Comments
A stripped down version of the Fort Worth dateline story. Dated July 9 instead of July 8, it made it into the afternoon and evening papers of July 9 as the story lost its interest. Parts not common to all articles are in italics.
Note, the major Roswell paper chose to go with a standard newswire story rather than write their own, based on independent investigation. The two Roswell papers did not do a very good job of covering their huge local story.
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Fort Worth, July 9 dateline. Each of the four Fort Worth datelined stories had a different opening paragraph. Maybe it gave the copy people something to do.
Here Ramey is given more credit for the ID, whereas the earlier Fort Worth stories credit everything to weather officer Newton.
Unlike the earlier AP Fort Worth stories, this never advances a specific time as to when the flight took place.
In other stories, Ramey was said to have said this on the radio.
Comments by Newton are shortened. It never mentions him specifically IDing the object.
** This is a major break from the other Fort Worth stories which changed the find date to three weeks before. Here it returns to the original press release statement of being within the last week.
Otherwise the rest of this is an abridged account, orginally put out in Fort Worth, of Brazel's discovery and reporting it to the sheriff. Roswell intelligence officer Marcel is no longer credited with reciting the story.
Again the time of the flight isn't specified. Dropped is the statement following that appeared in the first AP Fort Worth story that this happened about the same time the press release was announced.
Just a short statement of Ramey going on the radio and issuing a denial without quoting what he said.
And another shortened account about Newton's remarks.
A shift of emphasis away from Fort Worth, with a little more on Roswell. Wilcox's calls from England are elaborated on in separate Roswell Daily Dispatch and Daily Record articles. For some reason they caught the press' fancy.
This was actually part of a short AP story published in full in the Denver Post (see Brazel interview accounts). It appears the Independent attached it to the end of the story above.
Brazel's famous bomb statement. The Roswell Daily Record made it pretty clear the interview took place the previous evening or "late in the day." The AP story was probably posted early the next morning, perhaps accounting for the discrepancy of when the interview took place.
The Daily Record appears to have tagged on some additional paragraphs from the AP main story, such as this statement from the unnamed PRO and some more of Newton's comments. There was a lot of cut and paste editing of wire service stories making it confusing to track their development.
Gallup (N.M.) Independent, 7/9, front page (most complete story)
First Captive Flying Disc Turns
Out to be Wind Observation Balloon
Roswell Daily Record, 7/9, Headline story
Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer
Ramey Says Excitement Is Not Justified
General Ramey Says Disk is Weather Balloon
Santa Fe New Mexican, 7/9, front page
Latest Disc Report Is Phoniest Yet
Los Angeles Herald-Express, 7/9, front page
Mystery Cleared as Flying
Disc Proves Weather Balloon
Oakland (CA) Tribune, 7/9, front page
Flying Disc Find Was 'Slight
Error,' Army Spokesman Says
Long View (WA) Daily-News, 7/9, front page
Army's Flying Disc
A Weather Balloon
Santa Barbara News-Press, 7/9, front page
New Mexico 'Disc' Found
To Be Weather Balloon
Santa Ana Register, 7/9, front page
'Grounded Disc' Proves
Only Army Weather Balloon
FORT WORTH, Tex., July 9, (AP)--An examination by the Army revealed last night [also "today had revealed"] that a mysterious object found on a lonely New Mexico ranch was a harmless high-altitude weather balloon--not a grounded flying disc.
Excitement was high in disc-conscious Texas until Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters here, cleared up the mystery.
The bundle of tinfoil, broken beams and rubber remnants of a balloon were sent here yesterday by Army air transport in the wake of reports that it was a flying disc.
But the General said the objects were the crushed remains of a ray wind [sic] target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes.
Warrant Officer Irving Newton, forecaster at the Army Air Forces weather station here, said, "We use the balloons because they can go so much higher than the eye can see."
The weather balloon was found several days ago in a desolate section near the center of New Mexico by a rancher, W. W. Brazel. He said he didn't think much about it until he went into Corona, N. M., last Saturday and heard the flying disc reports.
He returned to his ranch, 85 miles northwest of Roswell, and recovered the wreckage of the balloon, which he had placed under some brush.
Then Brazel hurried back to Roswell where he reported his find to the sheriff's office.
The sheriff called the Roswell Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel, 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Officer, was assigned to the case.
Col. William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the bomb group, reported the find to General Ramey and the object was flown immediately to the Army Air Field here.
Ramey went on the air here last night to announce the New Mexico discovery was not a flying disc.
Newton said that when rigged up, the instrument "looks like a six-pointed star, is silvery in appearance, and rises in the air like a kite."
In Roswell, the discovery set off a flurry of excitement.
Sheriff George Wilcox's telephone lines were jammed. Three calls came from England, one of them from the London Daily Mail, he said.
Gallup Independent:
Brazel, the New Mexico rancher who was originally thought to have found the nation's first "flying disc" is sorry he said anything about it.
The 48-year old New Mexican said he was amazed at the fuss made over his discovery.
"If I find anything else short of a bomb it's going to be hard to get me to talk," he told the Associated Press in Roswell early this morning.
Brazel's discovery was reported yesterday afternoon by Lt. Warren [sic] Haut, Roswell army air field public relations officer, as definitely being one of the "flying discs" that have puzzled and worried citizens of forty-four states during the past several weeks.
Roswell Daily Record
A public relations officer here said the balloon was in his office "and it'll probably stay right there."
Newton, who made the examination, said some 80 weather stations in the U.S. were using that type of balloon and it could have come from any of them.
He said he had sent up identical balloons during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistics information for heavy guns.
