(H&M, FUFOR, 1979 television interview) "[There were] many bits of metallic foil, that looked like, but was not, aluminum, for no matter how often one crumpled it, it regained its original shape again. Besides that, they were indestructible, even with a sledgehammer."
(Corley) "...the material was unusual. Of course the Air Force called it a balloon. It couldn't have been. It was porous. It couldn't hold any air. The material was a fabric... I tried to blow though it. It would go right through it. I tried to blow it with my mouth." [Corley asking for clarification: "What piece? That foil looking stuff?"] "No, no. ...what looked like balloon material. A cloth. ...It wouldn't hold any air. ...it's a cloth-like material, but it was also metallic. ...It was a metallic cloth. It [air] would go right through it. I even tried to burn it. It wouldn't burn. ...a balloon has to have ...gas to go up in the air -- even hot air. This could not hold anything like that. It was porous.
JESSE MARCEL JR.
(Son of Roswell intelligence chief, Marcel Jr. was 11 years old in 1947)
(B&M) "The material was foil-like stuff, very thin, metallic-like but not metal, and very tough."
(R&S2) Marcel Jr. described the foil as resembling "lead foil."
(KPFA) "Most of the debris consisted of metal foil. It was kind of like a dull aluminum on each surface."
(Pflock, also FUFOR, affidavit, May 6, 1991) "Most of the debris looked like pieces of an aircraft airframe and its skin. . . . [There was] a thick, foil-like metallic gray substance."
WILLIAM BRAZEL JR.
(F&B) "One of the pieces looked like] something on the order of tinfoil, except that [it] wouldn't tear.... You could wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed its original shape... quite pliable, but you couldn't crease or bend it like ordinary metal. Almost like a plastic, but definitely metallic. Dad once said that the Army had once told him it was not anything made by us."
"...a little piece of -- it wasn't tinfoil, it wasn't lead foil -- a piece about the size of my finger. ...The only reason I noticed the tinfoil (I'm gonna call it tinfoil), I picked this stuff up and put it in my chaps pocket. Might be two or three days or a week before I took it out and put it in a cigar box. I happened to notice when I put that piece of foil in that box, and the damn thing just started unfolding and just flattened out. Then I got to playing with it. I'd fold it, crease it, lay it down and it'd unfold. It's kinda weird. I couldn't tear it. The color was in between tinfoil and lead foil, about the [thickness] of lead foil."
(B&M) "There were several bits of metal-like substance, something on the order of tinfoil, except that this stuff wouldn't tear and was actually a bit darker in color than tinfoil -- more like lead foil, except very thin and extremely lightweight. The odd thing about this foil was that you could wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed its original shape. It was quite pliable, yet you couldn't crease or bend it like ordinary metal. It was almost more like a plastic of some sort except that it was definitely metallic in nature. I don't know what it was, but I do know that Dad once said that the Army had told him that they had definitely established it wasn't anything made by us."
(R&S1) "The only reason I noticed the tin foil was that I picked this stuff up and put it in my chaps pocket. Like I said, I had it in here two, three days, and when I took it out and put it in the box and I happened to notice that when I put that piece of foil in the box it started unfolding and flattened out. Then I got to playing with it. I would fold it or crease it and lay it down and watch it. It was kind of weird. The piece I found was a jagged piece. I couldn't tear it. Hell, tin foil or lead foil is easy but I couldn't tear it. I didn't take pliers or anything. I just used my fingers. I didn't try to cut it with my knife. The color was consistent through the pieces I found. It was a dull color [and the same on both sides]. It was about the gauge of lead foil. Thicker than tin foil. It was pliable. Real pliable. I would bend it over and crease it and if you straighten back up, there would be a crinkle in it. Nothing. It would flatten out and it was just as smooth as ever. Not a crinkle or anything in it. [It didn't make a sound.] ...As best as I can remember, it was smooth. I wasn't intrigued with any part of it until I discovered the foil and what it would do. Then I got to looking at the rest of it."
