A sheep rancher from New Mexico found strange debris scattered across the desert near Roswell in 1947. Newspapers declared a ‘flying saucer’ had been captured, and 47 years later, investigators linked it to a secret Cold War program

Roswell UFO incident: On a June morning in 1947, sheep rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel was making his rounds at the J.B. Foster ranch, about 85 miles northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. Across the ground was a strange scattering of debris. He did not initially think much of it because he was in a hurry, and the pieces looked more like rubbish than something that could change the course of American folklore.

The material stretched across roughly 200 yards and included rubber strips, tinfoil, wooden sticks, tape and what Brazel described as a tough paper-like material, according to TIME’s 1997 reconstruction of the episode. He gathered some of it and took it home. At that point, there was no alien body, no flying saucer story and no worldwide mystery, only a rancher who had found something unusual on his land.

The story changed after Brazel went into Roswell. On July 7, while in town to sell wool, Brazel visited Sheriff George Wilcox and said he might have found a ‘flying disk.’ Wilcox contacted Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF), home of the 509th Bomb Group, and Major Jesse Marcel went with counterintelligence officer Sheridan Cavitt to inspect the debris. Marcel collected pieces and took them back to the base.

Then came the headline that transformed an obscure ranch discovery into a national sensation.

Walter Haut, the base’s public information officer, later recalled being ordered to issue a press release saying, “We have in our possession a flying saucer.” The Roswell Daily Record followed with the headline “RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION.” News organizations quickly picked up the story.


But the flying-saucer story lasted only briefly. At the headquarters of the Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey announced that the material was not a spacecraft but debris from a high-altitude weather balloon. The sticks and tinfoil, he explained, came from a radar reflector used to track the balloon. The following day, the Roswell newspaper reported the explanation.

Brazel himself appeared to want no further part in the uproar. TIME reported that he joked, “If I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.” After that, the story largely disappeared from public memory.

The Roswell story resurfaced in 1978 when nuclear physicist-turned-ufologist Stanton T. Friedman was tipped off about a retired military officer who claimed to have an extraordinary story to tell: Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had handled the debris recovered from the ranch.

Marcel still believed the material he had handled was extraterrestrial. Friedman's research helped revive the case, and the 1980 book The Roswell Incident brought the story back into public consciousness. The tale grew with each retelling.

Later UFO researchers introduced accounts involving alleged alien bodies, military searches and supposed witnesses to crashed spacecraft. Some stories concerned events that were not even tied directly to Brazel's debris field. Some witnesses later claimed to have seen strange activity at the Roswell Army Air Field hospital.


By the 1990s, the Roswell incident became a story about extraterrestrials, secret military operations and an alleged government cover-up.

Washington eventually looked for answers. After pressure from New Mexico Representative Steven Schiff, the General Accounting Office launched an investigation in 1994 into records surrounding the incident. The Air Force also conducted its own investigation. Investigators followed the trail to Project Mogul, a then-secret program involving high-altitude balloons designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.

The Air Force's 1994 report concluded that the debris recovered in 1947 came from a balloon-borne research project known as MOGUL. The report also addressed one of the most enduring parts of the Roswell mythology: the alleged alien bodies. According to the Air Force, some accounts likely became mixed with later military incidents and high-altitude research involving anthropomorphic test dummies.


That explanation also helped account for descriptions of strange-looking bodies that appeared in later versions of the story. The Air Force said dummies had been carried aloft on balloons for scientific research, while other alleged “body” accounts corresponded to later Air Force accidents. Yet the official explanation did not end Roswell.

The mystery had already acquired a life of its own. Witness accounts, books, television programs and UFO investigations had transformed a rancher's discovery of scattered material into one of the most famous alleged extraterrestrial incidents in American history.