New York Herald Tribune, Paris, July 9, 1947, top of front page
Flying Saucer Being Studied
By Air Forces
---------------------------
'Object' Found at Roswell, N. M.
Looks Like Kite Made of Tin Foil
---------------------------
By the Associated Press
WASHINGTON, July 8--Brigadier General Roger Ramey said tonight that a battered object which previously had been been described as a flying disk found near Roswell, New Mexico, is being shipped by air to the Army Air Forces research center at Wright Field, Ohio.
General Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force, with headquarters at Fort Worth, Texas, received the object from the Roswell Army Air Base.
In talking by telephone to Army Air Force headquarters at Washington, General Ramey described the object as of "flimsy construction, almost like a box kite."
Badly Battered
It was so badly battered that Ramey was unable to say whether it had a disk form.
He did not indicate the size of the object.
There were "some fragments of junk" found near the object near the New Mexico ranch where a rancher sighted it last week.
General Ramey reported that as far as the AAF. investigation could determine, no one had seen the object in the air.
Asked what the material seemed to be, AAF officials here said Ramey described it as "apparently some sort of tin foil."
The object, after being found by the rancher, was delivered to [the] 509th Armored Group at Roswell Air Field.
FBI May Check
When asked if other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would examine the exhibit, AAF officials said they understood that if the airplane carrying the material had not left Fort Worth, Texas, up to now the Federal Bureau representatives in that area might make an examination.
Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg, deputy chief of the Army Air Forces, hurried to the press section to take an active hand in the situation.
Later the Army Air Forces said that further information indicated that the object might 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, Air Forces said.
The construction of the disk seemed too flimsy to have enabled it to carry a man, it added.
Comments
This is one of the earlier AP Roswell stories and can also be found with minor wording differences in the Miami Herald & Los Angeles Herald-ExpressThe Herald-Express also carried many other AP bulletins and some INS items. However, the material in the last four paragraphs is not found in the Herald-Express (which had to go to press for a special evening edition), and thus probably represents bulletin items coming out slightly later. Thus, like the Miami Herald, this is probably an intermediate AP story just before the official weather balloon ID.
Ramey's earlier quotes in earlier UP stories (e.g., see S.F. News) about it looking like the remnants of a weather balloon and radar reflector are missing, and replaced by Ramey's reported telephone conversation to the Pentagon with less explicit descriptions.
However, in other stories (e.g. Washington Post, and UP stories in Charleston News-Courier, Philadelphia Inquirer ), Ramey is quoted giving a size of 25 feet in diameter if reconstructed. Attributed originally to Ramey following a return call to the Pentagon after he said he would take a look in Washington Post story.
This is only the second newspaper I have found mentioning possible FBI involvement, the other being the LA Herald-Express that carried the same AP bulletin. However, the almost identical AP story carried in the Miami Herald dropped this paragraph. We now know the Dallas FBI office was involved, which then sent a telegram to FBI HQ in Washington about what one of Gen. Ramey's intelligence officers had told them (it resembled a radar target attached to a balloon), but phone conversations they had with Wright Field disagreed with that assessment. Witness Lydia Sleppy also testified that the FBI cut off a teletype transmission she was sending from Albuquerque to ABC News in Los Angeles from a Roswell reporter, who told them of seeing the actual crashed disc and hearing of bodies being recovered.
The rest of the story below is also in the LA Herald-Express story, but in a separate bulletin. Like the Miami Herald, the Herald Tribune seems to have published a slightly later AP story incorporating the earlier bulletins into one story.
Another press mention of Vandenberg being directly involved, despite modern-day insinuation by AF debunkers that Vandenberg's daily log doesn't mention, therefore it didn't happen. See Vandenberg page for discussion.
Again, the strange 20-25 foot description, totally at odds with the 4 foot radar target soon to be shown to the press.
Again, the need to deny the existence of a crew or capability of speed.
The otherwise nearly identical Miami Herald story carried the AP version of the Roswell base press release here.