SALLY STRICKLAND TADOLINI
(Daughter of Marian Strickland, age 9 in 1947)
(Pflock, FUFOR, from affidavit 9/27/93): "What Bill [Brazel Jr.] showed us was a piece of what I still think as fabric. It was something like aluminum foil, something like satin, something like well-tanned leather in its toughness, yet was not precisely like any one of those materials. While I do not recall this with certainty, I think the fabric measured about four by eight to ten inches. Its edges, where were smooth, were not exactly parallel, and its shape was roughly trapezoidal. It was about the thickness of a very fine kidskin glove leather and a dull metallic grayish silver, one side slightly darker than the other. I do not remember it having any design or embossing on it. Bill passed it around, and we all felt it. I did a lot of sewing, so the feel made a great impression on me. It felt like no fabric I have touched before or since. It was very silky or satiny, with the same texture on both sides. Yet when I crumpled it in my hands, the feel was like that you notice when you crumple a leather glove in your hand. When it was released, it sprang back into its original shape, quickly flattening out with no wrinkles. I did this several times, as did the others. I remember some of the others stretching it between their hands and "popping" it, but I do not think anyone tried to cut or tear it."
(R&S2) Bill Brazel showed that small piece of foil to others. ... Brazel showed her [Tadolini] the foil, and she has the impression that it was dull in color, maybe gray, and that it was a small piece. Brazel, according to her, balled it up in his hand and then opened his hand, letting it return to its original shape. She thought it was stiff, like aluminum foil, but that it did not seem metallic.
MARIAN STRICKLAND
(Friend and neighbor of Mac Brazel)
(VIDEO1) "The time that he brought the sample of what he had picked up, he was at the corral. My daughter and two sons and husband were at the corral, and they saw it. My daughter says that it could be crumpled up and straighten right back out."
LORRETA PROCTOR
(Friend and neighbor of Mac Brazel. Brazel visited before reporting find in Roswell.)
(Pflock, FUFOR, from affidavit 5/5/91): " ...'Mac' [W. Brazel] said the other material on the property looked like aluminum foil. It was very flexible and wouldn't crush or burn."
(VIDEO1) "He said the stuff that looked kind of like aluminum foil, he said you'd crumple it up and then it would straighten out, it wouldn't stay creased, it would just open out. But he couldn't get any of it off to bring up. He said he couldn't cut it or anything."
(R&S1) "He was telling us about more of the other material that was so lightweight and that was crinkled up and then would fold out."
PHYLLIS WILCOX McGUIRE
(Daughter of Roswell Sheriff George Wilcox)
(Shirkey, pp. 94-95, from letter Jan. 1996) "When I read in the Roswell paper about the Flying Saucer being found, I went into his [her father's] office to ask about it... I asked my father if he thought the information about the saucer was true. He said: 'I don't know why Brazell [sic] ... would come all the way in here if there wasn't something to it.' He said Brazell had brought in some of the material to show, and that it looked like tinfoil, (a material like aluminum foil), but when you wadded this material up it would come right back to its original shape. He felt it was an important finding and he sent deputies out to investigate."
SGT. ROBERT SMITH
(Robert Smith was a member of the First Air Transport Unit, which operated Douglas C-54 Skymaster four-engine cargo planes out of the Roswell AAF.)
(F&B, interviewed 1991) "All I saw was a little piece of material. You could crumple it up, let it come out. You couldn't crease it. One of our people put it in his pocket. The piece of debris I saw was two to three inches square. It was jagged. When you crumpled it up, it then laid back out. And when it did, it kind of crackled, making a sound like cellophane. It crackled when it was let out. There were no creases. ...The sergeant who had the piece of material said [it was like] the material in the crates."
(Pflock, FUFOR, affidavit 10/10/91) "All I saw was a little piece of material. The piece of debris I saw was two-to-three inches square. It was jagged. When you crumpled it up, it then laid back out; and when it did, it kind of crackled, making a sound like cellophane, and it crackled when it was let out. There were no creases.
(R&S1) [Smith and a couple of the other sergeants discussed the nature of the cargo as they were loading the aircraft.] "We were talking about what was in the crates and so forth and he (another of the NCOs) said, 'oh do you remember the story about the UFO? Or rather the flying saucer.' That was what we called them back then. We thought he was joking, but he let us feel a piece and stuck it back into his pocket. Afterwards we got to talking a little bit more about it and he said he'd been out there helping clean this up. He didn't think taking a little piece like that would matter. It was just a little piece of metal or foil or whatever it was. Just small enough to be slipped into a pocket. I think he just picked it up for a souvenir. It was foil-like, but it was stiffer than foil that we have now. In fact, being a sheet metal man, it kind of intrigued me, being that you could crumple it and it would flatten back out again without any wrinkles showing up in it. Of course we didn't get to look at it too close because it was supposed to be top secret."
