrial town 330Km North-East of Rio de Janeiro.

8am: An ultralight pilot, Carlos Souza, was driving between Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, when he witnessed a "cigar shaped" craft approx. 120 meters above the highway making a "strange noise". The craft had windows along the side, and appeared to have a large jagged hole in the front, with a "crack" running from the hole to the middle of the craft, issuing forth smoke or "vapour". The craft was flying quite slowly, moving Northward. Souza followed the craft as best he could in his pickup, but eventually lost sight of it. After twenty minutes of searching, down a dirt track he came upon a large expanse of "wreckage", along with a helecopter, an ambulance, two trucks, several cars and about 40 armed soldiers!

(This strand of the story is frustratingly incomplete, as there is no attempt to say whether or not there was a "conventional" explanation for the wreckage. If anyone out there has easy access to back issues of Brazilian newspapers, perhaps you could check the date out and E-Mail me any reports published at the time, to confirm whether there was indeed a mundane explanation for this "crash site".)

Saturday, January 20,1996

1am: Farmhands Oralina Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues were awakened by the noise of a disturbance in their cattle herd. They went outside to see "a grey object, similar to a submarine, the size of a small bus", emitting what appeared to be white smoke. (One researcher, Claudeir Covo, speculates that, given the similarity to Souza’s earlier sighting, the unlikelyness of two such sightings on sequential Saturdays and the fact that both stories were being told some time after the fact, it is conceivable that either of the witnesses could have "mixed up" the weekends. This would suggest that both events could have happened on either the 13^th or the 20^th…)

Between 8am and 9:30am: A group of passers-by sighted a "strange creature" in woodland around 2Km from the centre of Varginha. A woman came upon three teenage boys throwing stones at the creature to try to elicit a reaction – she told them to stop, and called out the local fire brigade. (It is a regular part of the fire brigade’s duties to capture wild animals which stray into the city bounds – they routinely carry nets, cages etc. for this purpose.) The brigade responded to the call, but immediately realised that they were not dealing with a conventional wild animal. They radioed the fire station, who in turn contacted the military academy (the Escola de Sargentos das Armas or "Army Sergeant’s School") at Tres Coracoes, 25Km away.

10:30am: By the time the firemen had captured the creature an army truck had arrived from the Sergeant’s School to take charge of it. The creature was placed in a box, under a sheet in the back of the truck, and driven away. 

2pm: A jogger passing the woods in the Santana district of Varginha saw seven armed soldiers enter the woods in what appeared to be a search formation. A couple of minutes later, he heard three rifle shots. On returning to the scene, he saw four soldiers carrying two "body bags" emerge from the woods. One bag contained a still form, while the other was "squirming". No further information about this incident has been uncovered, but given the date, time, place and lack of comment by the local military, local investigators believe it is probably safe to assume a connection with the other "captured creatures" that day.

3:30pm: Three young women (Two sisters, Liliane and Valquiria Silva, and their friend Katia Xavier) were returning home from their jobs as housemaids. They took a shortcut over a patch of waste ground in the area of Jardim Andere, 2km from the centre of Varginha. They were frightened to witness a strange creature a few meters from the side of the path. "He was squatting, with his long arms between his legs" reported Liliane. "It was not an animal and it certainly wasn’t human" was how Katia recalled it. "The creature seemed afraid."

The girls described the creature as about one meter tall, having huge, red eyes, shiny brownish skin with what appeared to be a slippery, oily coating, long arms and three small rounded horns protruding from its large head. The creature made a slight movement with its head, and the three girls ran away screaming, believing that they had just encountered the Devil! Luiza Silva, the mother of Liliane and Valquiria, returned to the waste ground forty minutes later to investigate her daughter’s stories, but saw no sign of the creature. She did, however, note a strange and unpleasant smell lingering at the location.

6pm: A violent hailstorm, extremely unusual for the time of year, erased any tracks which may have remained in the woods. (Witnesses had described "paw prints" resembling a human hand opened out with a space between the ring and middle finger. Skeptics point out that this is in fact the "Vulcan salute" used by the "Spock" character in the original series of Star Trek…!) Just after this, one report says that another "humanoid" creature was sighted and captured by two policemen.

