Frederick Benthal's Roswell photographs claim
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Contents 9
| Witness | Sgt. Frederick Benthal, Army Air Forces photographic specialist at Anacostia Naval Air Station, Washington, D.C. |
|---|---|
| Claimed date | Early or second week of July 1947 (possibly 7 July) |
| Claim | Flown to Roswell by B-25 with Cpl. Al Kirkpatrick; photographed several small bodies in a tent north of town with a Speed Graphic camera |
| First interviewed | By Stanton Friedman, November 1990; affidavit 1993 |
| Published | As "F.B." in Crash at Corona (1994); by name in Witness to Roswell (2007) |
| Status | No photographs or records have surfaced |
| Date | 1 September 1994 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic) |
| People | Frederick Benthal, Sean Kirkpatrick, Tom Carey, Don Schmitt |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 121 |
| Year | 1994 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1994 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
Frederick Benthal was an Army Air Forces photographer who said that in July 1947 he was flown from Washington to Roswell, New Mexico, and photographed small bodies in a tent near a crash site.[1][4] He gave the account to UFO researchers in the early 1990s, more than four decades after the event.[1] No photographs have ever surfaced, and no official records corroborate the trip.[1][2]
His account
Benthal was then a 26-year-old sergeant and photographic specialist at Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington, D.C. In 1946 he had helped set up photographic equipment for the Operation Crossroads atomic tests at Bikini.[1] His story, in the version given in Crash at Corona (1994), which quotes him at length:[1]
- The flight. One morning in July 1947 he and a fellow photographer, Corporal Al Kirkpatrick, were told to pack their bags and were flown in an Army B-25 bomber to Roswell Army Air Field. "We didn't know where we was goin'."
- The site. They drove about an hour and a half north to a site with "a helluva lot of people" and a closed tent. Kirkpatrick went off in a truck to where debris was being picked up.
- The tent. In the dark tent, under an officer's direction, Benthal photographed bodies lying under a canvas on a tarp. "There were four bodies I could see when the flash went off." They were "all just about identical. Dark complected... thin, and it looked like they had too big of a head."
- The film. He took about thirty shots on roughly fifteen two-sheet film holders, handing each holder to the officer. "It smelled funny in there."
- The return. Kirkpatrick came back with a truck "loaded down with debris". They were debriefed on the way back to the base, flown home at 4 a.m. the next day, and debriefed again at Anacostia by a lieutenant commander.
The 2007 version
Tom Carey and Donald Schmitt's Witness to Roswell (2007) gave his full name. Its paraphrase, said to be based on his 1993 affidavit, differs in several details:[1]
- The destination. The two men were told in advance they were going to Roswell.
- The dossiers. On the plane they studied dossiers of people they might meet there, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Curtis LeMay.
- The suits. They changed into hot rubberised suits on the way to the site.
- The scene. Benthal saw several tents near a small bluff, what looked like a refrigerator truck, and trucks leaving with "thin strips of wreckage" sticking out.
- The smell. It was "something like formaldehyde".
- The session. It lasted about two hours.
- The confiscation. His camera case, cameras and all the film were confiscated before they left the site.
- The debriefing. It was carried out by a Marine lieutenant colonel named "Bibbey", who told them they did not know what they had photographed.
Benthal added that he was soon sent to Antarctica to photograph equipment for cold-weather tests.[1]
Publication
The physicist Stanton Friedman first interviewed Benthal in November 1990, after "months of negotiation". He appeared in Friedman and Don Berliner's 1994 book Crash at Corona, identified only by the initials "F.B.".[1][4] He signed an affidavit in 1993, and his full name was published in Witness to Roswell in 2007.[1] Researchers gathered many such affidavits from Roswell witnesses in the early 1990s. One was signed in September 1993 by the former Roswell police chief L. M. Hall, about a remark by the mortician Glenn Dennis, with no notary present.[5]
Claimed corroboration
Supporters point to several other accounts:[1]
- Ed Sain. A Roswell military policeman, he said he was taken to the site north of town and guarded bodies in a tent before they were moved to the base. The widow of his fellow MP, Raymond Van Why, said her husband had told her in 1954 of guarding a crashed spaceship.
- Arthur Exon. The retired brigadier general, formerly commanding officer at Wright-Patterson, said he knew some of the photographers involved but gave no names.
- Ben Games. In 2007 the retired pilot told a UFO group, as reported in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, that he had flown Lieutenant General Laurence Craigie from Wright Field to Roswell on LeMay's orders.
- Vandenberg's log. Its entries show LeMay briefing the acting chief of staff, Hoyt Vandenberg, on flying saucers on 7 and 8 July.
Assessment
No photographs have ever surfaced, and no official records corroborate the trip.[1] The two published versions of Benthal's story differ in several respects:[1]
- whether he knew the destination in advance
- whether four bodies or "several" were seen
- who debriefed him at Anacostia
- whether the film was handed over holder by holder or confiscated with his cameras
Skeptics note that the account was given more than 40 years later, after Roswell had become famous.[2] In the 1990s the Air Force concluded that the Roswell debris came from a Project Mogul balloon train. Its 1997 report, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, said accounts of bodies probably conflated later events, such as recoveries of parachute test dummies and military aircraft casualties.[2] The only photographs known from the 1947 event show the debris displayed to reporters at Fort Worth Army Air Field.[3]
People and topics
- Frederick Benthal — Army photographer who said he photographed Roswell bodies.
- Roswell incident — The July 1947 recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico, announced as a "flying disc" and then explained as a weather balloon.
- Sean Kirkpatrick — First director of AARO (2022–23).
- Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
- Tom Carey — Roswell researcher and co-author of Witness to Roswell.
- Don Schmitt — Roswell researcher and co-author of Witness to Roswell.
- Witness to Roswell — A 2007 book by Tom Carey and Don Schmitt.
On the Timeline
- Dan Sherman's September 1994 exchange (September 1994) — Sherman describes another exchange with the non-human source.
- Boscombe Down incident (26 September 1994) — A magazine reports an object crash-landed at Boscombe Down, UK, followed by unmarked jets.
See every 1994 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Roswell incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFOs and the Air Force: records — National Archives · archives.gov · archived copy
References
- "Sgt. Frederick Benthal", RoswellProof · roswellproof.com · archived copy
- Roswell incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Roswell UFO incident collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries · libraries.uta.edu · archived copy
- Benthal and Kirkpatrick photographers' account — RoswellProof via UFO Scans · ufoscans.com · archived copy
- Roswell 1947 witnesses index — Patrick Gross · ufologie.patrickgross.org · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Roswell incident”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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