Major E.R.T. Holmes, FLO, 1st Bombardment Squadron, to the Minister of Information 15, War Office, Whitehall, London, under date of October 24, 1943. (Mission No. 115 in the British records)47 Frank Edwards and others believed that an investigation into this phenomenon was initiated in Britain, although it was flatly denied by the British military. Further, no evidence for its existence, other than a few documents such as the Holmes report mentioned above, has been uncovered. The alleged report was known as the Massey Report, apparently named for a Lieutenant General Massey. But Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard, the first Deputy Director of Air Intelligence to the Air Ministry in Britain, stated that there was no General Massey in the records of the British Army. However, a Hugh Massy was listed in the 1945 Who’s Who. Lieutenant General Hugh R. S. Massy was appointed eventually to the office of Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Was this Massy, who retired in 1942, the general who investigated the foo fighters? As with the nature and origin of these enigmatic flying objects, the report and its namesake remain a mystery to the present day.48
6.4
New Mexico Crash Retrieval and Landing Cases
According to an article in the April 1, 1966 issue of Life magazine, between June 1947 and early 1966, 10,147 UFO sightings had been reported.49 The term "flying saucers" itself sprang from private pilot Kenneth Arnold’s experience on June 24, 1947 near Mount Rainier, Washington. He saw a formation of nine rapidly moving disc-shaped objects while flying in a small plane. In the wild publicity and wave of sightings that followed during the summer of 1947, the term "flying saucers" was coined by the popular press. The Roswell Incident: On July 2, 1947, an object crashed into a remote field on rancher William "Mac" Brazel’s land. Mr. Brazel reported hearing a loud explosion during a severe thunderstorm. The next morning, he discovered debris scattered over an area which may have spanned fifty acres. Mr. Brazel notified the local sheriff’s office who in turn called the Army. The case created a stir when the 509th Bomb Group at the Army Air Force Base at Roswell Field, New Mexico, officially released to the press the astounding story that a flying saucer had crashed near Roswell. The Public Information Officer at the base who released the story to the press was First Lieutenant Walter Haut, who still lives in Roswell. The Roswell Daily Record ran the story on the front page in bold headlines: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region." Two days later, the Army recanted, issuing a second press release claiming that only a weather balloon had crashed. Major Jesse Marcel, a staff intelligence officer at Roswell Field, was assigned to the recovery operation. To bolster the “validity” of the second press release, a press conference was held in Fort Worth, Texas, where the debris was first taken, and a photograph of Major Marcel kneeling to examine remnants of a torn, silvery weather balloon was released. This balloon was eventually declared by the Air Force to be a "Mogul balloon" — balloons which carried top secret acoustical apparatus designed to “listen” for evidence of Soviet nuclear bomb testing. The Mogul was actually designed so that a string of much larger balloons kept it airborne. It bore little resemblance to a sole weather balloon. However, a major military retrieval effort resulted from this alleged “crash” of a balloon. Teams of Army personnel combed the site for days, clearing it 47
Edwards, Frank, Flying Saucers--Here and Now!, Lyle Stuart, New York, 1967, p.77. Above Top Secret, p.28 49 “The Week of the Flying Saucers”, Bill Wise, Life magazine , April 1, 1966, 1966 Time Inc. 48
376
