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Is it all about book sales?
The CIA’s former Entertainment Liaison Officer (really....that was his position!), Charles Brandon, announced that he has seen the secret Roswell case files in a box marked “Roswell”. However, he will not reveal what was in there except that a craft and bodies were recovered. Color me skeptical but I suspect this is a ploy by Brandon to promote the release of his new book. Rumors and claims of seeing top secret documents, bodies, alien metals, and such have been around for decades. Many crashologists considered the story to be a bogus claim and were very skeptical of his statements. If only they would show the same degree of skepticism towards some of the other claims/stories about Roswell. The CIA would later publicly respond stating they did not know what Brandon was talking about.
Burnt ground and an Air Force button
On “Chasing UFOs”, Frank Kimbler presented his LANDSAT images of the area, which supposedly shows a controlled burn of the crash site. He gave no time frame for the burn and I doubt that it happened right after the Roswell incident. If the materials were as indestructible as claimed, I doubt a fire would eliminate, or significantly alter, the evidence. Another interesting point is the “burn area” goes from WNW to ESE. This is not what Jesse Marcel Sr. stated in his interviews. He stated the debris field went from NE to SW.
Kimbler also showed the team an enclosed box displaying the bits of debris he found over the years. If one recalls, back in a July of 2011 interview with Openminds radio (time 00:55:47-00:56:15), Kimbler claimed that he had discovered that one piece exhibited extraterrestrial properties. However, in SUNlite 3-5 (page 4), I pointed out that the values he presented fell within the terrestrial range if one included the margins for error. Since then, he seems to have pulled back on the claim. This did not prevent him from implying to the “Chasing UFOs” team that what he was showing them, was part of the crashed saucer.
While the “Chasing UFOs” team was stumbling around in the dark waving metal detectors over the “crash site”, something strange happened. As the team was sifting an ant hill for possible alien scraps, Erin Ryder got up and decided to go searching for more debris on her own. She surprisingly found something with her metal detector. Some quick digging revealed a silver Air Force button. They would determine this came from the 1947-1949 time frame, implying something significant occurred on the Foster Ranch that summer. Ben McGee’s blog would later reveal that they had shown the button to a historian, who determined it came from a time period after 1949! He would add that this type of button was only found on dress uniforms and not working fatigues, which is what one would expect from a field operation.
I realized that they made these errors when I saw the button. In July of 1947, there was no Air Force and the 509th was part of the Army Air Corps. The Army Air Corps buttons I have seen had either the army eagle or a propeller/star with wings. Of course, one begins to speculate about how the button might have gotten there. Is it pure luck that they found this button in the dirt or was it possible that it was planted by others? If it was a button found by chance, it does not state much. Maybe it was a button from some officer’s uniform that happened to be in the area? The 1997 USAF report documented all sorts of military activities outside the White Sands area in the 1950s. In addition to the activities of the test dummy drops, Holloman also launched many research balloons, which landed all over New Mexico (as well as places outside the United States!). It would not be any surprise that one might find a uniform button some place in the New Mexico desert.
Kevin Randle also commented about this in his blog. Kevin mirrored the comments about the button and that it was only available after September 1947. He also seemed to think the button was very likely planted by somebody because it was too pristine to have been in the dirt for over fifty years. Who would do such a thing? It could have been a Roswell crash proponent but they would have to know where the team would be stumbling around, which points towards the producers of the show. In SUNlite 3-1, Peter Merlin described how a producer had him “plant” a bit of material at a “crash site” and treat it as if it were just found! Did the producers of this program do the same thing?
More whining from the dream team!
Anthony Bragalia added his whining to the mix about skeptical criticism of the “dream team” in the July 15th edition of Saucer Smear. If they don’t want anyone to comment, why do they keep making announcements? He also stated that I declared they would cover-up evidence of a prosaic explanation. I did not actually state that. I posed the question wondering if they would announce such information if they found it. Mr. Bragalia closes by referring to Sheridan Cavitt as a liar and stating that no military personnel interviewed reported they saw a weather balloon at the ranch. The only military personnel, who are known to have gone to the ranch, are Marcel and Cavitt. All other individuals interviewed have never been proven to have actually been at that Foster Ranch in July 1947. We also know that in the 1947 media accounts, Jesse Marcel Sr. and Mac Brazel both described materials from a balloon. Bessie Brazel also stated so in her interviews/affidavit. Finally, the photographs at Fort Worth (the only physical evidence from 1947)show a radar reflector and balloon materials. If Bragalia is going to ignore or not mention this testimony/evidence, when making such proclamations, he demonstrates that my question about some of the team member’s objectivity is a valid one.