M. SGT. LEWIS (BILL) RICKETT
[Bill Rickett was with the Counter Intelligence Corps based in Roswell, part of Jesse Marcel's staff, and an assistant to CICman Sheridan Cavitt. He had an opportunity to examine some of the wreckage recovered from the Foster (Mac Brazel's) Ranch. He also said he escorted Dr Lincoln LaPaz, a meteor expert from the New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics, on a tour of the crash site and the surrounding area in September, 1947, in an attempt to reconstruct the speed and trajectory of the crash object.]
(R&S1) Rickett said the foil was dull, like the back side of aluminum foil, and because it didn't reflect the sun, it was hard to see.
(F&B) "[The material] was very strong and very light. You could bend it but couldn't crease it. As far as I know, no one ever figured out what it was made of...."
"...LaPaz wanted to fly over the area, and this was arranged. He found one other spot where he felt this thing had touched down and then taken off again. The sand at this spot had been turned into a glass-like substance. We collected a boxful of samples of this material. As I recall, there were some metal samples here, too, of that same sort of thin foil stuff. LaPaz sent this box off somewhere for study; I don't know or recall where, but I never saw it again. This place was some miles from the other one."
LT. JACK TROWBRIDGE, new witness
(Trowbridge is listed in the base yearbook as being with base headquarter but says he was assigned to Major Marcel's intelligence office)
(SCI FI video testimony) Well on this particular evening we were having bridge at Major Marcel’s home. ...All of intelligence was there playing bridge, except Jesse. He was out with a pickup gathering his junk in the debris field. So when he came in it was fairly late, I believe. And we broke up the bridge game then to go out and see what Jesse brought in. And it was of great interest.
It was aluminum in appearance. There were fragments of aircraft skin, or whatever the thing was, and also some girders with pictures of hieroglyphic-like things on it. I took them to be owls (?), but who knows? Anyhow, it was interesting. I did get to handle the material. And the material had some peculiar properties. For instance, it looked like Hershey bar wrappings. But you squeeze it up in your hand as hard as you could, let go, and it returned originally to the original shape—instantly!
S/ SGT. EARL V. FULFORD, new witness
(Roswell 603rd Air Engineering Squadron, aircraft mechanic. Said he was assigned to work detail, perhaps on July 9 or 10, 1947, to clean up a debris field along with 15 to 20 other men.)
(C&S, pp. 105-107) “…Armed MPs ringed the site …We knew from the day before that something had crashed up there, so we figured this must have been the crash site.” (Not much debris remained scattered over “hundreds of yards.” He found only 7 pieces. They were to ‘police-up’ the site and put anything they found in burlap bags that was “not natural.”) “I picked up small, silvery pieces of metallic debris, the largest of which was triangular in shape, about 3 to 4 inches wide by 12 to 15 inches long. It looked like thin, light, aluminum foil that flexed slightly when I picked it up, but once in the palm of your hand, you could wad it up into a small ball. Then, when you let it go, it would immediately assume its original shape in a second or two. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, this is neat. I’m going to keep a piece for myself.’ But they searched us thoroughly when we got back to make damned sure none of us had anything. Nobody picked up anything of size. We didn’t see any other type of debris or pieces of debris with writing on them, and we didn’t see any bodies. We also did not see any balloons or balloon material. They launched weather balloons from in between barracks where I lived back on the base every day. I was familiar with them, and the debris wasn’t from one of those.”
(New, 2010! Interview UFO Hunters, aired 4/9/09; 6:00 into video) "[We] picked up some debris of very unusual shape and feel and appearance... We picked up some material here [debris field] in a one square mile area... [for] the bigger part of a day. [a fan-shaped area spreading out over one square mile] ...The vehicles all drove up and like formed a circle. We started walking in one direction. We went about 10, 12, 15 [feet] apart where you could see what I could see and I could see what you could see, so we weren't missing anything. Well, I'd seen some type of material or metal or something that looked sort of like aluminum. It was shreds and pieces. ...My personal experience was great surprise when I picked up a piece and I wadded it up to put in my bag, and before you could get it there it came back to its original shape. And I took it out and wadded it up again and same thing. ...I would say I picked up 10, 12, maybe 15 pieces, but once it went into those bags, we never seen it again. [Who took possession of the bags?] They were military police. ...They told me up there if I showed anyone or told anyone, I was in deep trouble. (see also Fulford's multi-saucer sighting over Roswell base late June or early July 1947)
(Interview, Open Minds forum, 2/10/08, 26:20 into interview) "...we lined across an area--I’d say eight or nine hundred feet wide—and walked through in a straight line so that you could always see the man on your left and the man on your right, and picked up everything that was there that didn’t look like it belonged there. We did pick up some shreds of some kind of material that was one of the most unique things I ever saw, because you could pick it up—it looked like aluminum foil—didn’t appear to have any weight whatsoever—and you could fold it up and wad it up and lay it down and it would just return to its original position. It felt more like a cloth, but it looked metallic.. It was about like bending cardboard. You bend a piece of cardboard and it might come back out a little. But this would come back in a perfect, flat position with no crease marks or no damage left whatsoever. ...I would say my attitude was, 'Man, what kind of stuff is this? I never seen anything like this before.' And that was the general consensus of everybody."
