RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region

These were the headlines on the FILE of the July 8th, 1947, Roswell Daily Record and newspapers around the world picked up the story.

Colonel William Blanchard, commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Group in Roswell, New Mexico, announced to the world they had "captured a flying saucer."

Within hours, Brigadier General Roger M. Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas, squashed the earlier report, explaining the flying saucer was nothing more than the scattered remains of a "Rawin Target" balloon.

Ramey's explanation was the last the world heard of the Roswell flying saucer until 1978 when Major Jesse Marcel, a former intelligence officer of the 509th, revealed that he was the man who had picked up the debris. Marcel said, "... I was certain ... that it was not a weather balloon, not an aircraft, nor a missile ... being in intelligence, I was familiar with all materials used in aircraft and in air travel. It was something else of which we didn't know what it was."

In the years following Marcel's announcement, other witnesses have come forward — brigadier generals, pilots, intelligence officers, physicians, morticians and others whose credentials are hard to dismiss.

Army Captain O. W. "Pappy" Henderson said that he had not only seen the wreckage, but the bodies of the flight crew as well. Witnesses described wreckage that included thin, foil-like metal pieces that could not be cut or bent, tubing that could transmit light, and beams of the ship's framework that bore strange symbols.

Some startling new information has come to light about the crash and the bodies discovered near the site when Donald Schmitt and Kevin Randle, authors of the book UFO Crash at Roswell, recently returned to the area and uncovered at least 30 additional witnesses, seven of whom had actually seen the bodies of the flight crew.

Several rumors among seasoned researchers in the UFO field say that even those who thought they knew everything about the Roswell crash have been amazed at some of the new findings.

Donald R. Schmitt, Co-Director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and Director of Special Investigations, has spent the last three years crisscrossing the country interviewing over 400 witnesses and persons with first-hand knowledge of this extraordinary event in America's history.

Schmitt and Captain Kevin D. Randle, a former Air Force intelligence officer, have documented their research in the book, UFO Crash at Roswell, that is now in its 10th printing with more than a quarter million copies having been sold. A new book will be released next year detailing their recent discoveries and a major motion picture based on their research is due to be released in 1993 as well as two documentaries, one national and the other international. In addition, Time-Life Books has just finished an update in their book on UFOs by devoting several pages to Schmitt and Randles' research on the Roswell crash.

The Eclectic Viewpoint is fortunate to be one of the first groups to which Don Schmitt will be relating some of these new findings uncovered during his recent trip to Roswell. A well known researcher and speaker in the UFO field and a close associate of Dr. J. Allen Hynek who founded the Center for UFO Studies, Schmitt has served as a technical consultant on several documentaries including the UFO Enigma, A Report on UFOs,The History of UFOs and the recently produced and released UFO Secret: The Roswell Crash. He co-hosted Greetings From The Unknown with actress Sally Kellerman and has been interviewed frequently on radio, TV, and in the print medium, including the Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC and ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, and Omni Magazine.

You will find Schmitt's slide and lecture presentation fascinating. Copies of his book UFO Crash at Roswell will be available at the meeting as well as reproductions of the FILE of the Roswell Daily Record announcing the capture of a flying saucer.