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Roswell Timeline

Part 2 | <--

Calls come into Roswell from all over the world as the press release hits the various news wires.

Reporter J. Bond Johnson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is instructed to drive to the base. His editor tells him a flying saucer is coming from Roswell. 

Marcel is in Ramey's office with some of the debris. The general wants to see where the debris was found. Marcel accompanies him to the map room. Once Ramey is satisfied, they walk back to the general's office, but the debris is gone. In its place is a ripped-apart weather balloon with debris scattered on the floor. 

At 3:53 PM. Roger Ramey announces that the flying disk has been sent on to Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio. 

More men arrive at the debris field and are assigned to assist in cleaning it. Soldiers with wheelbarrows move across the field, tossing in the debris. When the wheelbarrows are filled, the soldier take the debris to collection points. The debris is then loaded into covered trucks to be driven into Roswell. 

At 5:30 PM. a solution for the mystery is offered by Major E. M. Kirton who tells the Dallas Morning News that a balloon is responsible for all the excitement. 

Warrant Officer Irving Newton is ordered from the weather office at the Fort Worth Army Air Field to Ramey's office. Newton, in front of a small number of reporters and officers of the Eighth Air Force, identifies the wreckage on the office floor as a balloon. He is photographed and then sent back to his regular duties. 

At 6:17 PM. the FBI sends a Teletype message to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover telling him that a balloon is responsible for the reports. It is on its way to Dayton for examination by army air force experts. 

At 7:30P.M. the AP breaks into its last message with a bulletin telling the world that the Roswell flying disk is nothing more than a balloon. 

Ramey, with the identity of the wreckage established, announces to the world that the officers at Roswell had been fooled by a weather balloon. Ramey also appears on Fort Worth-Dallas radio station WBAP. 

An unscheduled flight from Boiling Field (Washington, D.C.) arrives. Lewis Rickett meets it at Roswell and gives the crew a sealed box with wreckage in it. He is required to get a signature before he can surrender it. 

At 10:00 PM. ABC News "Headline Edition" tells the audience that Roger Ramey has identified the Roswell wreckage as a weather balloon. 

At 11:59 PM. one of the photographs taken by J. Bond Johnson is transmitted to New York on the news wire. 

Wednesday, July 9,1947 
Morning newspapers trumpet the story that the "flying saucer" found near Roswell is a weather device. Some quote Ramey while others quote "informed" sources, including senators in Washington. 

Clean-up on the various sites resumes at sunup. The military is trying to get everything picked up before any more civilians stumble across the field. 

At 8:00 A.M. members of the First Air Transport Unit begin loading crates into C-54s. They load three or four aircraft with an intermediate destination of Kirtland. From there they are to be taken on to Los Alamos. Armed guards watch the loading of the aircraft. 

Jud Roberts along with Walt Whitmore, Sr., attempt to drive out to the debris field but run into the military cordon and are turned back. 

According to Roswell Army Air Field head secretary Elizabeth Kyle, the telephones at the base are still tied up by the incoming calls. 

More of the wreckage is brought into the base and is now being taken to be boxed into crates of various sizes and shapes. 

Bud Payne, a rancher in the Corona area, is chasing a stray cow As he crosses onto the Foster ranch, a jeep carrying soldiers roars over a ridgeline and bears down on him. He is carried from the Foster ranch. 

At 12:00 PM. the crate that has been sitting in the empty hangar guarded by the MPs is moved out to bomb pit number one. Nothing other than weapons has ever been stored in the bomb pit. 

In Roswell Floyd Proctor and Lyman Strickland see Mac Brazel under escort by three military officers. He ignores both of them, something that he wouldn't have done under normal circumstances. 

At lunch the nurse tells Dennis she is sick and wants to return to the barracks. In the course of the meal, she has provided Dennis with an account of what has happened and given him a drawing of the alien bodies. 

Under military escort Brazel is taken into town and into the offices of the Roswell Daily Record. There he gives reporters, including R. A. Adair and Jason Kellahin from Albuquerque, a new story. Now he claims to have found the debris on june 14. He also says he has found weather observation devices on two other occasions, and what he found is no weather balloon. 

Ramey's weather officer; Irving Newton, says the weather balloon is a special kind. "We use them because they go much higher than the eye can see. 

An officer from the base sweeps through Roswell picking up copies of Haut's press release, including those at the two radio stations. (Art McQuiddy said that a military officer had retrieved the copies of the press release written by Haut.)

Late in the afternoon, a flight crew at the skeet range is told they have a special flight coming up. The squadron operations officer; Edgar Skelly, tells the aircraft commander to keep everyone together. 