(Asked about thickness) "...it never occurred to me to check for thickness or anything, but it had the appearance of being something thicker than it really was—I can say that. (Asked if it was as thin as cigarette package foil, as described by other witnesses) I would agree with that... I didn’t explain it that way, but I felt that it was very light with almost no weight, no noticeable weight... you can pick up a pencil and feel some weight. But the pieces I picked up, I don’t remember feeling any weight."
(Size, shapes, and edges) "Everything we picked up was in like shreds, like you’d just take a sheet of paper and cut the edge off at an angle and maybe cut one in a square, ...all different shapes like you just took up like a newspaper and tore it up in shreds and threw it down. (Later, asked about edges) ...everything I’d seen was in a straight line. It looked like it had been ripped off of a larger piece... I didn’t see anything jagged. There was a horizontal edge on everything I seen. ...they weren’t uniform. You’d have a three-cornered strip and an almost square piece. Nothing in round circles, nothing like that. And I don’t remember anything torn like in an arc or anything like that. Everything had straight lines in one shape or the other."
(Asked about possible makings or scorch marks) "I don’t remember anything like that. In my mind, this could have happened from something exploding, or something like that. Now what I picked up wasn’t discolored in any way and reminded me very much of aluminum foil."
(Quantity of material he picked up) "I would guess a half a dozen pieces, maybe as many as 8 or 10."
(Asked if it looked like modern aluminized mylar plastic) "I would say it looked similar."
(Asked about temperature in desert sun) "I don’t remember any temperature to it. There may have been. You know, anything you pick up in that country has got a given amount of temperature. That’s something that never occurred to me. If it had been real hot, you know, I would have commented about it or if it had been ash (?) cold I would have, but it was just an ambient temperature."
(Roswell 830th Bomb Squadron, B-29 aircraft mechanic & crew chief. One of the original 509th Bomb Wing members from 1944. Stayed at Roswell until 1956. Said he and his B-29 crew returned to Roswell on the night of July 7, 1947. Five men on his crew were sent out to clean up debris field.)
(San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/26/2007) About 500 soldiers sent to the crash site were lined shoulder to shoulder and ordered to scour the property for debris. “They lined them up and then said, 'We want you to go through this ranch the way you're facing until we tell you to stop, and we want you to pick up everything unnatural. When my crew got back (from the crash site), we talked for weeks. They told me everything and I believe them.... They told me, 'Milt, it's true.' ” Among the material discovered was a malleable, foil-like material that could be laid flat with no creases after being squashed into a ball.
(North County Times, San Diego, Riverside, 9/30/2007) ...hundreds of men from the 509th were taken to the crash site and told to walk shoulder-to-shoulder through the field, looking for debris pieces. Sprouse himself did not go because he was told he was needed for Dave's Dream [his B-29], but five men from his ground crew went to the ranch. "They said it was out of this world," Sprouse said about what the crew reported finding. Among the objects it reported seeing was a metallic foil that, when crumpled, unfolded without a crease.
LARRY ROWLETTE, new witness
(Son of Sgt. Homer G. Rowlette, Jr. of the 603rd Air Engineering Squadron at Roswell. His father told son Larry and daughter Carlene Green about the “crash of a flying saucer” on his deathbed in March 1988. Larry Rowlette said his father was part of the cleanup detail sent to the impact site north of Roswell. There were also two other sites near Corona, N.M.)
(C & S, p. 199) [His father had handled the material which he described as] “thin foil that kept its shape.”
[Exon was stationed at Wright Field at the time of the crash. From 1964-69 he was the Commanding Officer of Wright-Patterson AFB, where crash material was taken in 1947. He said he never saw the actual crash material, but was told the result of testing by other personnel involved.]