Quelle: SUNlite 5/2012

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Peter Merlin comments concerning SUNlite 4-4

Last issue’s Roswell commentaries sparked some interesting comments by Peter Merlin. His statements were worth publishing and commenting upon:
On lightning strikes to aircraft and spacecraft:
In 1976, I was on a flight to New York City in an American Airlines 747. We approached the airport in a thunderstorm during which I witnessed several lightning strikes to the aircraft. I vividly recall a hit to the tail that resulted in a shower of sparks visible through my window, and I saw a bolt strike the outboard right hand engine (or very near to it). In any case, we landed without incident. In later years, when I worked at Burbank Airport, I saw a Convair 440 that sustained lightning damage. The bolt struck the nose area, traveled through the fuselage, and blew off the cap on the vertical tail. Again, a commercial aircraft had survived a significant lightning incident. That said, I have also seen the opposite end of the spectrum. I was at Cape Canaveral in April 1987 when Atlas-Centaur 67 was launched into a thunderstorm. The 11-foot-tall aluminum alloy tube, trailing hot plasma, became an instant lightning rod. It was stuck nine times before it got more than half a mile downrange. Electrical damage to the Centaur Digital Control Unit resulted in an erroneous hardover yaw command and subsequent destruction of the vehicle and payload. Presumably, a civilization with the technology for crossing interstellar space could devise some decent electrical shielding for their spacecraft.
My comment: With the exception of the UNMANNED (and this is important to note) Atlas-Centaur mentioned by Peter, I still find it amazing that our manned aerial craft and spaceships can withstand lightning strikes and are designed to handle them. My point of this section was to demonstrate how our “primitive” technology has considered the possibility of lightning strikes and other adverse conditions to help the craft survive such events. For some reason the aliens were not very bright and designed a craft that could cross the interstellar void but not handle the weather presented by the planet they were exploring.
On private photographic records of government crash retrievals:
In October 1959, the Navy’s YF4H-1 Phantom II prototype crashed on a ranch near Frazier Park, California, during a test flight from Edwards Air Force Base. Military officials instructed the landowner in no uncertain terms not to take any pictures of the crash scene. He ignored this instruction, and managed to take some pictures from a low rise about within a quarter mile of the impact point. When I visited the ranch in June 2007, the original landowner’s son provided one of these photos, which was instrumental in pinpointing the crash site. Fortunately for historians and researchers, the government doesn’t always succeed in preventing civilians from acquiring documentary evidence.
My Comment: The missing photographs of the huge gouge at the Foster Ranch site has always made me skeptical of its existence. If it did last for over a year, it should have been photographed by the locals at some point. Additionally, nobody wrote letters or made diary entries documenting that they had picked up debris and the military had confiscated it
On military intimidation of civilian witnesses:
Following the 1963 crash of an A-12 near Wendover, Utah, officials went to great lengths to prevent disclosure of the top secret aircraft to unauthorized persons. Cleanup was given top priority, and efforts were made to conceal the wreckage before it was removed from the scene. The CIA had the Air Force provide a cover story that an F-105 had crashed. The only serious threat came from reporter Art Kent of KUTV television news in Salt Lake City who claimed to have pictures of the accident scene and planned to show them on the evening news. OXCART project personnel debated how to approach Kent in attempts to suppress the photos. Brig. Gen. Boyd Hubbard made arrangements for an Air Force representative with Office of Special Investigations (OSI) credentials to contact Kent and request that he not air the pictures. Kent, surprisingly with no reluctance, agreed to mail the pictures to Hubbard at Nellis. In September 1967, a top secret D-21B was accidentally launched during a captive test flight from Area 51. After it crashed in a rural area, recovery forces with armed security personnel arrived and closed off the area to local residents. One witness now recalls with bitterness how Air Force personnel ordered him out of the area with a warning to forget what he had seen. But, not everybody was unhappy with the uninvited guests. USAF/CIA liaison Col. Frank Hartley somehow learned that another witness had taken unauthorized photos of the crash scene. Reluctant to strong-arm the civilian, he asked if there was anything he might be able to exchange for the film. The civilian subsequently traded his film for a cream pie. Sometimes it is easier to offer a gift or appeal to someone’s sense of patriotism than to bully them.
My Comment: It seems odd that the military in actual documented cases behaved so differently than the military at Roswell and other UFO crashes. In peacetime, and in the United States, there is absolutely no need for heavy-handed tactics of threatening civilians with their lives and confiscating/damaging property. To do so would be violating several laws and military regulations. Contrary to statements by the authors, such actions would have sparked written letters to various elected officials and the news papers in Roswell (as well as other media outlets). The failure of any such evidence to be produced indicates these events probably never happened this way.

