The Roswell incident must be the most covered topic with regards to UFO's.

Many documents, reports, videos and films are available on the internet and youtube, far too many to put on this site,

For that reason I shall just add a 'Taster' along with the information pertinent to myself, leaving you to search the internet if you have further interest in the event.

There is endless data available on the internet about the Roswell Incident, unfortunately over the years it has also generated many 'Chinese whispers' and tall stories which tend to swamp the serious information. Although there was an initial claim that bodies were recovered along with the wreckage, in later years this has escalated to the beings still being alive and held within Area 51. There are other videos which claim to be the Alien's under interrogation and the video available on the internet that claimed to be an alien autopsy has been proved to be a hoax. 

There has been many claims that the saucer itself is stored at Groom Lake (Area 51), many scientists and technicians have come forward after allegedly seeing it or even working on it, but until the base relaxes its intense high security and allows the public to see for themselves, then I guess we will never know.

I am not going to re-invent the wheel so will only outline the events, the only thing I will add will be an account told to me personally by an American acquaintance, who as a boy lived near to the crash site area and remembers some strange events on the route from the crash site towards Roswell airfield.

He remembers officials knocking on the doors of where he lived and insisting everyone go inside and shut their curtains and wait until they were told it was clear. His parents did as they were told, people did back then when faced with such authority, but being an inquisitive young lad he immediately started watching through his fractionally peeled back curtains of his room. He saw these officials lining and patrolling the road, obviously ensuring that the residents were following orders and remained inside, then saw a very large lorry of the 'Low Loader' variety slowly drive past, on the flat-bed of the truck was a large item which considerably overhung the sides of the lorry, completely covered in tarpaulin's but obviously curved and rounded in shape. He remembers it being a good twenty or thirty minutes before the officials knocked again and said it was now 'Safe' to open curtains and carry on with day to day life, obviously they were making sure the lorry was well out of sight.

The famous Roswell headline of the time stated that the Army had captured a "flying saucer", then only a few hours later published a retraction, substituting 'Weather Balloon' rather than "Flying Saucer".

At the time of the original event, a sense of naivety and trust in the government gave birth to a rapid, quiet acceptance of the retraction by most locals and the story was played right down. It must be remembered that this was just following the war years, when the people were still very much influenced by the wartime propaganda from governments about 'keeping quiet for national security', that "Walls have ears" and they must be wary of what they talk about in case it was overheard by a spy.

Although remaining local folklore in the area the story did not really resurface as general knowledge until January 1976, when ufologists William Moore and Stanton R. Friedman were examining interview notes from two witnesses whom Friedman had met with. The witnesses A man and a woman, both who had knowledge of a crashed saucer in July 1947 in Corona, New Mexico.

A retired Air Force officer, Major Jesse A. Marcel asserted that he had first hand involvement in the crash debris and the following Air Force cover-up. The woman was Lydia Sleppy, who had been employed at an Albuquerque radio station KOAT. She claimed that the military had covered-up the story of a crashed saucer, and the bodies of "little men" who were aboard the craft. She also claimed that the Air Force had literally stopped the sending of a teletype news report of the incident.

The USA Military had announced to the world that it had captured a flying saucer on a remote ranch in Corona, then four hours later corrected the story, saying that what was found was just a weather balloon with a radar reflector kite. Surely there must be a lot of difference between a 'spaceship' and a Balloon? I would think even I who has no real aviation experience would be able to tell that.

The alleged crash debris was then flown to the Eight Army Air Force Headquarters in Ft. Worth, Texas, somehow between the time that Jesse Marcel Sr. had handled the "other worldly" material in Corona and its later arrival in Ft. Worth, the strange material had lost its lustre and became just a standard weather balloon.

The Air Force effectively murdered the eye witness accounts and made fools of all who were involved. Jesse Marcel Sr. would categorically state that the debris he held in his hands and showed to his family was not the same material shown in photos of the "balloon wreckage."

What happened to the saucer debris? An uncertified, but controversial document might provide an answer. Supposedly a brief prepared for then President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, this document was authored on November 18, 1952. It asserts that on September 24, 1947, President Harry S. Truman ordered the genesis of the highly top-secret "Operation Majestic-12," to study the remains of the Roswell crash. These papers would arrive in a plain manilla envelope, postmarked Albuquerque, in the post of Los Angeles television producer Jaime Shandera in December 1984. In the early part of 1987, another copy was given to Timothy Good, a British ufologist. Good released it to the British press in May. These documents caused quite a stir, but their authenticity cannot be established beyond doubt. The jury is still out on the MJ-12 papers, but many ufologists view it as a hoax. The issue itself is not insurmountable, however, as a huge amount of evidence still remains to establish the Roswell crash as a reality. 