[RUCU] "...couldn't be easily ripped or changed ...you could change it. You could wad it up, you could change the shape, but it was still there and ... there were other parts of it that were very thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with heavy hammers and stuff like that... which at the time were causing some people some concern... again, say it was a shape of some kind, you could grab this end and bend it, but it would come right back. It was flexible to a degree."
JUNE CRAIN
(Crain was employed at Wright Field/Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio, from 1943 through 1952. Crain recalled that she saw and handled the following metallic debris in either 1951 or 1952 at Wright Field. Although it is not clear that the this debris is directly related to the 1947 Roswell event or some other event, the testimony is that the metal came from a spacecraft in New Mexico. The testimony is therefore included because of Crain's position and the similarity of the description to that of others. Links to the full interview and documentation of her employment can be found at http://www.majesticdocuments.com/witnesses.php)
(Interview by James E. Clarkson, June 27, 1997) "He [Lt. Rose or Cpt. Wheeler] walked in. ...He threw it on my desk, and it was a piece, well it was a piece [about the size of a business card?] Yeah, about that size, and a half of this. ...it was bent like this. And he says, 'June, you're good. Tear that thing apart, break that up.' and I took it and I bent it and I twisted it and I laid it back down, and it went ...right back to the same shape. I got back to my desk and he said, 'cut it. Cut it. Trying cutting it.' ...I got my scissors out and I snipped at it., and you know there was no way I could even cut that piece of metal. And it was as light as a feather. I had it in my hand and I couldn't --I would say that it didn't weigh as much as these two cards -- it wasn't that heavy. It was so light but strong, and it was [fairly thick]. But it had no weight at all, it was like a feather. And so strong. It was sort of a grayish, gun metal type of color, and you could see that on the inside that there was a different coating on the outside of it. Both sides were the same and the insides seemed to have a sort of a lead-colored, light lead-colored center to it. [Were the edges even or like part of something else?] It was even, all even and I said 'what is it?' He said, 'it's a piece of a space ship.' ...He said, 'I just came back from New Mexico and I brought it back with me.'"
"I've never seen [anything like it since]. I always look at things, metal things and I still have that curiosity, because it still bothers me and I have yet to see anything that would have those properties and looks like that. And so light! [Was it slightly v-shaped, in a very slight curve?] Sort of a curve. ...it was practically indestructible. I even took the edge of the scissors and laid it on ... like this, and I whacked it like this, and I couldn't even make a dent in it. Just nothing. Cause he said tear it up, so I tried every thing I could to tear it up, and I couldn't tear it up. I couldn't make a dent in it; I couldn't make a mark on it."
CHARLES SCHMID
(Roswell resident who said he heard rumors about the crash and went to take a look.)
(VIDEO1) "There was some material that looked just like tinfoil, but quite strong. You could writhe it up in your hand and it would just straighten out, no kinks, no nothing, it would just straighten out by itself."
PAUL PRICE, New witness
(A Roswell resident, he said he and his older brother had heard about the crash of a flying saucer north of town and went to take a look.)
(C&S, p. 50) “We knew most of the ranchers, so it wasn’t long before we got to the right spot. There were so many parts for as far as you could see. Some of the pieces just snapped back in your hands when you bent them.”
FRANKIE DWYER ROWE
(Frankie Rowe, age 12 in 1947, is the daughter of Roswell fireman, Dan Dwyer, who allegedly was at the main saucer crash site with other members of the fire department and members of the Roswell police department. The foil she saw was allegedly later shown at the Roswell fire station to some of the firemen and herself by a state trooper.)
(R&S2) Frankie Rowe talked of foil that, when crumpled into a ball, would unfold itself with a fluid motion.
(R&S2, Paperback edition, affidavit 11/22/93): "In early July 1947, I was in the fire house waiting for my father to take me home. A State Trooper arrived and displayed a piece of metallic debris that he said he'd picked up on the crash site. It was a dull gray and about the thickness of aluminum foil. When wadded into a ball, it would unfold itself. The fire fighters were unable to cut or burn it."
(VIDEO2) [Referring to state trooper] "And he pulled his hand out of his pocket and he had a piece of the material wadded up in his hand in a little tiny ball. When he dropped it on the table it spread out like it was liquid or quicksilver, and there was not one wrinkle in that. I do remember that we all got to touch it, we all got to pick it up. You could bend it, it made no crinkle, no noise. It was very shiny, very silvery color, maybe about a foot square. I have no idea what happened to it."
