Talk:Roswell UFO incident

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New information needs to be included ASAP

http://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.127.185.52 (talk) 17:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC) read it too, but according to http://www.die-zeit-ist-reif.wg.am/ufo-abst__rze.html (not reliable) and other web pages (on German) (with a time stamp of Thu 04 Dec 2008 12:31:00 PM CET) is this source already published in the book "UFOs: Die Beweise" (UFOs :the proves) by Michael Hesemann (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Michael_Hesemann) from 1989 on page 73. so it is not new, though interesting, because published on a reliable site —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.35.204.187 (talk) 18:18, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

"Cultural influence" section too long

The "Cultural influence" section is getting quite lengthy. What say we at least restrict the section to the more notable cultural influences, by which I mean authors, bands, and video games notable enough to have their own wiki articles? Opinions? Plazak (talk) 02:46, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

No one objected, so I'll start to trim the wording and weed out non-notables. Plazak (talk) 13:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I have no objection, Plazak. Canada Jack (talk) 14:49, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I've culled the section, removing entries for those things which have little connection to Roswell (such as a single episode or song) and leaving those based heavily on Roswell. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 18:27, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Also in this section, in Literature, does the book "The Day After Roswell" really belong here? It does not purport to be fiction and was not marketed as such. Its veracity is still being investigated and seems unsettled, as noted by web sites such as http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/exopolitica/esp_exopolitics_ZZO.htm. Might be more appropriate to address this book's assertions --the author was military intelligence officer and claims to have been responsible for seeding alien technology into US engineering firms for reverse engineering--in another section of the article.Markdf10825 (talk) 20:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Project Serpo Needs To Be Deleted

Project Serpo, a hoax, has nothing to do with the Roswell Incident. As such, the section needs to be deleted.BoyintheMachine (talk) 18:43, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

It seems to be based at least in part on Roswell, so the brief mention seems ok to me. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 18:27, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Project Serpo is fringe and has no relevence to the topic other than it being a debunked conspiracy theory that incorporates elements of the Roswell Crash. This article should not be set up to document every single thing that remotely references the Roswell Crash. I will delete the section unless any convincing argument can be made to keep it.BoyintheMachine (talk) 07:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

HDPE (High-Density Polyethelyne) discovery

I just watched a documentery about Roswell and apparently a man found a smooth object at another crash site to the east of Roswell, he held onto it for over 40 years. When he finally came forward and released it to the public it was shown to be HDPE (High-Density Polyethelyne). The piece of HDPE was molded into a deformed shape, the melting point of HDPE is about 1200 degrees celsius, or 2500 degrees farenheit. The desert that this object was found in only reaches as high as 120 degrees farenheit, and wouldve needed extreme heat or an explosion to mold into the shape it had formed. The object was discovered in 1947, 4 years before it was said to be invented by research chemist Paul Hogan and Robert Banks of phillips petroleum. My theory is that there was an actual crash at Roswell and another to the east, these crashes are related and happened at the same time. The government got wind of these crashes and devised a plot to cover up both of them, I believe that most of our products we use today are actually alien technology that was discovered at these crash sites. I believe that the government found these findings and hid them from the public for a short period of time and then released them after a few years as an attempt to cover up their findings. They didnt want the public to piece together the same theory that I've come up with and it is more then likely that this theory was contemplated before, so they held onto their findings for some time then released them to research facilities to produce them and release them as their own inventions. When in actuality these were already invented by higher intelligence from another planet, it was a sad attempt to cover up the Roswell crashes and it seems that most of our technology that we that use today was made from the alien ships that crashed over 50 years ago. The government has collected this technology and used it as their own to advance todays technology, Im sure somebody has come up with this theory before and has challenged the governments side of the story on Roswell. Apparently the objects found at the crash sites were the remains of the military expirement Mogul that had fallen to the ground, scraped and left scraps of metal behind. Then it had risen again and hit the ground to the east and left more debris at the other crash site to the east of the famous Roswell crash. But the eyewitnesses who were at the scene of the crashes that day described their finding of debris as a almost weightless sheet metal with a dull look to it, as they crumpled the sheet metal into a ball and tried to put it in their bag the piece of metal had unfolded just as quick as it as crushed. The material was described by two eyewitnesses that have never met and were tested and both chose the same light weight material they say was found at both crashes. The last few sentences seem a little off topic, but one of these men who handled this metal was the one who discovered the piece of high-density polyethelyne. After a series of tests on the object its contents were revieled as HDPE, and dirt that had been fused with it during some form of extreme heat. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.118.147.136 (talk) 07:06, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a show broadcast a few years ago with Earl Fulford who was interviewed shortly before his death. From what I can gather, a blob of material was tested, but there is no way to establish the provenance of the substance or if it in fact had any connection with the events of 1947. As to your ideas about retro-engineering, this has been a common theme amongst Roswell researchers who claim advanced technology was discovered and slowly released to the market. It's an idea that is easily disproved when specific technologies are shown to have a earthly history (such as transistors). But one wonders why, if alien vehicles indeed crashed and were recovered, why THIS technology has not allowed us to progress beyond the fuel-propelled rockets we use to get into space. Why don't we see any such space vehicles now? Canada Jack (talk) 17:30, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Object crashed June; Object crashed June or July

