Comments
This was a shorter version of the main AP story with a few items not present in the main story. Parts not common to all newspaper samples are in italics.
Still a Fort Worth dateline with a different opening paragraph from main story
Launches right into the identification by Newton, skipping announcement of ID by Ramey. Newton's reported comments here are identical to those in the longer AP main story.
Lacks the more elaborate account of Ramey's radio broadcast found in main story. Ramey's rank is wrong here. There was confusion in main story as well.
The fact that he had earlier said he would broadcast over NBC wasn't present in main story.
Notice lack of agreement as to discovery date amongst the newspapers, though most use the 3 weeks figure.
The debris being scattered over a square mile is present in this story as well.
The same account of Brazel reporting his find as in he main AP story.
The following 3 paragraphs aren't in main AP story.
According to this, the flight to Fort Worth was in the afternoon when the press release came out. This contradicts statement in main story that the flight was at 10 a.m.
A repeat of the first sentence of the AP version of the press release, not present in main story, but common in earlier AP stories. Haut's name remains misspelled.
This is all the same as the main AP story.
Atlanta Constitution, 7/9, page 1
A WEATHER BALLOON
Disc 'Find' Turns Out To Be 'Dud'
Pittsburgh (Penn) Post-Gazette, 7/9, Morning, Headline story
'DISC' BARED AS WEATHER BALLOON
--------------
Kite-Like Object Found
on Ranch In New Mexico
Missiles Used by Army Stations And Are Followed by Radar; Rise Farther Than Eye Can See
Miami (FL) Herald, 7/9, Page 1
Flying Disc Is Balloon, Army Says
Large Star-Shaped Weather Testing Device 'Discovered' Near Roswell, N. M.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7/9, page 1
Wind Is Quickly Let Out
of A.A.F.'s 'Flying Disk'
FORT WORTH, Texas, July 8--(AP)--The discovery of a "flying disc" reported by an Army public relations officer proved a dud Tuesday when the object was identified as a weather balloon.
Warrant Officer Irving Newton, a forecaster at the Army's Eighth Air Force weather station here, said the object found near Roswell, N.M., was a ray wind [sic] target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes.
He said there were some 80 weather stations in the United States using this type of balloon, and it could have come from any one of them.
"We use them because they can go so much higher than the eye can see," Newton explained. A radar set is employed to follow the balloon; and through a process of triangulation, the winds aloft are charted, he added.
When rigged up, Newton stated, the object looks like a six-pointed star, is silvery in appearance, and rises in the air like a kite, mounted to a 100-gram balloon.
Newton said he had set up identical balloons in this one during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistics information for heavy guns.
Maj. Gen. [sic] Roger M. Ramey, Commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters here, also said in a radio broadcast Tuesday night the "flying disc" was a weather balloon.
He was interviewed over a Fort Worth radio station. Earlier, it was announced he would broadcast over the National Broadcasting Company, but this was not done.
The weather device had been found three weeks previously [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "found last week"] by a New Mexico rancher, W. W. Brazell [sic], on his property about 85 miles northwest of Roswell. Brazell, whose ranch is 30 miles from the nearest telephone and has no radio, knew nothing about flying discs when he found the broken remains of the weather device scattered over a square mile of his land.
He bundled the tinfoil and broken wooden beams of the kite and the torn synthetic rubber remains on the balloon together and rolled it under some brush, according to Maj. Jesse A. Marcel, Houma, La., 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Officer at Roswell, who brought the device to Fort Worth.
On a trip to town at Corona, N.M., Saturday night, Brazell heard the first reference to the "silver" flying disks, Maj. Marcel related.
Brazell hurried home, dug up the remnants of the kite and balloon on Sunday, and Monday headed for Roswell to report his find to the Sheriff's office.
This resulted in a call to Roswell Army Air Field and to Maj. Marcel's being assigned to the case. Marcel and Brazell journeyed back to the ranch, where Marcel took the object into custody of the Army.
After Col. William H. Blanchard, 509th Commanding Officer, reported the incident to Gen. Ramey, he was ordered to dispatch the object to Fort Worth Army Air Field immediately.
At that time, Lt. Warren Haught [sic], Public Information Officer at the Roswell field, announced a "flying disc" had come into possession of the Army Air Forces.
Lt. Haught said in a statement to newsmen "the many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality Monday when the intelligence office of the 509th (Atomic) Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Airfield, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through co-operation of one of the local ranchers and the Sheriff's office."
(A similar object was identified last night at Adrian, Mo., by the Kansas City Weather Bureau. Grant Cook, of Adrian, found the tinfoil-covered object on his farm and notified authorities. Investigation by meteorologists revealed it as a reflector for radar signals.)
Army weather experts in Washington, however, discounted any idea that such weather targets might be the basis for the scores of reports of "flying discs."
Brigadier General Donald N. Yates, chief of the AAF weather service, said only a very few of them are used daily, at points where 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.
For ordinary purposes, General Yates told a reporter, the AAF uses balloon-borne radiosondes much on the order employed by the weather bureau, tracking them with radio direction finders. Those instruments consist of a milky-white balloon five or six feet in diameter with the automatic radio transmitting apparatus suspended below in a package about cigar box size.
During the war, General Yates said, the radar target method of wind checking was standard practice because of the high degree of accuracy needed.
The U. S. weather bureau said it uses none of the radar target balloons at land stations. Some are used from coast guard vessels in the Atlantic, bureau officials said, but they normally blow eastward toward Europe.
Between the Army and the weather bureau, hundreds of weather balloons without the metallic target are released daily from points all over the country.
Ivan R. Tannehill, weather bureau chief forecaster, pointer out, however, that such balloons have been in use for many years. He said they were unlikely to have been mistaken "all over the country and all in one week" for mysterious objects speeding through the sky at supersonic speeds.