(Pflock) [As she waited, a state police officer came in and said he wanted to show the firemen something.] "He took his hand out of his pocket and he dropped what he had in his fist on the table. He said it was something he picked up out at the crash site. It looked like quicksilver when it was on the table, but you could wad it up. [It was] a little larger than . . . [his] hand. It had jagged edges" [and it was a dull grayish-silver color.] "You couldn't feel it in your hand. It was so thin that it felt like holding a hair . . . It wasn't anything you'd ever seen before. It flowed like quicksilver when you laid it on the table. [The firemen and the trooper] tried to tear it, cut it and burn it. It wadded up into nothing. The state cop said he'd gotten away with just this one small piece, and he said he didn't know how long he'd be able to keep it, if the military found out."
(FOX) "They tried to burn it, and they couldn't burn it, and it wouldn't catch on fire. And they took out their pocket knives and tried to cut it, and they couldn't cut it. ... I reached over and picked it up. And I played with it for about five minutes. When you would wad it up in you hand, you couldn't feel it in your hand. You couldn't feel you had anything there. And it would go to a size that was so small, that you'd have to look to see if it was still in your hand. And then when you'd drop it, it would spread out all over the table.
HELEN DWYER CAHILL
(Older sister of Frankie Rowe. She was married and not living in Roswell in 1947.)
(R&S2, Paperback edition, affidavit 11/22/93): "My sister, Frankie, told me about her experiences sometime in the early 1960s. Frankie told me about sitting around the table in 1947 and being threatened. My sister also mentioned seeing the material that 'ran like water.'"
SHIRLEY BRAZEL (new witness)
(Wife of Bill Brazel Jr. Daughter-in-law of Mack Brazel)
(C&S, p. 48): [There was] "stuff that would flow like water after you wadded it up in your hands."
JIM RAGSDALE
(Allegedly Ragsdale, a Roswell resident, was at the main saucer crash site just before the military arrived. He later changed stories and impeached much of his earlier testimony.)
(R&S2) [describing some of the pieces picked up at the site] "You could take that stuff and wad it up and it would straighten itself out. [One of the pieces] You could bend it in any form, and it would stay. It wouldn't straighten out."
(Pflock, affidavit 12/8/98) "It wasn't a rigid metal, but even though being thick was flexible up to a point. You could bend it and it would come right back to it's original shape. This was also true for the lighter material scattered all over the mountain that looked like tin foil and would go back to it's original shape when crumpled in your hand. The material of the craft itself had a sort of bronze-gray color. There were not rivets, seams or indication of how it had been constructed."
" PHILIP CROFT" -- New witness
(A new witness uncovered by Roswell resident and Roswell researcher Don Burleson and his wife Mollie, the anonymous "Croft" claimed Mack Brazel still had a piece of indestructible foil in 1951 and showed it to a hunting party. According to Burleson, Croft "lived in Corona, NM, and was employed by the Highway Department, working on roads around Vaughn, Corona, and Carrizozo. He and his friends used to go deer hunting on land near Corona. One day in November of 1951 one of his two hunting companions was Mack Brazel, whom he and a friend had met at the bar in Corona.")
(Burleson, Nov. 2002)
...On the day in question, the hunting party was out in the prairie southeast of Corona near the spot where Brazel had parked his truck. Brazel suddenly seemed a bit nervous for some reason. He looked toward his truck and said, "I want to show you boys something." Going to the truck and opening the door, he pulled an odd object out from behind the seat.
Philip Croft has described the object as a piece of "silver-aluminum" metallic foil, "paper thin," and about the size and shape of a dinner plate. Unfortunately he didn't get to touch the material himself, but he had plenty of opportunity to observe it, because Brazel set the object up at the base of a pinyon tree and suggested that they fire at it-which they did-with 30.06 deer rifles from a distance of about thirty feet, an easy target for experienced deer hunters.
Mr. Croft said that when the foil was hit, it spun a considerable distance up in the air and came floating down "like Kleenex." Upon examining the material, the men found that it showed no effects from having been hit-not even a dent, and certainly no tears or punctures.
... he asked Brazel at the time, "Didn't the army people tell you what the stuff is?" Brazel, in characteristically colorful fashion, replied, "No, and they're sure being a bunch of chicken****s about it." Clearly he was still upset over the whole business, feeling put-upon by his experiences with the military, and feeling anxious that the wrong people not know of his possession of the material.