Quelle: SUNlite 5/2012

Balloon material testing - Part II

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Last issue, I discussed my tests with balloon materials and the results I had obtained. For some reason, some Roswell crashologists seemed to have confused what I was trying to prove. I was not trying to replicate the exact conditions of the balloon material from the “cluster of balloons” launched on June 4th. What I was trying to do was to determine whether Professor Moore’s recollections/statements about the balloon material’s reaction to sun light was more accurate than the claims made by Roswell crashologists concerning the balloon materials. My tests demonstrated that some of the claims regarding the balloon materials made by the proponents of an alien spaceship crash were not accurate. Meanwhile, the result did confirm what Professor Moore had stated in various settings over the years after he had performed his own tests.
Recognizing that I probably could not duplicate the conditions in the New Mexico desert and wanting to see if others got the same results, I mailed out some samples to skeptics to see what results they would obtain. Two of the skeptics performed similar tests to mine. The first was Lance Moody, who tested from Mason Ohio. The second was James Carlson, who was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Would their results differ significantly from mine?
Lance Moody’s report
Lance sent me an e-mail documenting his results:
Mason, Ohio June 12th-July 12th
I received the neoprene material from Tim Printy by mail. It was packed in a sealed zip lock bag. The material was a light tan in color and very wrinkly. It was thin but quite strong and stretchable but I would guess that it was not as strong a child’s balloon, which is made from a thicker material.
On the morning of 6/12/12, I took the long piece of the neoprene and folded it over itself to create an upper layer exposed directly to the sun and a lower layer beneath it. I pinned the material to a piece of wood and placed it in a position to receive as much sun as possible. It was a very sunny day.
Within the first hour, there was a change in the color of the upper layer of material. It had become slightly darker. After 8 hours, the color was very much darker on the upper layer. The lower layer was only slightly darker than its original color. There was no noticeable change in the texture/elasticity of the material. (see image below)

Over the next days and weeks, I noted that the color of the outer layer did get slightly darker but there nowhere near as dramatic a change as on that first day. Much of the color change takes place in those first hours. The texture did change a bit each day.

After 9 days, the material of the upper layer is drier looking. It’s strength against tearing is reduced but it is still relatively strong and stretchable. The lower layer is much closer to the same texture as day one. It’s color is much lighter than the upper layer.
After 16 days, the upper layer is noticeably more fragile. It is easy to tear, almost as weak as tissue paper. The lower layer is still stretchy and still lighter in color than the upper layer.

After 25 days (see image on left for material after 21 days), there is even more deterioration in the upper layer. It makes a crinkly sound when handled. The lower layer is weakened but still retains some stretchiness. It’s color is still lighter than the layer above. If I take a piece of the upper layer and ball it up in my hand, it produces very tiny flecks of material.
During the course of the test, the wind occasionally blew enough to displace the pins. I would re-pin the material when I discovered this but I have no idea how much additional sun my lower layer got during these periods. Certainly it got darker than it would have otherwise.
We had very little rain to speak of and much sun, including several record setting high temperatures. One night a very powerful thunderstorm moved through and I brought the whole operation inside.
I note no odor from the neoprene to speak of. If you put your nose right up on it, there is a slight burnt rubber smell. On most days, I took at least one photo of the test.
I am struck, after handling the material so closely, as to how similar it appears to what we see in the famous Ft. Worth/Roswell photos. I see in the photos what appears to be the same variety of textures as I obtained in this test: crinkly and torn portions and stretchy lighter portions of neoprene.

The image to the right was taken by Lance on day 16 demonstrating the elasticity of the material at that point. This was consistent with what I had observed in my testing.
Lance had felt that our tests would come under criticism because they were not conducted in New Mexico under similar conditions that the NYU balloons had experienced. I was not too concerned about such criticism because Professor Moore had already tested materials under those conditions and described the results he had obtained. However, Lance convinced me that it wasn’t a bad idea. So, I contacted James Carlson, who was quick to volunteer his services.

