— 4 Rawin radar targets, composed of balsa sticks and metalized paper
— Multiple plastic tubes containing a liquid ballast dribbler system
— 3 sills canopy parachutes (highly visible colors)
— 600-plus feet of braided nylon cord
On Flight #4, there was no radiosonde for tracking, as it had been replaced with the four radar targets.
The items listed here were used in a great number of different research programs, and anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of weather balloons and radar targets would have been able to identify them. When rancher Mac Brazel originally brought the material into the police station, even the sheriff — untrained though he was in the radar technology of the time — would have been able to recognize the material as components of a weather balloon. If the government's published accounts were true, and the debris Brazel found actually was from a weather or Mogul balloon, the story would likely have ended right there.
When my father investigated the crash site, he ascertained the types of debris and the size of the crash site. He never mentioned seeing any electronic components such as the sonobuoy microphone, batteries, or other items such as parachutes or rope that would have been part of a weather balloon or Mogul device. The foil debris that we looked at on our kitchen floor was not paper that had been metalized on one side. The beams that I saw and handled were made of some kind of metal, definitely not balsa wood. Even as a child, I could easily tell the difference.
The size of the debris field and the amount of debris at the crash site deviated so dramatically from the government's story that it would have taken a simultaneous crash of every Mogul balloon ever constructed-many times over-at this exact spot to even come close to the mass of debris my father saw.
Although the government reported that it was Mogul balloon Flight #4 and its radar targets that were found at the debris site, the balloon group at New York University commented that it was more likely that Flight #11 would have landed on the Foster Ranch instead. However, Flight # 11 had no Rawin targets whatsoever. I once had a discussion with Professor Moore (which I'll go into more detail about in the next chapter), and he commented that Flight #4's radiosonde had a cardboard housing. I later found out that Flight #I I had a radiosonde, but Flight #4 did not. In a way, Dr. Moore confirmed that the balloon in the government's cover-up was from another flight, and not #4. Thus, I believe that we can discount the validity of the staged photos of my father holding a Rawin target, because there were none on the lost Mogul balloon flight anyway.
Let's take a closer look at Flight #11. Its telemetry failed over Arabela, New Mexico, where all tracking was terminated. If you compare its flight path to the trajectory of Flight #10, which was more fully documented (yet probably quite similar to that of Flight # 11), the balloon would have continued heading north past Albuquerque and Pueblo, Colorado. Because the telemetry of Flight #I I failed, however, everything after Arabela is simply a guess. Even so, the wind patterns in the stratosphere where these balloons travel are typically quite consistent, and their direction changes slowly, so the trajectory of the Mogul flights should have been similar.
Chapter 5
Dr. Moore: Mogul Balloon Scientist
The year 1997 was a special one, being the 50th anniversary of the Roswell event. My wife, Linda, and I, along with our two youngest daughters, Marissa and Mackenzie, made plans to go down to the "festival" that was being held to commemorate the event. As had happened on many other occasions, I received a phone call in which the person on the other line apparently knew of my plans almost before I did. The person requested that I stay over in Socorro, New Mexico, on the way to Roswell. Apparently there was a gentleman there who needed to talk to me.
We booked a room in Socorro and continued with our plans. Shortly after we arrived at our motel, there was a knock on our door. As it turned out, our visitor was none other than Dr. Charles Moore, who had been the head of the NYU balloon portion of Project Mogul. Our meeting was a pleasant one, and Dr. Moore, a gentleman in every sense of the word, told me that he had in his possession a Rawin target, and that he wanted me to look it over and tell him what I thought. In particular, he was interested in having me compare it to what I had seen in my kitchen in Roswell 50 years before. (There is a photograph of Dr. Moore holding a Rawin target; it was not taken at our meeting, but it shows Dr. Moore holding a target similar to that one.)
The target he showed me had the appearance of a box kite, quite similar to those I might have made as a child. The actual construction was quite simple: There was a framework of balsa wood sticks, taped to a white paper body that was coated on one side with some kind of metallic coating, like the wrapper on a chocolate bar. It was all pretty much identical to the material in the old photo taken of my father holding one of these targets. Let's take a closer look at the components of the target.
As Dr. Moore and I were discussing the difference between the debris I had seen and the target he was holding, he commented that the tape on the original targets had been decorated with flowers and berries in a Christmas motif, rather than being clear, as it was on the one he currently held. (More than three years previously, he had told Air Force investigators that the reflectors had been manufactured by a New York toy company, which had reinforced the seams with leftover tape that had "pinkish-purple, abstract, flower-like designs." He and others have surmised that this was what my dad and I could have interpreted as hieroglyphics.)
In any event, the differences between the target Dr. Moore brought to our meeting and the materials I had seen in my kitchen 50 years prior were quite obvious. As I had noted earlier, the "foil" in the debris my father showed us was quite different from the paper-backed foil of the radar target. Neither the foil nor the tape I was shown resembled those in the original debris. Following is a reproduction of Dr. Moore's drawings of the symbols on the tape.
His symbols are just outlines, and the originals are at least an inch high. The symbols I viewed on the I-beams were solid figures of a purple/violet hue, with no distinctive outline. In fact, the symbols were so subtle that I didn't even notice them until direct light reflected off of them. They were clearly not line drawings, and were less than 3/8 of an inch in height. I had a facsimile made to better demonstrate the actual appearance of the beams.
Later on, my daughter Denice did some research on tapes manufactured during that time period that had been printed with a Christmas motif. She was lucky enough to locate and purchase some from a collector. Unfortunately, those samples have been misplaced through the years, and did not resemble the designs on the I-beams my father and I saw anyway.
When Dr. Moore was subsequently interviewed by NBC for a program about Roswell, he described the symbols on the tape not as flowers, but as mathematical symbols or Greek letters. I have to wonder, why the change? The symbols I had seen on the debris were not printed on tape, nor were they holiday floral or berry designs, as Dr. Moore had initially described them. Neither were they Greek letters or mathematical symbols; they were, instead, geometric symbols. As much as I respect Dr. Moore, I have to wonder at the changes in his story. My assumption is that he revised his comments to more accurately match my own recollection of the debris I had examined with my father, rather than to describe what was actually on the tape. I would prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really does not remember what the tape on the original targets looked like.