About 9:50pm on July 8th, 1947, Roswell hardware dealer Dan Wilmot and his wife were sitting on their front stoop when they saw a 'big glowing object' traveling at speed through the sky out of the south-east. It was, they said, like "two inverted saucers faced mouth to mouth".

The Foster Ranch, 'Mac' Brazel's rough, isolated spread, lay 30 miles from Corona, and 75 miles northwest of Roswell. It was stormy on the night of July 2nd, 1947. Brazel thought he heard an explosion over the sound of thunder. The next day, checking his sheep, Brazel came across some wreckage that spread in a 400-yard trail across his land, pointing due west towards Socorro, a town on the Rio Grande about a 100 miles. The debris was a 'metallic, foil-like substance' which was very thin, pliable, and tough. He could not crease it or give it a permanent bend. On it was some

obscure markings. Some fragments had a 'tape-like material' attached to them, which showed a floral pattern when held up to the light. Shortly after, in Corona, he heard, for the first time, about the rash of UFO sightings in the area. Wondering if the wreckage on his land was connected, he told the US Army at Roswell of his find. Major Jesse Marcel and a Counter-Intelligence Corps agent went with him to inspect the debris. The next day, July 8th, troops descended on the sight, keeping

everyone off the land until they had cleared it. Marcel stated in 1978 that the wreckage he saw was like 'nothing made on Earth'. It resisted prolonged attack by blowtorch and 16-lbs. sledgehammer despite its thinness and, if crumpled, slowly reverted to its original form.

Also on July 8th, civil engineer Grady L. Barnett of Socorro was working in the desert about three miles from where the debris was scattered when he saw what he thought might be a crashed aircraft. He found 'some sort of metallic, disk-shaped object'; about 30 feet in diameter, split open. Inside it, and beside it on the ground, were a number of bodies. They were small, hairless humanoids with large heads, wearing gray, one-piece suits without fasteners. Barnett was soon joined by a group of archaeology students. Shortly after, a US Army jeep roared up. The officer on board declared the area off limits and under military control. The area was cordoned off, the civilians told to leave - and to say nothing of what they have seen - and troops began to move in. The crashed disk had been detected from the air.

The same day a statement printed in the Roswell Daily Record, authorized at the base commander at Roswell, announced that a flying disk had been found and recovered from a ranch 75 miles from Roswell. Later that day, the Army called two press conferences, proclaiming that the debris found on Brazel's ranch was the remains of a weather balloon. Reporters saw and photographed it.

There is considerable testimony that secret cargos were flown under heavy guard from Roswell to Fort Worth, Texas and Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson AFB) at Dayton, Ohio, over the next few days.