- [Narrator] Maybe the most
well known alien conspiracy
surrounds the infamous
Roswell UFO incident,
so what really happened?
Is there a logical
explanation for this event
or is there a chance
that it actually is
an alien encounter?
Let's find out in
today's episode
of "Colossal Mysteries".
It all started on
June 14th of 1947
when a rancher in New Mexico
named William "Mac" Brazel
found something strange
while out on horseback
about 30 miles north of a
small town called Roswell.
He came across clusters
of wreckage and debris
that looked like
some kind of plane
had come crashing
down from the sky.
The crash site was full
of large hunks of metal,
rubber strips,
tinfoil and all kinds
of strange bits and bobs.
Puzzled by the peculiar
find the rancher decided
to collect the
materials from the site.
The next day Brazel read
reports in the paper
about an unidentified object
flying over the area at night.
Two days later Mac
Brazel got up the nerve
and told the local
Sheriff what he found,
but if Brazel is to be believed
the Sheriff whispered to
him that he may have found
a "flying disk" and that he
should keep it confidential.
The Sheriff then contacted
Roswell Army Airfield
who visited Brazel's ranch,
collected the wreckage
and asked him to keep
things under wraps.
Of course, he didn't
and almost overnight
local newspapers and
tabloids were writing stories
about the unidentified crash.
More stories ran
about the witnesses
seeing strange, charred
creatures inside the airfield
and before long the well known
UFO conspiracy theory was born.
So, is there a chance
that Mac Brazel
stumbled across an
authentic alien crash site
near Roswell, New Mexico
all those years ago
or is there an explanation
for what they found?
Immediately following
the incident
the US mIlitary announced that
the so called flying saucer
was nothing more than
a run of the mill
weather balloon that had
crashed during a windstorm.
Newspapers who printed headlines
about flying saucers
issued corrections
and the Roswell flying saucer
incident seemed to be over.
The Roswell story quickly
faded from the headlines,
but interest in aliens and UFOs
kept growing across the country.
It seemed as though
the Roswell incident
was all but forgotten
until the early 1980s
when two UFO researchers wrote
a book about the incident.
In their book the duo claimed
it was all a government coverup,
aliens were actually found
at the crash site of the UFO.
Experts, government agencies
and members of the
military all disputed
and debunked the books claims,
but by this point
it was too late
a spark was lit and before long
more conspiracy theories
started popping up
around Roswell and
other possible UFO sites
across the country
and as it turns out
skeptics and
conspiracy theorists
weren't entirely wrong to doubt
the official Roswell story.
The government wasn't
telling the whole truth
when they claimed a weather
balloon crashed near Roswell.
In 1994, the US Air
Force finally admitted
that the weather balloon
that crashed near Roswell
wasn't your average aircraft,
it was a secret US spy balloon
that was part of a
top secret program
called Project Mogul.
Their objective, monitor
Soviet nuclear tests
by detecting sound waves
in the upper atmosphere.
The tech was quickly surpassed
by other more advanced methods,
but it took the
military over 40 years
to disclose the truth.
Since the balloon was
involved in a Cold War coverup
rumors could grow and what
about those charred alien bodies
people reported seeing
at Roswell Army Airfield,
well turns out there's an
explanation for them too.
A 1997 Air Force
report determined
that the alien bodies
were actually parachute
crash test dummies
that had been burned
up in an accident,
but for those who still believe
all these explanations
amount to nothing more
than a giant government coverup
and it's safe to say nothing
is going to change
their minds on that.