The Roswell saga actually began in Silver City, New Mexico a month earlier on June 25. A Dr. R. F. Sensenbaugher, a dentist reported sighting a saucer-shaped UFO fly over that was about one-half the size of the full moon. Two days later, in Pope, New Mexico, W. C. Dobbs reported a white glowing object flying overhead not too far from the White Sands missile range. On the same day, Captain E. B. Detchmendy reported to his commanding officer that he saw a white glowing UFO pass over the missile range. Two days later, on June 29, Rocket expert C. J. Zohn and three of his technicians who were stationed at White Sands, watched a giant silver disc moving northward over the desert. On July 2, a UFO was tracked at three separate installations; Alamogordo, White Sands, and Roswell. In Roswell on the same day, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot saw a UFO, They reported its appearance as "two inverted saucers faced mouth to mouth," moving at a high rate of speed over their house.

The events of Roswell began on either July 2 or July 4, William W. "Mac" Brazel, a sheep rancher, would etch his name forever into UFO history, a designation that he neither desired, nor appreciated. A common working man, Brazel was foreman of the Foster Ranch in Lincoln County, near Corona, New Mexico. Mac Brazel was a family man, but his wife and children lived in Tularosa, near Alamogordo. The reason for this arrangement was so his children could attend better schools than they would at Corona. Brazel stayed in an older house on the ranch where he tended sheep and the general chores of the ranch. He was a simple man, content with his job, family, and his life. Mac would be thrust into the limelight for a brief period of time and ultimately regret ever reporting what he was about to discover on the range of the Foster Ranch.

An evening thunderstorm was raging at the close of another workday, The storm was highlighted by numerous bolts of lightning. These summer storms were not uncommon for these parts, but this evening Mac noticed something different. a sound, like an explosion mingled with the typical sounds of a storm. Two of Mac's children were staying with him that night at his farm house, Mac retired with his two children and temporarily forgot about the sounds of that night. The next day's sun brought Mac out again to ride the fences and check on his sheep. He was accompanied that day with a seven-year-old neighbour's boy, William D. "Dee" Proctor, who often rode with Mac. As they rode into the open field, they noticed ahead of them an area about a quarter of a mile long and several hundred feet wide, covered with debris of some type. The debris was composed of small pieces of a shiny metallic material, a material that Mac had never seen before. The sheep would not cross the fragmented pieces and they had to be taken the long way around that day. Because of the curious nature of the debris, Mac picked up some of it and carried it back to store in a shed. Little did he know the significance of his find.  

One of his children, Bessie Brazel recalled:

"There was what appeared to be pieces of heavily waxed paper and a sort of aluminium-like foil. Some of these pieces had something like numbers and lettering on them, but there were no words you were able to make out. Some of the metal-foil pieces had a sort of tape stuck to them, and when these were held to the light they showed what looked like pastel flowers or designs. Even though the stuff looked like tape it could not be peeled off or removed at all. The writing] looked like numbers mostly, at least I assumed them to be numbers. They were written out like you would write numbers in columns to do an addition problem. But they didn't look like the numbers we use at all. What gave me the idea they were numbers, I guess, was the way they were all ranged out in columns. No, it was definitely not a balloon. We had seen weather balloons quite a lot, both on the ground and in the air. We had even found a couple of Japanese-style balloons that had come down in the area once. We had also picked up a couple of those thin rubber weather balloons with instrument packages. This was nothing like that. I have never seen anything resembling this sort of thing before, or since..."

Later that afternoon, Mac took young Dee Proctor back home a journey of about 10 miles. He took along a piece of the debris that he had found and showed it to Dee's parents, Floyd, and Loretta Proctor. Mac tried to get the Proctors to go back with him and look at the strange material strewn in the fields.

Floyd Proctor would later state:

 "[He said] it wasn't paper because he couldn't cut it with his knife, and the metal was different from anything he had ever seen. He said the designs looked like the kind of stuff you would find on firecracker wrappers...some sort of figures all done up in pastels, but not writing like we would do it."

Loretta Proctor remembered:

"The piece he brought looked like a kind of tan, light-brown plastic...it was very lightweight, like balsa wood. It wasn't a large piece, maybe about four inches long, maybe just larger than a pencil. We cut on it with a knife and would hold a match on it, and it wouldn't burn. We knew it wasn't wood. It was smooth like plastic, it didn't have real sharp corners, kind of like a dowel stick. Kind of dark tan. It didn't have any grain...just smooth. We should have gone [to look at the debris field], but gas and tires were expensive then. We had our own chores and it would have been twenty miles."

The first hint that the debris could be "not of this world" would come the next night from Mac's uncle, Hollis Wilson. Mac told Hollis about his find and Hollis urged Mac to report the findings since there had been reports of "flying saucers" in the area as of late. On July 6, Mac was going to Roswell to strike up a deal for a new pickup truck, He took along some of the debris and stopped off at the Chaves County Sheriff's Office and spoke to George Wilcox. The story of the find was not significant to Wilcox until he actually handled a piece of the silvery material. Wilcox telephoned the Roswell Army Air Field and spoke to one Major Jesse A. Marcel, who was the base intelligence officer. Marcel told the Sheriff he would come into Roswell and talk to Brazel about his find. Word of the goings on began to spread rapidly in the community and soon Mac was talking to radio station KGFL about the incident. Mac told the station what he knew over the telephone.

