 July 8, 1947, issue of the Roswell Daily Record, featured a story announcing the Roswell Army Air Field "capture" of a "flying saucer" from a ranch near Roswell | |
| Date | June & July 1947 |
|---|---|
| Location | Lincoln County, New Mexico, US |
| Coordinates | 33°57′01″N 105°18′51″W / 33.95028°N 105.31417°W |
| 1947 flying disc craze |
|---|
| Events |
| External audio | |
|---|---|
 ABC News radio broadcast on Roswell disc – July 8, 1947 |
The Roswell incident is a conspiracy theory which alleges that the 1947 United States Army Air Forces balloon debris recovered near Roswell, New Mexico was actually a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. Operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, the balloon was intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests.[a] After metallic and rubber debris were recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines, but was retracted within a day. To obscure the purpose and source of the debris, the army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon.
In 1978, retired Air Force officer Jesse Marcel revealed that the army's weather balloon claim had been a cover story, and speculated that the debris was of extraterrestrial origin. Popularized by the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, this speculation became the basis for long-lasting and increasingly complex and contradictory UFO conspiracy theories, which over time expanded the incident to include governments concealing evidence of extraterrestrial beings, grey aliens, multiple crashed flying saucers, alien corpses and autopsies, and the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology, none of which have any factual basis.
In the 1990s, the United States Air Force published multiple reports which established that the incident was related to Project Mogul, and not debris from a UFO. Despite this and a general lack of evidence, many UFO proponents claim that the Roswell debris was in fact derived from an alien craft, and accuse the US government of a cover-up. The conspiracy narrative has become a trope in science fiction literature, film, and television. The town of Roswell promotes itself as a destination for UFO-associated tourism.
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