Early evening: (after 6pm) Army trucks arrived at the "Hospital Regional" in the centre of Vaginha, bringing a body for autopsy. As it was a busy Saturday night in the city centre, many people witnessed their arrival and leaving. Hospital staff say they were told to take the body away because the hospital "was only equipped to deal with humans"…

Late evening: Some reports say that the military captured a further creature, possibly the one seen by the girls at 3:30pm.

Monday, January 22, 1996

Morning: (before dawn) One or more creatures was brought by the army to "Hospital Humanitas", Campinas, Sao Paulo. Hospital staff witnessed a number of vehicles from the University of Sao Paulo, along with two Americans carrying "Strange devices" visit the buildings during that morning.

Evening: A military operation, reputedly run by "S-2" (Brazilian intelligence) was arranged to remove one dead creature from the hospital. This involved at least three trucks, one for the body and two "decoys". According to soldiers who claim to have been involved in this operation, the body, now smelling very bad, was removed to the University of Campinas, where it was to be examined by Dr. Badan Palhares, a world-acclaimed professional in the field of autopsies. Both the University and Dr. Palhares deny involvement in any such events.

All through January 1996, UFOs continued to be seen over Southern Brazil, with sightings in Sao Tome de Letras, Tres Coracoes, Conselheiro Lafaiete and Pouso Alegre.

April 1996: A woman sitting on the veranda of the restaurant at Varginha zoo saw a strange creature, fitting the earlier descriptions, looking at her from behind a railing a few meters away. The creature ran off, vaulting a low wall. Zoo staff recalled that over the past three months there had been a number of unexplained deaths amongst the animals in the zoo, averaging at least one animal a week, often with no signs of a cause of death. These strange deaths stopped after this sighting.

May 1996: A student driving along the Varginha – Tres Coracoes highway spotted a strange creature which started to cross the highway in front of him, then darted back into the roadside bushes. When he reported this, he found out that the spot was right where the highway ran past the farm where Oralina Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues reported the strange craft on January 20^th.

May 1997: UFOs were being sighted "nightly", shortly after sundown, over Ribeiro Branco, a small town 350km from Sao Paulo. The main national TV network, "Redo Globo" broadcast two features on the phenomenon.

July 1 1997

Evening: An incandescent disc-shaped object was sighted lighting up the skies of the city of Nova Brasiliandia. There was a loud noise like an explosion which shook houses in the city, and the object disappeared from view. The object is alleged to have "crashed" at a ranch in the Teresopolis district, on the edge of the Manso river. One witness, named as Gilberto Braga, a local cowboy, described the crashed object as "an iron ball, bigger than a tractor, that released an odd smell". Another witness described the object as "black", "the size of a truck", and said it was impossible to remain near it for any length of time because of the smell it produced. (The story took over a week to "break", and by this time, the locals had become very secretive about the location of the "crash site", deliberately misdirecting TV crews and reporters. I have yet to find out any follow-up to this story.)

Researchers and correspondents quoted:

• Graham Birdsall, British UFO researcher
• Edson Boaventura Jr., Grupo Ufologico do Guaruja
• Luiz Clovis Bordin, Brazilian journalist, original article in Portugese translated by Eroll Bruce-Knapp.
• John Carpenter, American abduction-phenomena researcher. Carpenter says: "In short, it’s a damn good case. I’d say it’s equal to Roswell."
• Marco Antonio Petit de Castro, Associacao Fluminense de Estudos Ufologicos
• Claudeir Covo, UFOlogist, Sao Paulo.
• Rafael Cury, Associacao Nacional dos Ufologicos do Brasil
• Professor Stanton T. Friedman, Canadian physicist and UFO researcher. (Professor Friedman, in an interview broadcast in the feature "Brazilian Roswell" on Channel 5 television in the UK, said that he found the case both interesting and compelling. One aspect he highlighted was the reported behavior of the creatures involved, compared to reports of the "Roswell aliens". Friedman suggested that their behavior was not so much that of intelligent creatures who had just been piloting a craft from a distant planet, but rather that of "cargo" who had been dumped in a strange landscape and didn’t know what to do…?)
• A.J. Gavaerd, Editor of "Brazilian UFO Magazine" and Director of the "Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research".
• Irene Granchi, Centro de Investigacao sobre a natureza dos Extraterrestres
• Regina Guimaraes, A Brazillian woman who translated and posted the local press reports onto the internet as they were released, much quoted in CNI reports. (regina@originet.com.br)
• Michael Lindemann, Journalist, CNI.
• Cynthia Luce, MUFON representative in Brazil.
• John Mack, American researcher
• Oswaldo and Eduardo Mondini, Centro de Pesquisas Exologicas
• Marcy O. Monteiro Neto, Brazillian UFO researcher.
• Vitorio Pacaccini, Centro de Investigacao Civil de Objetos Aereos Nao Identificados.
• Bob Pratt, Researcher
• Helga Reidler, CNI News Brazilian correspondent
• Dr. Ubiraja Franco Rodrigues, Respected Brazillian UFO researcher.
• Marco Antonio Rodrigues Silva, Grupo de Estudios de Objetos nao Identificados
• James Sutton, UFO writer.
• Jamil Vilanova, Grupo Ufologico do Guaruja

