Roswell, New Mexico

Roswell, New Mexico is a small ranching community, that until July 4, 1947, was known primarily as the site of a Texas League baseball franchise and a site for much of Robert Goddard's later rocketry work. On that day, however, an object crashed nearby. On July 8, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) announced it was an UFO, and four alien bodies were recovered from the landing site. The following day, U.S. Air Force officials stated that it was not an UFO, but a weather balloon. Since then, Roswell has been a focus of alien and conspiracy theory, rivaled only by Area 51, where the alien bodies are said to be stored. Today, UFO tourism is a major income for people around Roswell. The place has also been featured in many books, comics, movies and television series. In 1994, the "Roswell case" was officially closed (see [1]).

So what did crash in Roswell? Was it a flying saucer, a weather balloon, or something else? And if it wasn't a flying saucer, why the initial reports of UFOs and the veil of secrecy? Here are some probable explanations by Karl T. Pflock in his book "Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe":

1) The initial report of a UFO crash by the Army was the blunder of a particular officer suffering from a case of hubris, and the desire to "scoop" the biggest story he could see, which involved the growing number of UFO sightings.

2) What crashed in the desert was a balloon with a long train of equipment, and this balloon was of a top secret project -- Project Mogul, hence the veil of secrecy.

3) Several years later, an ariel tanker crashed near Roswell and badly burned bodies were found. Due to the time that passed, this memory merged with the original balloon crash and thus was born the story of alien bodies being found.

See also : Roswell television show