James Carlson report (based on e-mail reports from James)
James began his testing on June 10th at 1330 local time. By 1830, the balloon had changed color to a dark gray the same way the tests by Moody and myself had (see image to the right). James reported the following about the texture:
As for texture, it really hasn’t changed that much. There is no brittleness at all, and if I had to find some change, all I would suggest (and I probably wouldn’t swear to it, since it’s significantly warmer from the sunlight) would be a possible weakening; it seems a little thinner, but only a very little. It still stretches with the same consistency, at least in my judgment.
He would add this comment the following day:

As for texture of the material, the “weakness” I noted earlier must have been caused by direct heat. I know it’s expected of other materials due to the increased molecular vibrations, but I didn’t expect the balloon bits to snap back once they had cooled. The rubber (or whatever it is) suffered no permanent changes. It seems just as consistent as it was before the tests.
James’ testing continued and the material darkened at a similar rate to the other tests. By the 13th, James reported that the texture had weakened. This was not unexpected as my tests showed that after three days, the texture of the material had begun to change on top. By the 17th, the balloon material on some parts of the balloon had turned black (see image on the right) On the 18th of June, he had a windy day and discovered the material had been blown such the unexposed portions became exposed to the sun. As a result the underlying layer became darker although it still had a tannish color to them. On the 20th, James reported that the texture, while having changed somewhat, still did not exhibit brittleness or tearing.

On the 22nd (12 days after putting the material out), James noticed that the material was splitting in the top layer (see image to the bottom left). My test showed splitting on the 13th day but I had some rain for several days early in my testing. Lance noticed the splitting around day 16. So, once again, it appeared that the tests agreed within a certain margin of error.
On June 26th (16 days into the test), James reported:

As for today, the samples are definitely drier, with the only exception being the few square inches that still retain some of the original coloring. Of the two shades of black that you can make out, the lighter is the driest, and it’s starting to reflect some of the “brittleness” you’ve mentioned in the past. It’s much less malleable, but it still retains enough body to put off any type of “flaking”. It’s much easier to tear through, and you’ll note that there are more “splits” in the samples......
This can be seen in the image to the left, which was taken on June 27th.

On the 28th (day 18), James had bad news to report:
As you can see in the attached photos, the entire lower sample was pulled free of the staples last night and was then blown hither and yon, yon being where I was able to find one small part of the whole (about 15 feet away) and hither being God knows where (I couldn’t find it).
While the gusting winds are typical of the New Mexican desert, one has to remember this was a test strip of material on a board that was exposed to the sun in a position well above the ground. It is not quite the same as a balloon fragment lying flat on the dirt. If the wind did play a role it might have broken the balloon materials into smaller fragments and littered them over a large area (as well as blowing the ML-307 fragments “hither and yon”). This seems to be what Bessie and Mack Brazel described.

On the 29th (day 19), James started to notice a slight brittleness in the remaining material. On July 5th (day 25), James noted there were still portions of his sample that displayed some of the original color of the balloon strip. Sometime between July 6 and 7 (day 26-7), the balloon material was once again blown off the board. James, once again, retrieved the fragments. Despite all of this time in the sun and the fragmentation of the pieces, he still had sections that retained some of their original color. By day 30 of his testing, the remaining fragments had become a dark black parchment-like material. He sent me these scraps for examination.
The thing I noticed concerning the samples I received was that there were certain sections of the dark material that retained its elasticity. One part, I could put my finger into and stretch. However, another section tore quite easily. When I put the material up to the sunlight, I noticed that there were two different densities and colors visible (see image lower left). This is all consistent with what both Lance and I experienced in our tests.

Conclusions
There really is not much to conclude other than what I wrote in the last issue of SUNlite appears to be confirmed. There is no indication that after a few weeks the material turns to ash as some have claimed. There is also no indication that one can put a balloon out for a few hours and achieve the results one sees in the Fort Worth images. However, there is plenty of indication that what professor Moore had written was accurate and that the material in the Fort Worth images contain balloon material that was exposed to the sun for a considerable amount of time ranging from about ten days to over a month.
I tried to present most of the data for all to see but there is only so much space for the images. Professor Moore did conduct these kinds of tests but just made general statements about his results. On the following page, there is a collection of photographs converted to black and white (without any other adjustment) for comparison to the Fort Worth image. At this point, it will take something a lot more convincing than a change of color to convince me that the balloon materials in the Fort Worth images came from something that was put out in the Texas sun for a few hours as a trick to fool the media and public.
June 27th 1730
July 1st 1200
July 7th 1200 (note bits of tan color on largest piece)

Photographs of the two tests (duration and daily test) conducted in Ohio, NH, and NM (with an additional daily test in Florida) compared to the balloon debris in the Roswell photographs. Images were converted to black and white for comparison without any other adjustment. The balloon material tested for 30 days appear to be a closer match to the Fort Worth photographs in both color and appearance. In none of the duration tests, did the balloon materials turn to ash although sections of the balloon turned brittle and began to fragment. One can infer that this effect is usually experienced after many more weeks just as Professor Moore would state after he had conducted his own tests. Meanwhile, the texture of the balloon material after one day showed no significant change.

Quelle: SUNlite 5/2012