Peet, 8^th November 1998

SETI@home

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence at Home

For many years now, scientists based at Berkley University in the United States have been running a project known as "SETI" - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The aim of the project is to collate all the signals available from the world's radio telescopes and search through the "background noise" for recognisable patterns which might indicate signals of intelligent origin.

One of the biggest problems they encountered was that radio telescope data was TOO easily available - from the outset, the project was overwhelmed, with the amount of data coming in vastly outstripping the computing resources available to them. To simply "pick and choose" amongst the data was deemed unacceptable, since there is no way to determine without processing the data whether it is more or less likely to contain the elusive signal they are searching for.

As the archive of unprocessed data built up, a plan was hatched to make use of the Internet to "spread the load", and SETI@home was born. The idea is simple - there are millions of computers connected to the internet. The vast majority of these are "personal workstations" such as PCs and Apple Macs, which can spend a lot of their time switched on unattended. The total processor resources "wasted" on screen savers between all these machines is vast. So, how can all this "wasted" processing power be harnessed?

The SETI@home project is quite simple - participants download a small program which runs in the background when their screen saver is active. The program receives "packets" of data e-mailed to the user from SETI, and processes them. After two or three days (on an average PC) the program sends a reply e-mail to SETI containing the results of the packet's processing, along with a request for a new data packet. ( While the data is being processed, the screen saver shows a pretty graphic of the frequencies found in the current signal packet)

At the time of writing, over a hundred thousand individuals and organisations have already "signed up" to the project (which has only been running for less than three weeks!), making SETI@home the largest collaborative computing project in history.

If you have an interest in the science behind ETs, and some form of internet connection, then I think that you will find this project worth a close look. As an added incentive, if your machine provides data which indicates the existence of an extraterrestrial intelligence, you will have a say in naming it!

For more information, visit "http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu".

 Peet, May 29^th1999

The "Roswell Incident", 1947

Possibly the best-known UFO related tale is that of the recovery of debris (and, in many versions, bodies) from a crashed object from two (or more) regions to the North and West of Roswell, New Mexico. Testimony from eyewitnesses who have since died, third parties and relatives all point to the fact that something out of the ordinary happened in that area, at that time, but there is much disagreement over details. The following timeline is distilled from a large number of sources, some mutually contradictory, and is not intended to reflect any one single version of the "true" events.

9:50pm: Report filed by Mr. And Mrs. Dan Wilmot of an oval-shaped object in the sky, moving North-West in the direction of site 2 (the "Crash Site"). William Woody, driving with his father North-West of Roswell, observed a bright light with a red trail. Several reports filed of a loud explosion.

mid-morning: The "Debris Field" ("site 1") discovered by Mac Brazel and D. Proctor - a remote pasture of Brazel's ranch was strewn with lightweight, metallic debris. Brazel collected some of the material and showed it to D. Proctor's parents.

Brazel visits friends in Corona, New Mexico, and tells them about the find.

Morning: Brazel visits Sheriff Wilcox in Roswell to report the find, and enquire about possible reward

Afternoon: Brazel and Wilcox report the find to Roswell AF base. Col. Blanchard, Maj. Marcel and Capt. Cavitt arrive and interview Brazel at the Sheriff's office. Col. Blanchard returns to the base with debris samples, and informs Brigadier Gen. Roger Ramey at Fort Worth of the find.

late afternoon: Marcell and Cavitt return to Brazel's ranch to examine debris he had stored there. The debris that Brazel took to the sheriff's office is flown to Fort Worth. Marcell and Cavitt stay over at the ranch.

early morning: Brazel takes the two officers to site 1

late evening: The two officers return to Roswell AAF, having loaded their cars with debris

2am: Maj. Marcel stops off at his home on the way to the AF base, and shows some of the debris to his wife and son

early morning: Col. Blanchard orders guards posted on the access roads to site 1.