The lede says this: The Roswell UFO Incident was the alleged recovery of extra-terrestrial debris, including alien corpses, from an object which crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947.

Someone or some people keeps changing "June or July" to "July." While one can argue that the way the line is constructed the date refers to the recovery of the object, the "June or July" refers to when the object crashed. Depending on the author, that date was early July or mid-June. So to insert "July" is POV as there is no agreement. Canada Jack (talk) 22:03, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

"Numerous" or "several" UFO proponents dismiss incident

Rodney420 has suggested that since the copy in the lede says "numerous" UFO proponents dismiss the Roswell incident as having anything to do with aliens, but there are a mere three proponents dismissing it in links (he argues two, the third is not a ufologist), the text should read "several."

I probably wrote the original copy and the truth is "numerous" proponents dismiss the incident, but I illustrated the fact with links to three of the more prominent ones: the co-author of the first book on the incident; the author of one of the major books dismissing the incident who is otherwise a UFO proponent; the most public person demanding from the government further investigation and release of documents.

The trouble with inserting "several" is that it suggests these and only these proponents dismiss the incident. Which is simply not true. If Rodney420 has an issue with this, let's hear the argument. Canada Jack (talk) 17:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

After reading your explanation of "numerous" vs. "several", I agree that your wording is appropriate. I assumed that the cited/linked Ufologists were the only ones being referenced by the text. If there are others, ok, live and learn. By the way, clicking those blue links in the Reference list does not lead one immediately to the articles. In order to find the articles being cited, one has to search the database for keywords at the website that comes up when clicking the link, namely the CSI website. That can be a time-consuming, hit-or-miss process. There must be another/better way to provide a link directly to the cited articles. However, I don't know how, personally. Rodney420 (talk) 18:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, those links need to be addressed. Too often, they become outdated. And I think I have a source which says "numerous" ufo proponents blah blah blah which would better cover the argument that, well, we only see 3/2 there. Canada Jack (talk) 19:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Dead link?

I can't get anything from link #3: ^ http://ufologie.net/rw/p/rdr8jul1947.htm Mariusm98 (talk) 20:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Declassified document from FBI

• Anyone seen this yet? [1] Heiro 22:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
• Or how about this? [2] InMooseWeTrust (talk) 01:33, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The first document doesn't sound connected to the Roswell incident as it doesn't match the descriptions we've heard elsewhere. If you are trying to incorporate it into this article, you'd need to link it to a published person who claims it is connected. But IMHO it's a bit too specific a document (as opposed to the Majestic documents) to be a stand-alone. As for the second document, perhaps you've not carefully read the article - this document is quoted in the section "contemporary accounts". Canada Jack (talk) 22:24, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I included the first link because it had happened recently and I figured the fringies would be all over it and this article, so to save everyone time I added the link. The second editor added the second, probably assuming I was a fringee looking to have UFO claims propped up in the article. I added it for convenience sake and will let the regular editors of this article figure out what to do with it(if anything) as they see fit. Heiro 22:42, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

This sounds more like it is connected to that hoax from 1950 which was featured in Time magazine, etc. It doesn't sound like Roswell. So we'd need someone to make the explicit link to Roswell, a published source. And I'm not sure it adds anything at this point, though if the document causes a lot of excitement in the ufo community and they say this is some sort of smoking gun (like with Haut's 2007 description of aliens), that's when we'd put it in, IMHO. Canada Jack (talk) 23:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Could you tell me which hoax you were talking about? The Trent Photos? Thanks. Qrfqr (talk) 08:42, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Can't recall of the top of my head the name of the hoax, but I recall it was big in 1950 and was placed in New Mexico.

