PROJECT MOGUL

By Kevin D. Randle

The United States Air Force, on September 8, 1994, announced they had reviewed their records and determined that the debris found by Mac Brazel on his ranch northwest of Roswell was the remains of a balloon and array train from Project Mogul. Project Mogul was a top-secret postwar balloon project designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. The Air Force suspects, as explained by Mark Rodeghier and Mark Chesney (September/October IUR), that it was balloon flight 4 of Project Mogul that was the source of the debris. They do not, though, have any records to prove this supposition. Karl Pflock, in his report ROSWELL IN PERSPECTIVE, agrees that it was a Project Mogul balloon, but suggests that the debris came from Flight 9 instead. As with the Air Force's hypothesis, there is no compelling documentation to support that claim either.

What do we know about the Mogul balloon flights? I will attempt to provide an answer to that question by drawing on several available sources. There is now a large number of formerly classified documents available, and many people who worked on the project have been located and interviewed, in some cases by Air Force investigators. I will use this available evidence, including official flight records, to consider how likely it is that a Project Mogul balloon might have been the source of some of the debris recovered near Roswell.

Longh before the Air Force began its investigation, UFO investigators had been aware of Project Mogul and the theory that a balloon from the project might have caused the Roswell event. For example, when Don Schmitt and I were writing our second book, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE UFO CRASH AT ROSWELL, we found documentation about a few Mogul flights, specifically for Flights 8, 10, and 11, among others. In our book, we wrote: "On July 3 cluster-balloon launch Number Eight was made. The balloon was not recovered, but it was spotted down in the Tularosa Valley just a few miles northwest of Alamogordo. There is no record of a Number Nine launching, but Number Ten took place on July 5. Though not recovered, again because of the terrain, it was reported to be down northeast of Albuquerque." This information was contained in a report titled "Analysis of Project 'Grudge' Reported Incidents" and dated April 18, 1949. It was part of a huge report in the Project Blue Book files, prepared by then Captain A.C. Trakowski, one of the military officers attached to Project Mogul.

Pflock, in his discussion of Project Mogul, writes, "No information is available for the next numbered launch, Flight 9, which is missing from all Mogul documentation I have gathered to date. Both [Dr. C.B.] Moore and [Colonel A.C.] Trakowski have told me they recall nothing about it. However, Moore remembers several flights were 'classified out' of the NYU Project 93 reports and reports on subsequent balloon programs in which he was involved. It appears that Flight 9 was one of those."

Some documents concerning Flight 9, however, have now been located. It wasn't "classified out" as Pflock suggested because the flight was not tracked and nothing of scientific importance was learned by the flight. The evidence for that statement comes from the diary of Dr. Albert Crary, apparently the only written record for this balloon launch. Using the diary, Dr. Moore was able to recall what happened to balloon Flight 9.

The critical flights

Project Mogul Flight 8 was launched on Thursday morning, July 3, in conjunction with a V-2 rocket firing. Crary wrote: "On Thursday morning 3 July, a cluster og GM plastic balloons sent up for V2 recording but V2 was not fired. No shots fired. Balloons up for some time. No recording at Roswell ... [?] Pibal showed no W winds. Balloons picked up by radar W S ... [?] and hunted by Maryals [?] C-45. Located on Tularosa Range by air." According to other documentation, Flight 8 was found down in the Tularosa valley northwest of Alamogordo. The terrain was too rough for them to recover the equipment, but the debris was located.

 This confirms the information reported in our book, what Dr. Moore has previously stated, and the details are also consistent with what Pflock has written in his report about this flight.

A little additional data might be helpful here. The early morning July 3 launch of the V-2 was postponed for some reason, but the balloons were launched prior to the postponement. The data gathered by Flight 8, though, were considered to be of scientific value. Project Mogul Flight 9 was scheduled to accompany the next launch of the V-2, which was quickly rescheduled for 7:30 that evening. Unfortunately, an accident occurred on the misssile pad injuring several people, some seriously, and, as a consequence, the V-2 launch was canceled. Newspapers around the country carried the report of the accident. According to Crary's diary, "At the last minute before the balloon went up, V2 was called off ... account accident at White Sands." Newspaper reports and statements by the commander at White Sands, Colonel Turner, have corroborated this.

Crary writes of Flight 9, the second launch on July 3: "Sent up cluster balloons with dummy load." That is all that he says about it, and apparently the only written record of it. Dr. Moore added to the detail, telling me that the balloons were stripped of their equipment, but the project engineers couldn't put the helium back into the bottles. The majority of the balloons were not the new polyethylene balloons but regular neoprene rubber. Helium leaked slowly from them. Because of that, they released the balloons, but nothing of value was learned from the flight.

