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Big banner headline.
Another edition of the Miami Herald ran a slightly later AP story announcing the weather balloon identification ("Flying Disc Is Balloon, Army Says: Large Star-Shaped Weather Testing Device 'Discovered' Near Roswell N.M."). Front page was otherwise identical.
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In the AP chronology, Ramey's announcement of the Wright Field shipment was at 6:53 EDT, and several more adds, probably of Ramey's debris descriptions, appeared within the next 7 minutes. The first complete story went out at 7:02.
UP reported this as Ramey saying "part of a weather balloon" was found nearby. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted Maj. Marcel saying they found "a few more patches of tinfoil and rubber."
The same wording here is also in the NY Herald-Tribune & LA Herald-Express stories, but in the Herald-Tribune is in a separate AP bulletin. The Miami Herald and NY Herald Tribune seem to have published a slightly later AP story incorporating the earlier bulletins into one story.
The following section giving the AP version of the Roswell press release is not in the otherwise nearly identical NY Herald Tribune story
AP's characteristic misspelling of Walter Haut's name is here again. The main difference here from other AP stories is the word "said" instead of "announced".
This is the complete initial base press release, according to the AP, also found in the earlier AP stories, but here moved to the end.
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'Flying Disc' Turned
Over To Army
First Object Is Found
In New Mexico
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Mysterious Saucer Shipped to AAF
Research Center At Wright Field
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By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON, July 8--Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey said today that a battered object which previously had been been described as a flying disc, found near Roswell, N.M., is being shipped by air to the A.A.F. research center at Wright Field, Ohio.
Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters at Fort Worth, received the object from the Roswell army air base.
In talking by telephone to A.A.F. headquarters at Washington, Ramey described the object as of "flimsy construction, almost like a box kite." It was so badly battered that Ramey was unable to say whether it had a disc form. He did not indicate the size of the object.
MADE OF TIN FOIL
There were "some fragments of junk" found near the object near the New Mexico ranch where a rancher sighted it last week.
Ramey reported that so far as the A.A.F. investigation could determine, no one had seen the object in the air. Asked what the material seemed to be, A.A.F. officials here said Ramey described it as "apparently some sort of tin foil."
The object, after being found by the rancher, was turned over to the 509th armored group at Roswell air field.
LACKED INFORMATION
News dispatches from Roswell announcing the find of the material apparently caught AAF headquarters without any information. Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, deputy chief of the AAF, hurried to the press section to take an active hand in the situation.
Telephone calls from headquarters here were hurriedly put in to the Roswell field and then to Ramey's headquarters at Fort Worth.
Later the AAF said that further information indicated the object would have had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet if reconstructed.
Nothing in the apparent construction "indicated any capacity for speed," and there was no evidence of a power plant, the AAF said.
Construction of the disc seemed too flimsy to have enabled it to carry a man, it was added.
Lt. Warren Haught, public information officer at Roswell Army airfield, in a statement said:
"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th (atomic) bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the co-operation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.
"The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell some time last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th bomb group intelligence office.
"Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher's home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters."