As for the above, I see someone has tried to insert the text of the FBI note. AGAIN, this is not explicitly about the Roswell incident. Therefore, to include this we MUST have some source saying that this FBI note is somehow connected to the Roswell incident. That's what the "CITE" note in the revert means. The title of this article isn't "UFO claims from New Mexico circa 1947," it's the "Roswell UFO incident." Canada Jack (talk)

Could someone else catch the next insertion of this without citations? I find myself too often lately pulled into 2 to 3RR with the insertion of fringe materials(in other article than this) against IPs and SPAs. I'm at 2RR now and just dont care to go to 3, thanks. Heiro 18:29, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I've done some more digging on this and far from a "smoking gun" revelation, this is a recycled hoax. From International Business Times [3]:

By Jesse Emspak | April 11, 2011 10:21 AM EDT

News organizations across the world were taken in -- once again -- by a hoax that was perpetrated more than 50 years ago.

The infamous "Hottel memo" was posted on several sites, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "vault." It was touted as "newly revealed" this week. The memo supposedly confirms that alien ships landed in the U.S. in the late 1940s and the information was covered up.

But in fact the infamous memo has been making the rounds for several years. (It was never classified). The "vault" is simply a newer system put in place by the FBI over the past week to make accessing documents easier.

The memo describes what was told to an FBI agent, Guy Hottel, who was the special agent in charge of the Washington field office. It describes an "air force investigator" who described finding a crashed craft in New Mexico, and also said that alien bodies were found in it. Hottel only reports what the unnamed informant says, not what his own conclusions are. The informant says that the craft was disabled by "high powered radar" in the area.

Not only is the information not first-hand and far removed from New Mexico, it is connected to a 60-year-old hoax that resulted in a conviction for fraud.

The memo was the end of a long chain of tale-telling. The Hottel memo repeats a story from the Wyandotte Echo, a legal newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas in January of 1950, which was repeated to Guy Hottel by an Air Force investigator who read the story (and pasted into a memo himself. Such practices were common in the days before scanning documents was possible and memos had to be typed out). That news story draws from the account of a Rudy Fick, a local used car dealer.

Fick got the story from a two men, I. J. Van Horn and Jack Murphy, who said they got the story from a man named "Coulter" - actually a radio station advertising manager named George Koehler. Koehler got the story from Silas Newton.

The hoax begins with Newton and his accomplice, Leo A. Gebauer. Newton and Gebauer were peddling "doodlebugs" - devices that could supposedly find oil, gas, gold, or anything else that the target of the con was interested in finding.

In an interview in 2003 for a documentary called The Other Side of Truth, written and directed by Paul Kimball, the late Karl Pflock, a UFO researcher, described the original hoax that led to the Hottel memo. Pflock notes that the difference between Newton and Gebauer's con and many others that preceded it was they said their doodlebugs were better because they were based on alien technology.

The two men told Frank Scully, a columnist for Variety, about the UFO crash. There were no other witnesses (local newspaper accounts don't show anything for the relevant dates). Scully claimed in his book that Newton and Gebauer told him the military had taken the craft for secret research.

Meanwhile, the story of the alien technology piqued the interest of J.P. Cahn of the San Francisco Chronicle. Cahn managed to convince Newton and Gebauer to give him a sample of the "alien" metal, which turned out to be aluminum.

Cahn's account of the alien ship hoax - and the two swindlers -- appeared in True magazine in 1952. The result was that several people who had been conned by Newton and Gebauer came forward. One of their victims was Herman Glader, a Denver millionaire who had the wherewithal to press charges. Newton and Gebauer were convicted of fraud the next year.

The Aztec hoax appeared again in 1986, when William Steinman and Wendelle Stevens published a book called UFO Crash at Aztec. In 1998 Linda Mouton Howe, a documentary filmmaker, claimed to have government documents proving that an alien ship had landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. That proof was the Hottel memo.

Several news outlets have repotted the memo as "proof" that the government knew about crashes of alien spacecraft in Roswell. But not only does the memo say no such thing, it isn't even connected to the town of Roswell.