All the equipment, balloons and records had been tagged for Flight 9. Because of that, the numbers weren't reused. The balloons were launched, but, according to Dr. Moore, they weren't tracked. The Watson Lab people in charge of operation had already been on duty from early morning, and they suspended operations for the night. There is no record of the recovery of the balloons from Flight 9, and, in fact, no one knows what happened to them. Any suggestion about their fate is pure speculation.

Project Mogul Flight 10 was launched at 5:01 a.m. MST on July 5, and was last recorded over Pueblo, Colorado. There is no record of it being recovered. Trakowski's report places this balloon down northeast of Albuquerque (Pueblo is northeast of Albuquerque), but we take the additional information from Technical Report No. 1 of New York University, the organization working with Watson Laboratories to engineer Project Mogul.

 With the data above we can safely eliminate both flights 8 and 10 as sources of the Roswell debris. The balloons were either seen on the ground or recorded electronically in locations that would exclude them from landing on the Brazel site.

That leaves Fligt 9. But the evidence from Crary's diary, from the documentation, and from the testimony from Dr. Moore, suggests that what fell on the Brazel ranch was not that flight, either.

In fact, Dr. Moore told me that he didn't believe that a Mogul balloon was responsible for the debris field. Now, to be fair and accurate, what he was saying was that he didn't believe it was any of the polyethylene balloons or any other part of the Flight 9 launch on July 3 that caused the debris. Instead, he believes that it was the neoprene rubber balloon arrays launched on June 4, 1947, that were responsible.

In this he agrees with the Air Force, which suggested in its report that Project Mogul Flight 4, launched in early June, was the source of the Roswell debris. This is unlikely for many reasons, not the least of which is that neoprene balloons, when exposed to sunlight, rapidly deteriorate and darken, yet the debris photographed in Brig. General Ramey's office in Fort Worth was intact and shiny. For this and many other reasons, Flight 4 can be excluded as the cause of the debris.

Mogul flight characteristics

Project Mogul test flights did not remain in the air for days and days. This fact is crucial because it means that a Mogul balloon's flight path can be reconstructed by reviewing the data on winds aloft for a relatively brief period (this is especially true because these flights attempted to remain at constant altitudes to facilitate the acoustic detection of nuclear detonations).

Using the available Project Mogul documentation we learn that Flight 8 was launched at 0303 MST on July 3. The flight lasted 195 minutes (3 hours, 15 minutes) before it landed. The general track was to the northwest, and it maintained a roughly constant altitude of 18,000 feet for just about an hour. Just over forty-eight hours later, Flight 10 was launched at 0501 MST. The flight lasted over 512 minutes, when it was over Albuquerque, and it was eventually lost over Colorado. Its general track was to the north, and it maintained a constant atitude of about 9,000 feet for several hours.

Between these two was Flight 9, launched about 1930 MST (7:30 p.m.) from Alamogordo. No data about the direction of this flight or the location of its wreckage has been found to date. However, we know the direction taken by the balloon launched before it and the direction of the balloon launched after it. Both flew in a generally northerly direction. However, the Brazel ranch site is to the northeast of Alamogordo.

Given that both Flight 8 and 10 were found down or tracked to the north, not northeast, of Alamogordo, it seems reasonable to assume that Flight 9 followed a similar path since it was launched between the two. Without precise winds aloft data, this is, of course, speculation, but it is reasonable speculation. From the charcteristics of those two flights, there is no reason to assume that Flight 9 would have taken a different track.

What this means, simply put, is that the tracks of the baloons launched little more than twelve hours before Flight 9 and less than thirthy-six hours after it, give us a best estimate for the ground track of that flight. And it suggests that Flight 9 would not have come within sixty miles of the Brazel ranch.

The bottom line here is that there is no hard evidence for Pflocks Mogul theory that Flight 9 was the source of the debris. The documentation presented to date does not confirm it, and the testimony suggesting it is weak.

Rather than continue to debate about witness testimony, I have taken steps to move the investigation forward. I have ordered the winds aloft charts for June and July 1947 for New Mexico from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Although that data cannot prove that what fell on the Brazel ranch was a Mogul balloon, it can certainly exclude it. As soon as those charts are available and the data they contain have been analyzed, Don Schmitt and I will make them public, regardless of the results. Why the Air Force didn't bother to obtain this information is a real puzzle.

However, even without this new information, the conclusion seems self-evident. The debris as described by dozens of witnesses doesn't match Project Mogul balloon arrays, whether it came from Flight 4 or 9.