The aircraft loaded by Robert Smith and other members of the First Air Transport Unit takes off for Albuquerque. The crates will eventually reach Los Alamos. All the crates are marked with stencils saying TOP SECRET. 

Members of the flight crew pulled from the skeet range quickly preflight their aircraft. Once that is accomplished, they taxi out to the bomb pit. The only places on the base where the bomb pit can be observed are the tower and portions of the flight line. 

A sealed, unmarked wooden crate is brought out and loaded into the bomb bay of the B-29, tail number 7301. Six armed MPs guard it, never allowing it out of their sight. 
At Fort Worth a number of officers meet the aircraft. One is a man the bombardier recognizes as a mortician with whom he went to school. 

When the crate is unloaded and taken from the flight line, Jesse Marcel is driven up to the aircraft. He and the crew are told to return to Roswell. There was no briefing given to them at fort Worth. It is clear now that this flight was a diversion. The bodies had already been sent to Andrews. 

At 6:00 PM. Joseph Montoya returns to the base to catch the courier flight to land. He wants to get out of Roswell and forget what he has seen. 

Mac Brazel calls on Frank Joyce, this time with a new story, significantly different from the one he told on Sunday. When Joyce points that out, Brazel responds that it "would go hard on him" if he didn't tell the new story. 

At 8:00 PM. the flight crew is back. Again, they were not debriefed, but are told that they have flown the general's furniture to Fort Worth. They are cautioned not to tell anyone, including their famalies, what they have done. As far as everyone is concerned, the flight has not taken place. 

Upon his return, Marcel confronts Cavitt in the intelligence office. Marcel wants to the reports flied in his absence, but Cavett refuses. Marcel points out that he is the senior officer but is told the orders came from Washington. If he has a problem, to "take it up with them." 

The Las Vegas Review-Journal , along with dozens of other newspapers, carries a United Press story. "Reports of flying saucers whizzing through the sky fell off sharply today as the army and the navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors." The story also reports that AAF headquarters in Washington "delivered a blistering rebuke to officers at Roswell." 

Thursday, July 10, 1947
As he reads the morning newspaper, Bill Brazel learns about his father's activities in Roswell. He realizes that no one will be at the ranch and makes plans to get down 
there to help. 

At the debris field and impact site men are working to get everything cleaned up . They want nothing left and no signs of their presence. 

Military personnel return to Sheriff Wilcox's office and ask for the box of debris he has been storing for them. Wilcox surrenders it without protest. 

Mac Brazel is being held in the guest house on the base. The officers there are still trying to convince him that he is not to say anything about what he has seen. They are also trying to keep him out of the way of reporters. He is given a physical by doctors at the base hospital. 

Sheriff Wilcox calls on Glenn Dennis's father, telling him that his son has gotten himself into trouble out at the base. The sheriff had been visited by a sergeant who wants to ensure Glenn's silence. 

Major W. D. Prichard from Alamogordo claims that a unit from his base in Roswell launched balloons around June 14. That, according to the article reported in the Roswell Daily Record, is undoubtedly what Brazel had found. 

Friday, July 11, 1947 
The debriefings of all the participants are under way. Participants are taken into a room in small groups and told that the recovery is a highly classified event. No one is to talk about it to anyone. Everyone is to forget that it ever happened. 

When he tries to contact his nurse fnend, Glenn Dennis is informed that she has been transferred from the base and that no one knows where she has gone. 

Members of the military warn those civilians around Roswell who know something of the events that they can never talk about what happened. In some cases, the witnesses are threatened with death should they speak to anyone. 

Saturday, July 12, 1947 
Bill Brazel and his wife, Shirley, arrive at the ranch, but no one is around. Brazel begins his work, first surveying the ranch to see what needs to be done. He sees no evidence of a continued military presence. The trucks, jeeps, soldiers, and cordon are gone. 

This weekend no aircraft with gun cameras search for the flying disks. No aircraft on standby wait for orders to take off. In fact, all aircraft are ordered grounded to prevent further searching. 

Tuesday, July 15, 1947 
Mac Brazel returns from Roswell. All he will say about his experience is that his interrogators kept asking him the same questions over and over again and that Bill is better off not knowing what happened. Besides, Mac has taken an oath that he will never reveal, in detail, what he saw. By now most of the world has forgotten that a flying saucer supposedly crashed in New Mexico. 

Late July 1947 
A deeply upset Mac Brazel tells the Lyman Stricklands what happened in Roswell. Through he complains bitterly about his treatment there, he honors his oath of secrecy and says nothing about what he found. 

Bill Brazel finds one of the pieces of foil-like material his father had described. Brazel shows this bit of debris to Sallye Strickland (later Tadolini). 

