The Canadian Press -- July 9
[Text in italics unique to some papers]
Montreal Gazette, July 9, 1947, p. 1
Flying Saucer Mystery Unsolved,
Find in New Mexico Mere Balloon
-------
Remnants Discovered on Ranch Prove to Be Wind Target Used to Determine Velocity and Direction of Winds at High Altitudes
-------
The Halifax Herald, July 9, p. 1
FLYING SAUCER MYSTERY UNSOLVED
New Clue Exploded By Expert
Short Period Of Excitement Ends When “Disc” Found A Weather Balloon
Ottowa Citizen, July 9
Find “Flying Saucer” Was Just Weather Balloon
Toronto Globe and Mail, July 9, p. 1
Crashed ‘Flying Saucer’ Just Weather Balloon
(By the Canadian Press)
The “flying saucer” mystery remained unresolved Tuesday night after a short-lived report that one of the discs that have intrigued and perplexed residents in many parts of North America during the last three weeks had been found in New Mexico.
Weather Balloon
The reported discovery turned out to be nothing more exciting than a weather balloon.
Warrant Officer Irving Newton, a forecaster at the United States Army’s 8th Air Force weather station at Fort Worth, Tex., said the object found near Roswell, N.M., was a Ray wind target used to determine the directions and velocity of winds at high altitudes.
He said some 80 weather stations in the United States use this type of balloon and it could have come from any one of them. When rigged up, the apparatus resembles a six-pointed star, it’s silvery in appearance and rises in the air like a kite, mounted to a 100 gram balloon.
Maj.-Gen. [sic] Roger M. Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force with headquarters at Fort Worth, also deflated the find, which was first reported from Roswell late Tuesday. Lieut. Warren Haught [sic], army public information officer at Roswell army airfield, said the “disc” had landed on a ranch near Roswell and had been turned over to the army.
Ramey interviewed over a Fort Worth radio station (WBAP) Tuesday night, said that the “flying disc” was a weather balloon.
The weather device had been found three weeks previously be a New Mexico rancher, W. W. Brazell [sic], on his property about 85 miles northwest of Roswell. Brazell, whose ranch has neither telephone nor radio, knew nothing about flying discs when he found the broken remnants of the weather device.
But he kept the tinfoil and wooden beams of the kite and torn synthetic rubber remains of the balloon. Maj. Jesse Marcel, 509th Bomb Group intelligence officer at Roswell said that last Saturday night Brazell was in Corona, NM, and heard for the first time of the “saucer” reports. On Monday he went to Roswell and reported his find to the sheriff’s office.
Marcel went to the ranch Tuesday and took the object into the custody of the army. Later it was ordered sent to Fort Worth army air field.
---------------
[Unique to Toronto Globe and Mail]
The game of “saucer, saucer, who’s got the flying saucer,” is still raging across most of the North American Continent, but so far nobody has found one of them yet, though out in Fort Worth, Tex., they thought they had been located. It turned out to be a weather balloon.
United States military authorities trying to make some sort of sense out of what is so far a lot of nonsense veined with plain and fancy lying, are scouring the skies with fast pursuit planes, but so far they haven’t found any saucers or discs.
There was quite a stir when Gen. Roger Ramey said at Washington yesterday that a strange object had been found at Roswell Army Airfield, New Mexico. Lt. Warren Haught, a public relations officer at Roswell Army airfield, was more optimistic than Gen. Ramey. Haught said the air force had obtained possession of a flying disc. It had landed on a ranch near Roswell some time last week. Then the disc business was shattered into fragments. It was just a weather balloon. Lt. Haught has issued no more statements.
------------------
But “flying saucer” stories persisted.
At Oelwein, Ia., Lloyd Bennett said Tuesday that one crashed into his front yard Monday night and claimed a reward. He described it as a piece of metal, 6-1/2 inches in diameter and about 1/8 of an inch thick. It was analyzed by metallurgist Ed Kuhns who said the disc appeared to be a type of die cast metal.
In Vancouver, Antoine Beauregard, French Canadian artist, inventor and scientist, said he saw a disc moving eastward at 1,200 miles an hour over his home in Millairdville, B.C., and added he though he knew “pretty well what the flying missile is.” But he declined to tell anyone but “a secret agent of the government.”
Beauregard, 37, claims that he has exceptionally keen eyes and can see bullets flying from a rifle muzzle and automobiles on a hillside 30 (80?) miles away.
In New York, Admiral William H. P. Blandy, commander of the United States Atlantic Fleet, was sceptical about the flying saucers. “I do not believe that they exist,” he said in an interview.
Last Saturday Sherman Campbell, a Circleville, O., farmer found a strange object on his farm. It was in the form of a six-pointed star, 50 inches high and 48 inches wide, covered with tinfoil. It weighed about two pounds. Attached to the top were the remains of a balloon with a neck five inches in circumference.
An airfield weather station at Columbus, O., said the description tallied with an object used by the Army air forces to measure wind velocity at high altitudes by the use of radar.
Some of the flying discs reported seen by hundreds of persons in 41 states and in at least five Canadian provinces were much larger and were said to be flying at terrific speed. The objects were reported first sighted June 25.
There have been many “explanations” of the flying saucers ranging from radio-controlled flying missiles sent aloft by United States military scientists to light reflecting from the wing tanks of jet-propelled planes. Some Scientists said it was merely a trick eyesight was playing on persons who said they saw the discs.
The strange tales of the “flying saucers” spread to Sydney, Australia and Johannesburg, South Africa, where residents said they too saw the strange objects.