9am: Capt. Cavitt and M/Sgt. Rickett drive to Brazel's ranch to take him to site 1. They are joined by troops who begin gathering up the debris.

11am: Col. Blanchard, following a staff meeting, dictates a press release to Press Information Officer Walter Haut.

Late morning: (time uncertain) Civil engineer Grady L. "Barney" Barnett, out surveying for an irrigation project, discovered what he later described as a large "split saucer" in a hole in the ground, surrounded by the bodies of four "beings". ("Site 2" - the "Impact Site") Each was between 3 and 4 feet high, with hairless "pear shaped" heads, wearing snug-fitting silvery suits. A group of archaeologists/and students looking for indigenous Indian artifacts also arrived at the site. (In 1975, a woman dying from cancer at St. Petersburg Community Hospital, Florida claimed to have been one of these students - she correlated the "bodies" story, but said the bodies were already covered with "blankets" by the time they arrived.)

mid-day: PIO Haut goes in to Roswell to deliver the press release. The story goes out on the Associated Press wire service. W/O Robert Thomas and a team of photographers fly into Roswell AAF from Washington DC.

early afternoon: Sheriff Wilcox dispatches two deputies to site 1: They are turned back by the military police.

mid-afternoon: Site 2 is spotted from the air, and ground troops are directed towards it. The first troops to arrive escort Barnett and the archaeologists away from the area. They were warned that if they were to talk to anyone about this event, "the Government will know where to find them..."

late afternoon: J. Bond Johnson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is called to Fort Worth Army Air Field to cover the breaking story. Maj. Marcel arrives at Fort Worth AAF with debris samples - he later claimed that while he was in conference with Gen. Ramey, that the debris was removed and parts of a conventional weather balloon substituted. A press conference in Gen. Ramey's office culminated in Marcel being photographed with the balloon parts, while W/O Irving Newton was called in to identify them as being from a common weather balloon. Brazel slips away from the AFB and is interviewed by Walt Whitmore Sr., of KGFL radio about his find. A sealed box containing debris is flown out to Washington. The Roswell Daily Record hits the streets with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer". A memo is sent to the Strategic Air Command from the FBI Dallas office, regarding the balloon story.

Early evening: Sgt. Melvin Brown lifted a truck tarpaulin at site 2, and witnessed what appeared to be several "alien-looking" bodies. Roswell Mortician, Glen Dennis receives a number of enquiries from the Roswell AAF about tissue preservation, and the dimensions of the smallest "child-sized" caskets he stocked. "Clardie's Dairy and Creamery" received an order from the base for large quantities of dry ice. The truck carrying the bodies arrived at the AFB, and a preliminary autopsy is attempted at the base hospital by military pathologist Dr. Jesse Johnson Jr. Later in the evening, Glen Dennis drove an airman who had been injured in a minor automobile accident to the base hospital. A friend at the hospital warned him to leave before he got into "serious trouble", but before he could leave he was stopped in a corridor, questioned and threatened.

night: A crate containing bodies was placed under guard by Capt. John Martin, Sgt. Melvin Brown and other MPs in an empty hangar.

8am: As work continued on clearing both sites, three C-54 transport planes were loaded with crates of debris. Walt Whitmore Jr. received a call from Senator Dennis Chavez, warning him that if he was to broadcast any part of his interview with Brazel his station would lose their broadcast license.

mid-morning: Officers from Roswell AAF picked up Brazel and took him back to the base for "questioning".

late morning: Brazel is driven by the AFB officers to the office of the Roswell Daily Record, where he gives a "revised" version of his original story.

noon: The crate with the bodies was moved from the hangar to Bomb Pit Number One.

early  afternoon: Officers from the base visit newspaper and radio offices around Roswell, confiscating copies of the original press release. Brazel is taken to KGFL Radio, where he gives the "revised" version of his story.

late afternoon: Three fully loaded C-54 cargo planes fly debris to Kirtland Field, and thereafter to Loa Alamos, NM. The crate with the bodies is placed on a B-29 and flown to Fort Worth. The Roswell Daily Record carries the revised version of Brazel's story. 

