| MACK BRAZEL RECONSIDERED | |||
| BY THOMAS J. CAREY and DONALD R. SCHMITT | |||
| Were it not for William Ware "Mack" Brazel (1899-1963), there would never have been a Roswell Incident - at least not one known to the general public. In July 1947, the 48- year-old Brazel was scratching out a living as foreman of the J. B. Foster sheep ranch located 30 miles southeast of the small cattle town of Corona, New Mexico. The family lived in Tularosa, while Mack stayed on the ranch in a shack without a telephone, electricity, or even running water. The nearest neighbor was 10 miles away. | Roswell Daily Record on the afternoon of July 8. The description of the debris he furnished sounds much like a small part of a Project Mogul balloon array, similar to that from weather balloons, which is the accepted skeptical explanation today for the event. Though Project Mogul was indeed a top-secret project, the neoprene rubber balloons and paper-backed aluminum foil radar targets used in it were not. In the article, Brazel describes a collection of "tinfoil", "tape," "sticks," and "rubber," which was | ||
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As has been reported many times before, one day he discovered a mass of material strewn over a section of the vast hardscrabble grazing grounds and thought it strange and significant enough to warrant notifying the Chaves County sheriff, probably on July 6, who in turn called the Roswell Army Air Field. He did this not just because of a sense of patriotism, but also because the material was interfering with ranch operations, as the sheep wouldn't cross the debris field. |
Maggie and Mack Brazel in 1951, four years after the Roswell Incident. Photo courtesy of Bill Brazel Jr. |
so limited in size that it could be rolled up in a small bundle. But then he said the debris took up an area about 200 yards in diameter, vastly greater than the remains a Mogul array would produce.
Apparently unnoticed and certainly unappreciated by reporters at the time were Brazel's final comments. The article concluded by noting that Brazel had previously found weather balloons on the ranch on at least two occasions, and he firmly stated, "I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon." |
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The military, in the persons of Maj. Jesse Marcel and Capt. Sheridan
Cavitt, followed Brazel back to the ranch that same day. After spending
the night, they spent the next day inspecting and collecting the debris,
which they took to the base by the early morning of July 8. In short order,
Col. William Blanchard, the commanding officer at Roswell, issued a press
release stating that a "flying disk" had been recovered. Almost immediately
after Blanchard's astonishing claim, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, his superior
in the chain of command, held a press conference in Fort Worth, Texas,
in which a battered balloon-borne radar reflector was said to be the "disk"
found by Brazel.
A follow-up article in the Roswell newspaper on July 9 is the only contemporary published record of what Brazel said ("Harassed Rancher Who Located 'Saucer' 'Sorry He Told About It"). It was based on an interview conducted in the offices of the |
Brazel concluded by venting obvious frustration, saying that with the
possible exception of a bomb, he would never report another object found
on the ranch. The contradiction between his mundane description of the
debris and his claim that this was not a weather balloon would reverberate
almost endlessly when the Roswell controversy exploded into public consciousness.
THE HISTORICAL MACK BRAZEL
With that, Brazel and the Roswell disk faded into obscurity. |
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