Albuqueque (NM) Journal, July 9, Morning, Front Page
Disc Mystery is 'Solved' For Three
Hours Until Roswell Find Collapses
San Antonio (TX) Express, July 9, Morning, Front Page, Main Story
Flying Disc Turns Out
To Be Weather Device
Army Admits Mistake In Identifying Object;
Calls Swamp Small Town
Tulsa (OK) Daily World, July 9, Morning, Front Page,
Finding of 'Flying Saucer'
Exploded by Weather Man
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROSWELL, N. M., July 8 (AP)--A [New Mexico] rancher's discovery of a strange object at first identified by an Army public information [relations] officer as a "flying disc" touched off a {wave] temporary flurry of excitement across the saucers-conscious nation today [Tulsa D. World: Tuesday before another officer burst the bubble--by announcing it was only a weather device].
It was a good three hours after the first official announcement before an Army weather officer burst the bubble.
The object, he declared, was nothing more than an Army weather balloon and its kite. [or "weather device"]
Even as his [the second] decision was given, inquiries from as far away as London still clogged the telephone circuits[lines] into [Roswell, N.M.] this medium-sized eastern New Mexico town [near where the object was found]. Sheriff George Wilcox' line was the busiest.
"The London Daily Mail called, and I've just finished talking to New York," he told a reporter [Wilcox said] late in the afternoon. "I also had calls from two other London papers--I forgot to get their names--and there were more from every big newspaper in the United States, the radio networks and still others."
The identification, later discredited, [or "The later/latest discredited identification"] of the mystery object, picked up in a pasture near the center of the state, came from Lieut. Walter Haupt [sic], public information officer at the Roswell Army Air Field.
"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th (atomic) bomb group . . . was fortunate enough to gain possession of the disc," Haupt had said in a statement. The object was flown to Fort Worth Army base in an Army B-29 and the final identification was announced there.
Sheriff Wilcox said W. W. Brazell [sic], about 50,. made the find on the Foster ranch near Corona, 85 miles northwest of Roswell.
Journal:
Brazell, who has his own small ranch nearby, notified the sheriff's office yesterday and related he made the discovery some days before, Wilcox said.
Express, Daily World:
Brazell, who has his own small ranch nearby, notified the sheriff's office Monday/yesterday and related he made the discovery two or three days before, Wilcox said.
The sheriff said he called Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th (atomic)Bomb Group intelligence office at once, and the officer accompanied Brazell back to the ranch to recover the object.
Journal and Express: Wilcox said he did not see the object but was told by Brazell it was "about three feet across." The sheriff declined to elaborate. "I'm working with those fellows at the base," he said.
Army weather experts in Washington discounted any idea that weather targets might be the basis for the scores of reports of "flying discs."
Brig. Gen. Donald N. Yates, chief of the AAF weather service, said only a very few of them are used daily, at points were some specific project requires highly accurate wind information from extreme altitudes. Without field reports he would not hazard a guess on a precise number, he said.
Daily World:
On the orders of Maj. Gen. [sic] Roger M. Ramey, 8th Air force commander at Fort Worth, the object was flown in a B-29 to the Texas city. There W/O Irving Newton of Medford, Wis., identified it as a weather balloon and its kite. The balloon was badly damaged.
The balloons measure 50 inches across, but expand greatly as they ascend, Air Force officers reported. They sometimes reach 60,000 feet.
General Ramey spoke over a Fort Worth radio station after his headquarters was flooded with queries concerning the object.
In his broadcast, he said that anyone who found an object he believed to be a "flying disc" should contact the nearest Army office or sheriff's office.
Later, he said that the weather device could be mistaken for almost anything when seen in the air.
"I don't say these devices are what people have called disc," he said. "There is no such gadget as the disc known to the Army--at least this far down the line."