There are several other clues that something is wrong. The FBI has several documents that point to their knowledge of Newton and Gebauer both, as fraud schemes involving mining were common in the southwest at that time. In addition, an alien craft disabled by "high-powered radar" is implausible given that ordinary airplanes can fly without incident through radar, and "high power" radar is not enough to damage even conventional electronics. (Radars were even less powerful in the 1940s). In addition, the description in the Hottel memo does not match any of those given at the time for purported Roswell UFOs.

Canada Jack (talk) 19:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Whilst the report doesn't mention Roswell, it doesn't mention Aztec, either. And several news outlets have today linked it explicitly with Roswell. We should therefore include it, and give the arguments for both sides. And while we're at it, the article on the Aztec incident Aztec, New Mexico UFO incident needs more information added. ðarkuncoll 23:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Like I said, if sources start to make the explicit link, then that's when we can consider inclusion. However, since this is something which has been known about since 1952 at least (it's not a new revelation by any means - I thought this sounded familiar when I heard of it) any mention should couch those claims along the lines as "source x calls it a 'new revelation,' while source y says it is a recycled, non-classified document revealed as long ago as 1952..." etc. IMHO, this is one of those silly claims which, once someone says "wait a minute folks" it quickly dies down. But it seems there is an obvious interest in it so I'd say we will likely need to include it. Canada Jack (talk) 23:40, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and added the report, now that the mainstream media has picked up the story. (When I looked earlier, I saw only a few blogs and UFO sites had posted it, some with only a headline to suggest a Roswell connection. Now, more media has made the explicit connection). I put down a few sources quickly, others are invited to massage the text if it needs it, and format it correctly. Canada Jack (talk) 00:37, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

POV rewrite of lede

I've reverted the POV rewrite of the lede which asserts, for example, the following: "The Roswell UFO Incident refers to the crash of an alleged alien spacecraft on the night of July 3, 1947 in a remote area about 40 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico, the retrieval by the United States Army of the craft, debris and allegedly, its alien occupants (one of whom was still alive), and the ensuing coverup by the U.S. government."

Without going into every POV assertion in the lede, suffice to say the date "July 3" is hotly debated even amongst those who believe an alien craft crashed, and by those who think the object was a Mogul balloon and crashed around June 14. Further, the location "40 miles north of Roswell" is also disputed amongst UFO writers as is the claim of "one" living occupant (others say "all dead" or more than one survived, etc). And still further, it is the OPINION of some that there was a government cover-up, it is not a FACT. Which was why the lede was carefully written to avoid suggestion that what was written was the "truth" as to what really happened.

If this does not satisfy the anonymous editor, please enter into a discussion as to why you feel this needs to be changed and how we can do so in light of the NPOV and sourced approach which is employed here at wikipedia. Canada Jack (talk) 19:20, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality tag

Someone saw fit to put a neutrality tag on this page, but couldn't be bothered to start a discussion on how this page is not neutral. If nothing is posted, the tag will be removed. Canada Jack (talk) 17:03, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Sufficient time has passed with no discussion on the need for the neutrality tag, therefore I am removing it. Canada Jack (talk) 17:19, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

RAAF Base Search and Recovery Team

Speaking from experience as an AF retiree and participant of Base Search and Recovery Teams at serveral AF assignments during my career, I find the following intriguing: 1. That a large contingent of RAAF base personnel to include mortuary affairs personnel were mustered for recovery of a mere weather balloon. 2. Cordoning of the area with the intent to use lethal force to prevent unauthorized entrance to the debris field, again for a mere weather balloon. 3. Immediate reassignemnt to all parts of the globe of personnel involved with collection of the debris. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JRPickard (talk • contribs) 19:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOTAFORUM. You might want to read this. Heiro 20:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

In terms of this page as can be seen in the text, the actual recovery involved two or three personnel from the Roswell base, as was reported in 1947, and as was reported by "whistleblower" Marcell in 1978 and later. There was no "large contingent" nor use of "mortuary personnel," nor "use of lethal force" nor "reassignments" reported by the "whistleblower." The poster here is referring to later embellishments by UFO authors who innocently and not-so-innocently conflated real recovery operations and accidents attached to other military programs in the vicinity with the rather mundane recovery of balloon debris. Canada Jack (talk) 20:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)