The news of the UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico shocked all of America at the time, but what was once a headline on July 8, 1947 now seems like nothing more than an urban legend, writes the Daily Mail.
In July 1947, local rancher Mac Brazel reported strange pieces of metal, light but strong material scattered across his land. The wreckage was first discovered when a farmer was leading his sheep to a nearby stream. Officials were called to the scene, and after examining the wreckage, they determined that they were pieces of a “flying saucer”.
“At noon this afternoon, intelligence from the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Airfield reported that a ‘flying saucer’ had been found at the airfield,” the Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947, reported on the front page.
However, shortly after the discovery of the UFO hit the headlines, the War Department in Washington released a statement claiming that the wreckage was the remains of a weather balloon.
Nick Pope, who led the British government’s UFO research project from 1991 to 1994, told DailyMail.com in a telephone interview: mysterious disks that were seen over the US a few weeks before. 24 hours later, they completely changed the story.”
An UFO expert suggested that if the debris at Roswell were of unearthly origin, it could be one of the best cover stories in American history.
“I’m not saying it’s intentional, but the best cover story is the one that makes you laugh and roll your eyes,” he said. “If something becomes a joke, serious politicians, the military, scientists and journalists do not want to touch it, and if they do, they proceed from the fact that they do not really believe in it.”
The “reversal of the narrative 180 degrees”, as Pope calls it, refers to the 509th Bomb Group’s Intelligence Directorate announcing at noon that day that they had a flying saucer, and then claiming that the military later determined it was a radar balloon.
“I still haven’t decided,” Pope said when asked if he believed an alien object crashed on a ranch in New Mexico 75 years ago. “As much as I believe in life there, I’m not sure about the visits.”
“The late 40s were a more trusting era,” Pope explains. “It was an era when trust in the government and the military was very high, and it was an era before the advent of the Internet and social media. Because most people didn’t have a phone, the morning paper was their window to the world. I think it was treated like gospel.”
Nick Pope also pointed out that any UFO books written in the 1950s-1960s do not contain any information about the Roswell event. “Killing this story was so effective,” he notes.
Pope went on to explain that it would be interesting if the 75-year-old case were solved and if the wreckage turned out to be from a UFO.
“I won’t pretend we have clear evidence because we don’t,” he said. “Conversely, the people at the Roswell military base were where only the atomic bomb squadron was stationed, and these people were the best of the best. If ever there were people less likely to misidentify a weather balloon, it would be them.”
Playing the part of the “devil’s advocate,” Pope says the cover-up may have been a way to cover up some sort of top-secret weapon that crashed in the area.
Talk of UFOs and aliens is not taboo in the US, as over the past year the government has released video footage of military aircraft chasing what could be “flying saucers”.
Also recently, there was a congressional public hearing on UFOs in which three former US military personnel testified about their encounter with a UFO at a US military base in the Middle East in 2014. They said they saw eight bright objects hovering and hurtling across the sky at incredible speeds from a desert outpost in the Sinai, on the border with Egypt, around December 2014.
Three military men trained to recognize aircraft believe that the objects they witnessed were of non-human origin.
“It’s strange that, despite all this interest and congressional hearings, you almost never hear senators or congressional representatives mention the R-word for Roswell,” Pope said. “Maybe the stigma is still there and they can’t bring themselves to tell Roswell and ask what’s up with Roswell.”
“The original ‘cover story’, if there was one, could have been too effective and may have blotted out people in the media, the public and the government,” the UFO expert opines.