L. D. SPARKS -- New witness
(Rancher. He described a piece shown to him by rancher’s son Dan Richards a few years after the incident, which Richards had retrieved off the debris field before the miltary had arrived.)
(C&S, p. 52) [Dan Richards had him toss a thin piece of foil-like material in the air as he fired a rifle at it.] Shot after shot just ricocheted off of it. I would crumble the piece into a ball and watch in amazement as it would unfold as it floated through the air.”
MAJOR ELLIS BOLDRA
(Boldra, an engineer, allegedly found samples of the crash debris in a safe in the Roswell AFB engineering department in 1952. Testimony is second-hand from son and friends.)
(R&S2 description) When crumpled, it [a thin metal sample] quickly returned to its original shape. ...Boldra subjected the sample to a number of tests. It was thin, incredibly strong, and dissipated heat in some manner. Boldra used an acetylene torch on the material, which didn't melt and barely got warm. It didn't glow when heated, and once the flame was removed, it could be handled in seconds. Boldra tried to cut it with a variety of tools and failed. No one remembers if he tried to drill through it. One of Boldra's friends said that it wasn't any type of metal that he could identify.
[Sarbacher was a physicist and industrial scientist who acted as a consultant with the U.S. Department of Defense Research and Development Board (RDB). In numerous interviews, dating back to 1950 (e.g., see Wilbert Smith in Miscellaneous testimony), he claimed to have been on advisory boards dealing with crashed saucers, and that they and dead aliens did indeed exist.]
(From Whitley Strieber's "Breakthrough," 1995; phone interview 1986; in an e-mail, Strieber wrote the "quote" is from memory of the conversation, but fairly accurately representation of what he was told)
"That fabric we obtained at Roswell had molecular welds so small you couldn't even identify what they were until the sixties, when the microscopes to do it became available. ...What I can be certain about is that it was not produced by any technology we were aware of in 1947, or now."
(From letter to William Steinman, 11/29/83) "About the only thing I recall at this time is that certain materials reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and very tough. I am sure our laboratories analyzed them very carefully."
ALBERT BRUCE COLLINS
(Allegedly analyzed debris at Berkeley in 1947)
(SR#6) "As best as I can recall, it was a dull finish metal on the one side like aluminum and very shiny on the other side. It was thin and very light. It could be flexed but not dented on impact. We could not separate its metals through any assay we knew of. It was fire and cold resistant. Could not be cut or punctured. Some pieces were big with slight curvature to them. Other pieces were very small. One piece was very big and about one inch thick. It was jagged, like it had been part of a structure that had been hit by high explosives. It had burn marks but no scratches, which was very odd. You could fold it and it would extend back to its original shape."
WALT WHITMORE JR.
(Son of KGFL Roswell radio station owner)
(F&B) "[It was] very much like lead foil in appearance but could not be torn or cut at all. Extremely light in weight."
(B&M, 1979) ...He did see some of the wreckage brought into town by the rancher. His description was that it consisted mostly of a very thin but extremely tough metallic foil-like substance. ...He added that the largest piece of material that he saw was about four or five inches square, and that it was very much like lead foil in appearance but could not be torn or cut at all. It was extremely light in weight.
"RELUCTANT" [Walt Whitmore Jr.]
(Note Whitmore's change in testimony between 1979 and 1992)
(Pflock, interview 1992) "Most of what I found was white, linen-like cloth with reflective tinfoil attached to one side. . . . Most of the pieces were no larger than four or five inches on a side, although I found one or two about the size of a sheet of typing paper . . .One of the larger pieces of foiled cloth, measuring about 8 by 12 inches, had writing on the cloth side. Someone had used a pencil to do some figuring, arithmetic. There were no words, only numbers. I did not see any writing or marking on any of the other debris. I collected some of the foiled cloth material, including the piece with the writing on it, and a few of the sticks, filled a large, 9 by 12, envelope with it . . . I still have the material I collected on the ranch site in July 1947 . . . in a safe and secure place."
(Kellahin was an Associated Press reporter in Albuquerque in 1947 and was ordered to Roswell to interview rancher Mac Brazel following the release of the Army Air Force press release about the capture of a flying disc. On his way to Roswell, he claims to have taken a detour to Brazel's ranch, interviewed Brazel, and seen balloon debris. For various reasons, including impossible time constraints, there is good reason to doubt that he ever made it there. Possibly Kellahin confused another, more-accessible crash site much closer to the main highway with the remote debris field at Brazel's place.)
