Project Mogul
Project Mogul was a secret U.S. Air Force program between 1946 and 1949 that tried to detect the sound waves of Soviet nuclear tests using microphones mounted on balloon trains floating at high altitude. According to the Air Force's 1994 report, the Roswell debris most likely came from a Mogul balloon train.
Project Mogul was a secret research program of the U.S. Army Air Forces, based on an idea by geophysicist Maurice Ewing. During World War II, Ewing studied the ocean's “sound channel,” in which the sound of underwater explosions can carry for thousands of kilometers, and he hypothesized that a similar layer also exists in the upper atmosphere. If so, microphones placed at high altitude could also detect nuclear detonations carried out in the Soviet Union.
The research began in early 1946 at the Watson Laboratories, part of the Air Force's Air Materiel Command, while the balloons and measuring equipment were developed by a research group at New York University. Because the microphones had to be kept at the same altitude for extended periods, the researchers launched balloon trains made up of several dozen balloons and up to 200 meters long, which were also fitted with radar reflectors for tracking. The reflectors were made of lightweight materials: aluminum foil, balsa wood and tape. Several of the balloon trains launched from Alamogordo, New Mexico, in Summer 1947 could not be recovered. The program was terminated in early 1949 because of costs, secrecy difficulties and practical problems, and it was never put into service for its original purpose.
Connection to the Roswell case
In Summer 1947, W. W. “Mac” Brazel, a rancher living near Roswell, found unusual debris on his land. On July 8, the Roswell air base announced in a press release that it had recovered a “flying disc,” but the next day the command stated that the remains were those of a weather balloon. The case then faded into obscurity for decades, and only after 1978 did it become the best-known story of an extraterrestrial spacecraft crash.
Official finding
According to the U.S. Air Force's 1994 report, the debris most likely came from Mogul balloon train No. 4, launched from Alamogordo on June 4 and never recovered, and the program's secrecy explains why statements at the time did not say exactly what it was. The report found no document pointing to an extraterrestrial origin. The second report, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, from 1997, was no longer about the debris but about the alleged alien bodies
Sources
- U.S. Air Force: Report of Air Force Research Regarding the „Roswell Incident” (1994. július)
- U.S. Air Force: The Roswell Report – Case Closed (1997)
- GAO: Government Records – Results of a Search for Records Concerning the 1947 Crash Near Roswell, New Mexico (NSIAD-95-187, 1995. július 28.)
- GlobalSecurity.org: Project MOGUL
- StratoCat: NYU Flight 4, 1947. június 4.