August 1947 
Mac Brazel and ranch hand Tommy Tyree spot a piece of wreckage floating in the water at the bottom of a sinkhole. Neither man bothers to climb down to retrieve it. 

September 1947 
Lewis S. Rickett is assigned to assist Dn Lincoln La Paz from the University of New Mexico. La Paz's assignment is to deternaine, if possible, the speed and trajectory of the craft when it hit. According to Rickett, they discover a touchdown point five miles from the debris field where the sand has crystallized, apparendy from the heat, and they find more of the foil-like material. La Paz, who apparently does not know that bodies were recovered, concludes that the object was an unoccupied probe from another planet. 

Glenn Dennis learns that his nurse friend has been killed. A letter returned as undeliverable indicates the addressee is deceased. Nurses at the Roswell base tell him that she was killed in an aircraft accidentwhile stationed in London, England. 

November 1947 
Arthur Exon, assigned at Wright Field, flies over the debris field and the impact site. The tracks of the trucks and jeeps are still visible, as is the gouge. 

September 1948 
Rickett, while in Albuquerque, meets with La Paz. La Paz remains convinced that an unoccupied probe from another planet crashed in New Mexico the year before. In his secret dealings with various government projects La Paz has found nothing to cause him to change his mind. 

October 1948 
Rickett meets with John Wirth, another CIC agent. Rickett asks Wirth about the status of the material recovered at Roswell and is told that they had yet to figure it out. According to Wirth, they hadn't been able to cut it. 

Summer 1950 
From time to time in the two years following the crash, Bill Brazel has found "scraps" of the craft. His father confirms this, saying, "That looks like some of the contraption I found." Bill Brazel, in Corona, mentions his discoveries. The next day Captain Armstrong and three others from the Roswell base arrive and ask for the material. Armstrong reminds Brazel that his dad cooperated with them. It is the younger Brazel's patriotic duty to give it up. Brazel can't think of a good reason to deny it to them and surrenders it. 

Boyd Wettlaufer discusses the crash of an alien spacecraft with Dr. Lincoln La Paz. 

1952 
Major Ellis Boldra, an engineer stationed at Roswell, discovers samples of the debris locked in a safe in the engineering office. In the course of his experiments, he tries to burn and melt it with an acetylene torch and to cut it with a large variety of tools. Although extremely thin, the metal resists his efforts. When crumpled, it quickly returns to its original shape. 

1961 
UPI stringer Jay West is working in Alamogordo, in the area of White Sands Missile Range, when the base public information officer confides he has found a file that mentions the Roswell crash. The file includes a map. The PlO obtains a topographical map of the crash site. He and West make several trips out to try to locate the site. The maps show the debris field and then, to the east, a second site. 

1969 
As Americans walk on the moon, Melvin F. Brown tells his family that he has seen the wreckage of an extraterrestrial craft and the bodies of the crew. He assisted in the recovery; taking the bodies into Roswell. 

1972 
Inez Wilcox tells her granddaughter Barbara Dugger of the involvement of the Chaves County sheriff in the events of 1947. She says her husband, Sheriff Wilcox, was informed that one of the beings survived the crash. Mrs. Wilcox says rnilitary personnel used death threats to keep the family from talking about the events. 

1978 
Pappy Henderson confides in his close friend John Kromschroeder that he flew wreckage from a crashed saucer out of Roswell and to Dayton, Ohio. He shows Kromschroeder a fragment of the debris and tells his friend that he saw alien bodies. 

Jesse Marcel is interviewed by a number of researchers, including Leonard H. Stringfield and Stanton Friedman. Marcel tells them that he is sure the wreckage is 
nothing from earth. Later, Marcel grants interviews to various news organizations, but those reports do not gain wide dissemination. 

December 1979 
Reporter Bob Pratt interviews and later publishes his interview with Jesse Marcel in which Marcel "admitted that he was the intelligence officer who had recovered the parts of a flying saucer." 

1980 
Syndicated television program "In Search Of" airs an episode about UFO coverups and interviews Marcel. In the course of that interview, Marcel again insists the material he saw had no earthly origin. 

January 1980 
Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore publish The Roswell Incident, the first attempt at a comprehensive analysis of the events at Roswell. In the course of his research, Moore located and interviewed more than seventy witnesses who had some knowledge of the event. 

1982 
After reading a story about the events at Roswell in a tabloid newspaper, Pappy Henderson tells his wife, Sappho, that everything in the story was true. He knows from his own personal involvement. He is surprised that the story is being released and, moreover; that it is accurately reported. He says even the descriptions of the bodies are accurate.