On June 24th 1947, the word, flying saucer was coined by journalists who were reporting an odd story about Kenneth Arnold who while flying his plane over Washington spotted nine boomerang shaped craft that seemed to skip across the air as a “saucer would skip across water.” These unknown craft were mirror bright and traveled at fast speeds, faster than any jet that would eventually show up in the skies many years later.

The “flying saucers” had arrived only because the media said so.

The flying saucer was most definitely a media creation; a marketing label developed to sell newspapers. It would become a word that not only was used to encourage the believers and the witnesses but it also was used in a derisive manner.

Much like the word UFO has been used to either support or taint a story about aircraft of unknown origin today. The irony is that the military created that terminology and now they usually deny any affiliation with the term.

The term “flying saucer” has evolved in the communal mythology to be UFO, a term that originally meant Unidentified Flying Object. But now it seems to be stuck as a marketing label on everything mysterious which includes, the Chupacabra, crop circles, mutilated cattle, Men in Black, government conspiracies, alien abductions, genetic manipulation, and everything else that seems to have no definitive answer.

The media was beginning to pay attention to “saucer hysteria” as soon as the suggestion was made. This may be the reason why we may never hear the true stories of what was really happening in an era that was just recovering from a major World War and preparing for several other smaller wars yet to come.

One of the unfortunate repercussions of media coverage of these events in 1947 was that reporters were printing stories that pigeon holed these anomalous events into the realms of pulp science fiction.

It was a clever way in which every anomaly could be conveniently classified and labeled as a “flying saucer” and eventually debunked as “Venus” or a “weather balloon.” During this time, there could have been a number of significant events taking place that could very well have been glossed over or made to look like figments of an overactive imagination.

That is why witness testimonies are vital to cases that over the years have become embellished or thrust into the communal mythology.

One such event that sadly has become the best example of communal mythology is the Roswell crash in 1947.

With the help of the media, and several “experts” the Roswell incident has become a fact mixed with pulp science fiction and disinformation levied by opportunists and the military combined.

That is probably the chief reason why the Roswell case is the case that most people perpetuating the cover-up wish would go away. Many “skeptics” and “debunkers” have come forward to say that UFO believers are chasing after the weather balloons of the gods and ignoring what they claim to be the real data that suggests that what crashed at Roswell was a weather balloon with crash test dummy occupants.

On June 24th 1997, the Air Force used that explanation in their response to the GAO report which concluded:

“Aliens” observed in the New Mexico desert were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research.

The “unusual” military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. Reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and “crew,” were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.

The Air Force was certain that their tidy little conclusion explained why they needed hermetically sealed coffins as reported by Mortician, Glen Dennis. This was why the witnesses were threatened by military personnel who warned that if any one spoke about the incident they would be picking their bones out of the desert.

This is why they allegedly ordered a B-29 to fly the dummies and the weather balloon to Fort Worth and then to Wright Patterson Airforce Base. The Air Force thought that it was wise to point out that many of the eyewitnesses to the events at Roswell were becoming senile and meshing many events into one solid one.

Over time it was certain the Army Airforce was developing several “stories” that were misrepresentations of the events that really went on in 1947.

Many of the original witnesses maintained that it was the military that had meshed the events together, The project in which anthropomorphic dummies were used was called project “High Dive” and it was in operation in 1956. The project was not classified and the dummies were clearly marked so that if a wind carried them aloft and they were lost, civilians were offered a $25-dollar reward for their recovery.

Unfortunately, the Roswell incident has become a fact that has snowballed into an extraordinary myth. It was evident that when I attended the 50th Anniversary of the Roswell crash in 1997 that everyone had a story to tell about the incident.

It is as if flying saucer euphoria has engulfed the area and while a finite number of people were involved with the Roswell incident the number of those who claim firsthand knowledge about it will go beyond the official census.

The truth is that the true witnesses are aging, dying or dead. The others can only speculate and more so, others can only believe the stories their relatives have told them. There are also countless experts who demand your belief and their stories can only carry you so far.

I am pointing this out not because I am disillusioned or disenchanted but because it needs to be said that an overreaction to the whole affair taints it and unwittingly makes witnesses look silly or delusional.

