Daily News, St. John's Newfoundland, July 10, 1947
Another "Flying Saucer" Reported [to] Have Been Found
Washington, July 9, (Reuters) - The first example of the "flying saucers" appearance over 41 states, to fall into the hands of the United States Army air force has turned out to be an observation balloon such as is used by eighty weather stations throughout the states.
Brigadier General Roger Ramey commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters at Fort Worth, Texas, went to the microphone at a Fort Worth radio station and announced that the mysterious object found on a ranch near Russell [sic], New Mexico, and passed to the Army authorities was a weather balloon.
Meanwhile another report of the actual finding of a "flying disc" came from a tobacco wholesaler, Lloyd Bennett, in Oelwein, Iowa, who said a piece of metal six inches in diameter and about an eighth of an inch thick had "crashed into his front yard. No planes were overhead at the time when this object swished through the trees and landed on the lawn. He also said he had the highly polished piece of disc examined by metallurgist who said it took a heat of 6,300 degrees to melt. Metallurgist Edkunhs said the disc appeared to be a type of cast metal. Estimates the size of the "flying saucers" which have been said to shoot through the air at the speeds up to 1200 miles an hour, vary from six inches to that of a "five roomed house".
The object examined by the army authorities at Fort Worth was stated to have been discovered last week by a rancher who stored it until it was recovered by the 509th bomb intelligence men stationed at Roswell.
Before Brigadier General Ramey's broadcast, Major Edwin Kirtan [sic], duty officer at Eighth Air Force headquarters at Fort Worth, quoted him as saying "it looks like a hexagonal object covered with tinfoil or other shining material suspended from a balloon of about twenty feet in diameter. It is possibly a weather balloon flown at the highest altitude but none of the army men at this base recognize it as an army type balloon."
Warrant Officer Irving Newton, weather forecaster at Fort Worth, said the object was a "ray wind target" used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitude. "We use them because they can go so much higher than I can see" he said. Radar was used to follow the design ,he said, and by a process of triangulation the winds aloft were chartered. When rigged
up the object looked like a six pointed star, was silvery in appearance and rose in the air like a kite attached to a balloon.
Ivan Tannehill, chief forecaster for the weather bureau here, pointed out that such balloons had been in use for years and they were unlikely to have been mistaken "for the mysterious objects speeding through the sky all over the country.
