What Was the FIRST Actual Mogul Balloon Flight in New Mexico?
Air Force counterintelligence in 1994-95, in order to undercut a Congressional investigation into what happened at Roswell, claimed it was a top-secret Mogul Balloon Flight #4 from June 4, 1947, that was responsible for the Roswell crash. But OFFICIAL histories, starting with the Mogul Project itself, list Flight #5 from June 5 as being the real FIRST N.M. flight and had nothing to do with Roswell. Flight No. 4 was cancelled and never existed.
Below is a listing of six primary sources written by original Mogul personnel and later professional historians that clearly document Flight #5, June 5, 1947, was the FIRST Mogul flight. (I have underlined the use of the word FIRST in all these sources.) No skeptic when challenged has ever been able to produce even a single source documenting the existence of a Flight No. 4. The very simple explanation is that such sources don't exist because a Flight #4 never existed, therefore no sources. It was a propaganda phantom created by counterintelligence designed to debunk Roswell.
1. Original Project Mogul documents
Attachment 12, 1994/95 USAF Roswell Report
Technical Report No. 93.02
15 July 1949
CONSTANT LEVEL BALLOONS
SUMMARY OF FLIGHTS
Constant Level Balloon Project
New York University
Prepared in Accordance with provisions of Contract P128-099-ac-241, between Watson Laboratories, Red Bank, New Jersey and New York University
The research reported in this document has been made possible through support and sponsorship extended by the Geophysical Research Directorate of the Cambridge Field Station, N, U.S, A i r Force,
Page 6: “Flight 5: Released from Alamogordo, New Mexico, 0617 MST, June 5, 1947 Recovered at Roswell, New Mexico."
Includes a schematic of the balloon assembly and a graph of the flight altitude vs. time profile, showing how it performed.
There is no mention of a "Flight 4" anywhere in Project Mogul reports, no schematic, no flight profiles, no discussion.
Above is a condensed summary table (Table No. 7, Summary of NYU Constant-Level Balloon Flights), from Mogul reports for various periods, clearly showing Flight 5 (highlighted) as the FIRST New Mexico flight (all previous flights were back East). Last column summarizing flights states for Flight 5: "FIRST successful flight carrying a heavy load."
Further note the absence of Flights 2, 3, and 4 from summary table, all known from other sources to have been cancelled because of bad weather. ONLY flights that actually went up were logged in the summary table, even those noted as "unsuccessful," such as Flight No. 6. But it is there because it actually left the ground.
Versions of the summary table for different periods can be found in AF Roswell Report in Attachment 27 of Weaver Synopsis and Attachment 6 of McAndrew Synopsis.
2. Official Historical Report from the Cambridge Laboratories
(who ultimately ran the Mogul flights)
:
Chronology: From the Cambridge Field Station to the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory 1945-1985 (AFGL, Hanscom AFB, MA, Special Reports, No. 262, 6 Sept 1985, penned by Dr. Ruth P. Liebowitz, Historian, Chapter 1, p. 3:
“1947, 5 Jun, The first Army Air Forces research balloon launch was conducted at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, by a New York University team working under contract for the Air Material Command. It featured a cluster of rubber balloons. The first polyethylene plastic balloons in this project were launched on 3 July 1947.”
3. Holloman AFB, NM, Official History, Balloon/Missile Operations, 1947-1958, published Feb. 1959
Contributions of BALLOON OPERATIONS TO RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT at the AIR FORCE MISSILE DEVELOPMENT CENTER Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico 1947-1958, (HISTORICAL BRANCH OFFICE OF INFORMATION SERVICES AIR FORCE MISSILE DEVELOPMENT CENTER AIR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT COMMAND UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, James Steven Hanrahan, Center Historian, February 1959
CHRONOLOGY, p. 11:
“5 June 1947 First research balloon launch at Holloman, by New York University team under contract with Air Material Command. This was a cluster of rubber balloons.”
Chapter 1, p. 14, “As a matter of fact, the first research balloon flight at Holloman Air Force Base was launched over a month before the first missiles; on 5 June 1947 of the same year. This was actually not a single but rather a multiple launching, using a cluster of rubber-type weather balloons. The flight lasted not quite six hours, rose to a height of 58,000 feet, and ended with a successful recovery of the balloon equipment at a point east of Roswell, New Mexico
4. Holloman AFB, N.M. Official History, Early Space Biology Research, published January 1958
Historical Division
Office of Information Services
Air Force Missile Development Center
Air Research and Development Command
Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico
History of Research in Space Biology and Biodynamics
James Stephen Hanrahan, Center Historian
- PART I -
THE BEGINNINGS OF RESEARCH IN SPACE BIOLOGY AT THE AIR FORCE MISSILE DEVELOPMENT CENTER, 1946-1952
p. 16
Furthermore, much of the post-war development in balloon research had actually taken place at Holloman Air Force Base, which was therefore well qualified to handle the series of aeromedical flights. Holloman's first polyethylene research balloon was launched 3 July 1947 by a New York University research team …..18
:Footnote 18. "The first research balloon flight of any sort at Holloman had been slightly earlier, 5 June 1947; this involved a cluster of rubber-type balloons (interview, Mr. Gildenberg by Dr. Bushnell, 18 September 1957).”
(The primary source, B. D. Gildenberg, was head of balloon operations at Holloman from 1951-1981, but had been with Project Mogul since 1947 while at NYU. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gildenberg would completely change his story to support Air Force counterintelligence's 1994 claim that a Flight #4 existed and caused the Roswell incident, citing the AF Roswell Report as his source. See detailed discussion by me at Kevin Randle's blog. His original 1950s historical account should obviously carry much more weight and agrees with all other official historical sources.)
5. NASA Histories of Flight (1961)
https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/aeronauticsastro61unit/aeronauticsastro61unit_bw.pdf
(Broken link to old NASA website with history of flight:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Timeline/1945-49.html)
Aeronautics and Astronautics: An American Chronology of Science and Technology in the Exploration of Space, 1915-1960 (NASA, 1961), 1945-1949, pp. 49-63:
Author: Eugene Morlock Emme, NASA historian, U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, January 1961
p. 57
“1947, June 5: First AAF research balloon launch (a cluster of rubber balloons) at Holloman, by New York University team under contract with the Air Materiel Command.”
6) U.S. Air Force: A Complete History
The Air Force Historical Foundation, 2006
Author: Lt. Col Dik Alan Daso (ret.), curator of Modern Military Aircraft at the National Air and Space Museum
p. 300
“1947, 5 June, A New York University team under contract with the Air Materiel Command launches the Army Air Forces' first research balloon. The cluster of rubber spheres is released at Holloman, New Mexico."