(Pflock, affidavit 9/20/93) "There was quite a lot of debris on the site -- pieces of silver colored fabric, perhaps aluminized cloth. Some of the pieces had sticks attached to them. I thought they might be the remains of a high-altitude balloon package, but I did not see anything, pieces of rubber or the like, that looked like it could have been part of the balloon itself. The way the material was distributed, it looked as though whatever it was from came apart as it moved along through the air.
BESSIE BRAZEL SCHREIBER
(F&B) "[The material resembled] a sort of aluminum-like foil. ...[There was also] a piece of something made out of the same metal-like foil that looked like a pipe sleeve. About four inches across and equally long, with a flange on one end."
(Pflock, USAF, from affidavit, 9/22/93): "...The pieces were small, the largest I remember measuring about the same as the diameter of a basketball. Most of it was a kind of double-sided material, foil-like on one side and rubber-like on the other. Both sides were grayish-silver in color, the foil more silvery than the rubber. ...The foil-rubber material could not be torn like ordinary aluminum foil can be torn..."
CHARLES B. MOORE
(On-scene Mogul Project Head Engineer. Moore never saw the actual crash debris.)
(B&M, interview 1980) C.B. Moore's description of a Rawin target device, of which he had seen and handled many, was also important in that it strongly reinforced the belief that anyone finding such "flimsy foil and balsa-wood material" would have had great difficulty in confusing it with anything out of the ordinary.
(USAF description) [The radar reflectors] were made up of aluminum "foil" or foil-backed paper, balsa wood beams that were coated in an "Elmer's-type glue to enhance their durability...
(USAF, 1994 Interview, Attach. 23)
Q: Is there any type of material from that project that you can think of that would be pliable, would be bendable, but could not be torn?
A: ... But this [radar reflector material], in the B models [flown in 1947 and 1948] was more like an aluminum foil with a heavy laminated paper. So the material they talk about, I think, was derived from some version of this.
Q. They talk in terms of the material, being able to crumple it and releasing it, and it would unfold itself and not leave any creases. This material looks like it would almost be like aluminum foil, would crease and remain creased.
A: It does have this paper laminate, and the paper, I think, was a bit tougher on the earlier thing [radar reflector model]. But I have no explanation for the fact that it couldn't be bent with a sledgehammer, as one of the people said, and couldn't be ...
Q: Burned?
(USAF, Interview) [On the question of whether the radar reflectors used aluminized mylar]
(Moore): ... here is a communication between [Robert] Todd and a Warrant Officer [Irving] Newton, who identified things in General Ramey's office.
Q: It says a material like mylar. Do you have any knowledge of when that term came into use? Mylar is a polyethylene, it's a metallized polyethylene.
A: It's not really a polyethylene, it's a polyturpoline . . . [Note: the Mogul launches starting July 3, 1947 used polyethylene balloons.]
Q: I'm not a chemist.
A: It's really quite a different thing. We certainly got involved with mylar balloons in General Mills around 1950 or 1951.
Q: Nothing that early, though.
A: I think not. It was really quite a new plastic. This is mylar. As you can see from the appearance, it's really quite different than polyethylene. It's non-extensible [mylar], where this really stretches [polyethylene]. This scatters light [polyethylene] and this doesn't [mylar]. We have flown mylar balloons and mylar balloons vacuum coated with aluminum, but I think we didn't fly any in this era. It would be my guess that someone is sort of confusing this with later things. There were a lot of mylar balloons carried on rockets, and it was called Jim's sphere. Someone named Jim came up with the idea of increasing the turbulence around a following sphere by putting a little protuberance, little combs out on it. That was Jim's sphere. A lot of them were flown to measure winds in the low ionosphere, flown on rockets, from White Sands. They could well have fallen, but to by memory, it would have been anachronistic, out of times.
(Newton was the weather officer called in to identify the crash debris at Gen. Ramey's press conference on July 8, 1947, and is not a direct witness to what happened in Roswell. Marcel and Ramey's chief of staff Gen. Thomas Dubose said the "real" Roswell debris brought by Marcel was swapped with a tattered weather balloon and Rawin foil radar target.)
(B&M, questioning Newton in July 1979 Interview)
Q. But wouldn't the people at Roswell have been able to identify a balloon on their own?
A. They certainly should have. It was a regular Rawin sonde. They must have seen hundreds of them.
Q. Can you describe the fabric? Was it easy to tear?
A. Certainly. You would have to be careful not to tear it. The metal involved was like an extremely thin Alcoa wrap. It was very flimsy.
