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Alien bodies were Air Force test dummies
Dummies in the desert
Programs like Operation High Dive released dummies from balloons above the desert. Crews recovered them on stretchers, in casket-shaped crates, and sometimes in black insulation bags that looked like body bags. Witnesses described "weapons carriers" and a "jeeplike truck that had a bunch of radios," which matched the Dodge M37 used for those retrievals.
What witnesses described
Eyewitnesses described the supposed bodies as bald, resembling "plastic dolls," and wearing flight suits. They also called them "dummies." All of that is consistent with the dummies the Air Force used in the 1950s.
Accounts that came decades later
None of the 1947 Roswell accounts mentioned alien bodies, and none of the primary eyewitnesses did either. The body claims came decades later from elderly witnesses, sometimes as death-bed confessions, and they contradict each other on the location of the crash, the number of extraterrestrials, and what the bodies looked like. The Air Force concluded in 1997 that the sheer number of accounts pointed to an explanation other than dishonesty, namely memories of dummy recoveries and of accidents involving military casualties.
Why did the Air Force drop dummies from balloons?
Pilots who had to bail out at very high altitude faced thin air, extreme cold, and uncertain parachute performance. Dummies let engineers test parachute systems and body motion in free fall without risking a person. In August 1960, Joseph Kittinger stepped out of a balloon gondola at about 102,800 feet during Project Excelsior and survived the fall.
Why did the Air Force write two Roswell reports?
The first report, released in 1994, covered the debris and traced it to Project Mogul balloons. A second report in 1997, titled The Roswell Report: Case Closed, addressed the later claims about alien bodies. Its author, Captain James McAndrew, studied the dummy programs and military accidents as possible sources of those stories. The two reports were written three years apart.
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