Roswell's alien hieroglyphs matched flowers on toy tape
A boy's memory of a marked beam helped build the flying saucer myth, until the tape was traced to a secret military balloon.
en.wikipedia.org · Roswell incidentThe purple marks remembered as alien writing at Roswell matched flower-patterned tape from a toy maker.
Jesse A. Marcel Jr., the son of Army intelligence officer Maj. Jesse Marcel, recalled his father showing him debris when he was a child of 10, including "a small beam with purple-hued hieroglyphics on it." That description was matched to tape that secret Project Mogul, a balloon program built to detect Soviet nuclear tests, had gotten from a New York company that made toys.
Bessie Brazel Schreiber, the 14-year-old daughter of rancher Mac Brazel, said pieces of foil had tape stuck to them that "showed what looked like pastel flowers" when held to the light. In a 1947 newspaper account, Brazel said the foil, paper, tape, and sticks formed a roughly three-foot package, and estimated the entire lot, with rubber, weighed maybe five pounds.
Questions people ask
What was Project Mogul trying to do?
Project Mogul used long trains of high-altitude balloons carrying microphones and radar reflectors. The idea was to listen for sound waves from Soviet atomic tests traveling through the upper atmosphere. It was top secret because the United States did not want Moscow to know it was being monitored.
Why did the Army first announce a flying disc?
The reason is not documented. The account says public information officer Walter Haut issued the July 8 release after Marcel and Capt. Sheridan Cavitt gathered material with Brazel. The announcement drew worldwide attention and was retracted within a day, when officers called the material a weather balloon.
If it was just a balloon, why did the alien story last?
For 30 years almost no one talked about Roswell. Interest revived in 1978 when Marcel said the weather balloon story was a cover, and a 1980 book added claims of alien bodies. Later Air Force reports tied the debris to a specific Mogul flight lost near Corona in June 1947 and the bodies to crash-test dummies.