6pm: Officers and a mortician meet the B-29 at Fort Worth. The crew fly back to Roswell with Capt. Marcel, arriving at 8pm.

Clean-up of the crash sites continued. Brazel was held at a "guest house" on the Roswell AAF, pending further interrogation. A large metallic container and a selection of debris were flown from Fort Worth to Wright Field. MPs confiscated the remaining debris from Sheriff Wilcox's office.

MPs and others who helped in the retrieval were debriefed, and ordered to forget the incident.

Brazel's son visited his father's ranch, and found all evidence of debris and military involvement gone.

Mac Brazel was released, and returned home. (Some documentaries say that just after this, Brazel, who was not a wealthy man, was seen driving around Roswell in a brand new pick-up truck... They suggest this as evidence that Brazel was paid well to change his story)

Extracts from "Report of Air Force research regarding the Roswell Incident" - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY by RICHARD L. WEAVER, COL, USAF, DIRECTOR, SECURITY AND SPECIAL PROGRAM OVERSIGHT

(Full summary can be found at http://www.expressnews.com/roswell/afreport.html, report in full at http://www.cais.com/npacheco/ute.html)

...The "Roswell Incident" refers to an event that supposedly happened in July, 1947, wherein the Army Air Forces (AAF) allegedly recovered remains of a crashed "flying disc" near Roswell, New Mexico.

...in late January, 1994, SAF/AAZ(*) directed its research/declassification team, SAF/AAZD, to attempt to locate any official records relative to this matter. These initial research efforts focused on records at the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell AFB, AL, the Air Force Safety Agency (AFSA) at Kirtland AFB, NM, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

...This search for records was purposely limited to Air Force records and systems since:

(a) The Air Force had no authority to compel other agencies to review their records;

(b) The Air Force would have no way to monitor the completeness of their efforts if they did; and

(c) the overall effort was the task and responsibility of the GAO--not the Air Force.

...Records were located and thoroughly explored concerning a then-TOP SECRET balloon project, designed to attempt to monitor Soviet nuclear tests, known as Project Mogul. Additionally, several surviving project personnel were located and interviewed, as was the only surviving person who recovered debris from the original Roswell site in 1947, and the former officer who initially identified the wreckage as a balloon. Comparison of all information developed or obtained indicated that the material recovered near Roswell was consistent with a balloon device and most likely from one of the Mogul balloons that had not been previously recovered.(**)

As the US government report points out, the terms "flying disc" and "flying saucer" were buzzwords at the time for a phenomena which had very few theories or explainations. Nowadays, the terms are often assumed to be synonymous with "alien spacecraft", but in those days they were more likely to conjure images of Soviet secret weapons, spying devices etc.. The term "Flying Saucer" had only been coined eight days before the "Roswell Incident", and newspapers were looking for excuses to use it as often as possible. Many of the (up to 800?) sightings of so-called "flying discs" between May 17th and July 12th 1947 were undoubtedly the trains of balloons with large circular radar deflectors launched as part of Project Mogul. The newly developed synthetic silvered neoprene rubber used in the balloons would have been unfamiliar to anyone who was not working in the balloon industry. All in all, the "Project Mogul" theory seems to explain away all the materials found at Brazel's ranch.

However, it does not even attempt to explain what went on at "site 2" - the "split saucer" seen by Barnett and the archaeologists has always been reported as "solid-looking", apparently completely different to Brazel's debris. When Marcel complained that the debris had been "replaced" before his press conference, could "site 1" debris have been exchanged for debris from "site 2"? Perhaps the large army presence at "site 1", collecting up what was, in essence, a weather balloon, was a deliberate distraction?

And what of the "bodies"? The USAF came out with a suggestion at a press conference in 1997, that they were in fact dummies dropped from balloons in a series of experiments in the 1950s, and that investigators had just got their decades mixed up... - "If you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was,'' said Col. John Haynes, an Air Force declassification officer who presented the report at a Pentagon news conference. "I have no other explanation.''

Finally, one important fact to remember in terms of credibility, when following up any stories of the Roswell incident, is that at the time it was not considered of huge significance. Interest was stirred up in 1978, when an American tabloid re-printed the "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer" headline out of context, and offered to pay witnesses for their stories. That tabloid was "the National Enquirer"... You may have heard of it...

Peet, September 7^th, 1999