It is not far from the truth when I tell you that nearly 70 years of Hollywood gerrymandering has made Roswell virtually unbelievable. The known facts have been embellished. A consensus history has been constructed by a small number of people who have never been to Roswell and have never talked to eyewitnesses.

If you don’t believe me, the next time someone in the mainstream media writes a story that deals with UFO’s or ET’s count how many times the word Roswell, Area 51, and Hangar 18 come up. Also read on and see how many times Roswell and Area 51 are somehow related in the same legend. Also check out how many times alien bodies and Santilli’s alien autopsy film are somehow blended to show that all of them occurred in one big event.

Throw in a few crop circle legends, a cattle mutilation, and a few appearances by the Men in Black and you have a sensational news story. A story that has all of the gimmicks and trigger words that whet the appetite of what news people think the typical UFO enthusiast wants to hear.

The reality is that the new breed of UFO enthusiasts are tired of the gimmicks and want to know the truth. Roswell is not like the legend of Loch Ness, however it’s edging closer to that kind of story.

For example, the main stream press will point out that Roswell is the only event that kooky UFO followers treat as something equivalent to the “Alien nativity”. Many will completely overlook the events that set the stage for Roswell and the fact that Roswell was only “big news” 30 years after the alleged event.

I theorize that the reason for this is because of Hollywood and derivative movies like “Independence Day” that try and cram decades of information into a 2-hour popcorn film.

This does not mean however that nothing happened. There is little doubt that something fell out of the sky and that it was unknown. The authorities knew it, and official action had to be taken.

This action led to the separation of the Army and the Airforce, the creation of the CIA and President Truman signing the National Securities Act which basically established a single Department of Defense.

Many skeptics claim that all testimony about Roswell is simply an overreaction to a mundane happening yet we see the actions taken by a government scrambling for answers to a complex event, an event that has been kept secret for nearly 70 years.

It is evident that the United States Government and the para-military are lying about what really happened in the New Mexican prairie and that they have smeared the reputations of honest and dedicated men who served the country during World War II. No veteran or serviceman who fought and served our country should be treated this way.

But many have been, such as Jesse Marcel and others.

There are many questions about Roswell that seem to go unanswered by the military. While the Roswell crash has produced very little evidence of extra-terrestrial origins, it needs to be stated that the military treated the wreckage and the occupants differently. All the witnesses say that it was definitely not a weather balloon.

This cargo was special and many actions by personnel need to be evaluated. Here are a few questions that need to be raised when dealing with the Roswell incident:

•Why was there a need for secrecy when something as simple as a weather balloon crashed at Roswell?

•If the balloon was a Top Secret spy balloon why was a picture of it splashed on the front page of newspapers around the world?

•If the balloon was used in a Top Secret military exercise then why did a farmer have to notify them of a crash? Wouldn’t something that important be tracked and if it fell to earth wouldn’t it have been cleaned up and secured as soon as possible?

•Jesse Marcel and others used weather balloons every day. Wouldn’t they have known the difference? None of the witnesses recognized the wreckage.

•If what had fallen out of the sky was a secret military aircraft wouldn’t the 509th Bombing Group, a group used to secret activities like loading the atomic bomb be aware of that said aircraft?

The thing I find most unfortunate about Roswell is the government is banking on the idea that after all of the witnesses die off, you will forget about what happened there. They hope the myth-making processes which tend to cloud the facts will eventually grow into a sugar-coated unbelievable fairy tale.

The town of Roswell is banking on the tourism and history and continues to say that that it is a place where the aliens landed. So will the accurate stories endure?

The answer is no.

History is doomed to say that Roswell was a place where a myth raged out of control about something strange that occurred in July of 1947. The truth will be taken to the graves of everyone that was affected.

In order to understand Roswell fully is to understand the social climate of the times. It is a matter of coincidence that the Roswell crash happened where it did. It is also synchronicity that a crash took place and the rumors were that it fell from another planet. Not long after, mankind decided it was time to break the bonds of earth. To this day we still try to venture into the cosmos. To discover new worlds, and to explore the possibilities of life out there. Who knows, maybe someday we will be able to fly to a planet and crash land in one of its deserts.

I can only hope the beings that find us are more merciful and kind than we were to them.

https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/a2016-6-29

Written by Ron Patton