Walter Haut

1st Lt. Walter Haut (June 2, 1922 – December 15, 2005) was the public information officer (PIO) at the 509th Bomb Group based in Roswell, New Mexico during 1947. Early on July 8, 1947 he was ordered by the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, to draft a press release to the public, announcing that the United States Army Air Forces had recovered a crashed "flying disc" from a nearby ranch. The press release garnered widespread national and even international media attention. The U.S. Army Air Force retracted the claim later the same day, saying instead that a weather balloon had been recovered. Haut also received some criticism and ridicule in the nation's press for putting out the original press release. The series of events eventually became known as the Roswell UFO Incident.

When interviewed about the incident decades later, he claimed only a minor role, but he expressed his belief that there was "no chance" senior officers who handled the recovered material, including base commander Blanchard, mistook a weather balloon for a flying saucer.

He later claimed greater involvement, including seeing alien corpses and a craft at a base hangar and handling the strange crash debris.

Walter Haut was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 3, 1922. During World War II, he was a bombardier flying 35 missions against Japan. At Operation Crossroads, the A-bomb tests at the Bikini atoll in the summer of 1946, he dropped instrument packages to record data from the bomb blasts. In 1947, he became the public information officer for the 509th Atomic Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico. The base commander, Colonel William H. Blanchard, was a close personal friend.

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