Roswell Incident

Roswell UFO incident

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947, announcing the "capture" of a "flying saucer"
Date	1947
Location	Chaves County, New Mexico, United States
Coordinates	33°58.1′N 105°14.6′W / 33.9683°N 105.2433°W / 33.9683; -105.2433Coordinates: 33°58.1′N 105°14.6′W / 33.9683°N 105.2433°W / 33.9683; -105.2433

In mid-1947, a United States Army Air Forces balloon crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Following wide initial interest in the crashed "flying disc", the US military stated that it was merely a conventional weather balloon. Interest subsequently waned until the late 1970s, when ufologists began promoting a variety of increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories, claiming that one or more alien spacecraft had crash-landed, and that the extraterrestrial occupants had been recovered by the military, who then engaged in a cover-up.

In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the true nature of the crashed object: a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul. Nevertheless, the Roswell incident continues to be of interest in popular media, and conspiracy theories surrounding the event persist. Roswell has been described as "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".

The sequence of events was triggered by the crash of a Project Mogul balloon near Roswell. On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disc", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell.

The military decided to conceal the true purpose of the crashed device – nuclear test monitoring – and instead inform the public that the crash was of a weather balloon. Later that day, the press reported that Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force Roger Ramey had stated that a weather balloon was recovered by the RAAF personnel. A press conference was held, featuring debris (foil, rubber and wood) said to be from the crashed object, which matched the weather balloon description. Historian Robert Goldberg wrote that the intended effect was achieved: "the story died the next day".