Marcel and Brazel met at the Sheriff's office. Mac told Marcel what he knew and showed him a piece of debris. Marcel reported the results of his interview to Colonel William H. Blanchard back at Roswell Army Base. A decision was made for Brazel to go out to the site, and investigate for himself. Marcel would take his old Buick and Army Counter Intelligence Corps officer Sheridan Cavitt accompanied him in a Jeep all-terrain vehicle. Following Marcel back to the ranch, it was too late that day to visit the site so they all stayed in Mac's ranch house. The three headed to the site the next morning. After a brief look around, Mac left Marcel and Cavitt, returning to his chores.

Summary:

 There is reliable testimony that in August, 1948, the Technical Intelligence Division at Wright-Patterson and Project Sign, decided to make a formal Estimate of the Situation. The Estimate was a top secret document that contained unexplained sightings by pilots, scientists, and other reliable witnesses. The report concluded that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin.

The Army Air Force was, in one form or another, involved in investigating UFOs beginning with the 8th Army's investigation of foo fighter reports during World War II. The AAF also sent intelligence officers to investigate many of the early sightings, but did not, at that point, take them very seriously. However, sightings in 1947 by military personnel of UFOs over Muroc AFB, White Sands Proving Grounds, and other sensitive installations got the AAF's attention quickly. Classified orders went out that all UFO reports were to be sent to the Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Field.

In the late summer of 1947, when the Air Force had become an independent branch of the military, Air Intelligence at the Pentagon requested a report from Air Materiel Command regarding what was known about "flying disks". The Commander of the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson, Lt. General Nathan F. Twining, held a conference with persons from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, the Office of Chief Engineering Division, and the the Aircraft, Power Plant, and Propeller Laborotories of Engineering Division T-3. As a result of this conference, on September 23, 1947, Twining sent a secret memorandum to Brig. General George Schulgen, Chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division that concluded:

a. The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.

b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disk, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.

c. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena,such as meteors.

d. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability, and actions which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely.

e. The apparent common description of the objects is as follows:

(1) Metallic or light reflecting.

(2) Absence of trail, except in a few instances when the object apparently was operating under high performance conditions

(3) Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top.

(4) Several reports of well kept formation flights varying from three to nine objects.

(5) Normally no associated sound, except in three instances a substantial rumbling roar was noted.

(6) Level flight speeds normally above 300 knots are estimated.

f. It is possible within the present U.S. knowledge - provided extensive detailed development is undertaken - to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in subparagraph (e) above which would be capable of anapproximate range of 7,000 miles at subsonic speeds.

g. Any development in this country along the lines indicated would be extremely expensive, time consuming, and at the considerable expense of current projects and therefore, if directed, should be set up independently of existing projects.

h. Due consideration must be given to the following:

(1) The possibility that these objects are of domestic origin - the product of some high security project not known to AC/AS-2 or this Command.

(2) The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects.

(3) The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion, possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge.

The Air Materiel Command concluded by requesting that the Air Force issue a directive assigning a permanent project to study the phenomenon.

From this report, since declassified, one can make some interesting inferences:

1. The Air Force Air Materiel Command, presumably with access to all of the available information about UFOs that was in existence at the time, had come to the conclusion that they were real, and not all were explainable as natural phenomena or illusions.

2. Although this was almost three months after Roswell, and Twining was at Wright-Patterson, where the Roswell debris was supposed to have been sent, he states that there is a ...lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits...

By this time, U. S. intelligence had completed its analysis of German projects that were in existence during the War, and had found nothing that could account for UFO sightings, even with post-war continued development in the Soviet Union.

At the same time, the Air Force determined that there was no aircraft construction material in existence at that time that could withstand the stresses resulting from the high speeds and the reported maneuvers of UFOs. In addition, even if the material could be found, the human body could not withstand the g-forces involved.

On December 30, 1947, Major General L. C. Craigie, Director of Research and Development, issued an order establishing Project Sign (aka Project Saucer):

...to collect, collate, evaluate and distribute to interested government agencies and contractors all information concerning sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security.

There is reliable testimony that in August, 1948, the Technical Intelligence Division at Wright-Patterson and Project Sign, decided to make a formal Estimate of the Situation. The Estimate was a top secret document that contained unexplained sightings by pilots, scientists, and other reliable witnesses. The report concluded that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin.

The Estimate of the Situation was promptly rejected by Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenburg. It is said that he deleted the strongest parts of the original report, sent it back, and then, when he received the revised report, he rejected it on the grounds that there was not enough evidence to support the conclusions. Then, after rejecting it, he ordered all copies destroyed. Those inside Project Sign said that their morale and enthusiasm for the project declined sharply after this. Project Sign would soon have its name fittingly changed to Project Grudge.