Thomas DuBose affidavit on the Roswell debris

Thomas DuBose affidavit on the Roswell debris

Date	8 July 1947
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
People	Thomas DuBose, Roger Ramey, Clements McMullen, Jaime Shandera, Jesse Marcel
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 38
Year	1947 in UFO history
Timeline	1947 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

Thomas DuBose's affidavit is a sworn statement signed on 16 September 1991 by the retired Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Jefferson DuBose. In July 1947 DuBose was a colonel and chief of staff to Major General Roger Ramey of the Eighth Air Force at Fort Worth, Texas.^[1] DuBose stated that the "weather balloon" shown to the press in Ramey's office on 8 July 1947 had been "a cover story to divert the attention of the press". He said the real material from Roswell had been sent under "the strictest secrecy" to Washington and then to Wright Field in Ohio.^[1][6] The affidavit became one of the most cited pieces of testimony for the Roswell incident and was entered in a 2024 timeline submitted to Congress.^[2][8][9] But DuBose gave sharply different accounts in interviews in 1990 and 1991, and the photographs taken in Ramey's office show the remains of a balloon radar target.^[1][5] The Air Force later concluded that the debris came from the classified Project Mogul.^[2][3]

Thomas DuBose

• Early career. According to his Air Force biography, quoted by the French researcher Patrick Gross, DuBose was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1902. He graduated from West Point in June 1929 and trained as a pilot and flight instructor.^[1]
• War service. During the Second World War he ran Air Corps flight training in Washington. In 1945 he took the 316th Bomb Wing to the Pacific.^[1]
• Eighth Air Force. After posts with Strategic Air Command, he joined the Eighth Air Force at Fort Worth in late 1946. He served there in turn as assistant chief of staff for personnel, chief of staff and deputy commander.^[1]
• Later career. In 1948 he was deputy commander of the Air Force task group at the Eniwetok atomic tests. He later commanded an air transport wing in Germany. In August 1952 he took command of the Air Rescue Service and was promoted to brigadier general.^[1] He retired in 1959.^[1]

Fort Worth, 8 July 1947

On 8 July 1947, Roswell Army Air Field's public information officer issued a press release saying the military had recovered a "flying disc". Some of the debris was flown to Fort Worth Army Air Field.^[2]

• The press conference. In Ramey's office, Ramey, DuBose and the weather officer Irving Newton identified the material for reporters as pieces of a weather balloon. Newton said similar radar targets were used at about 80 weather stations.^[2]
• The photographs. Photographs taken in the office show DuBose and Ramey with the debris, as do others of Major Jesse Marcel, the Roswell intelligence officer.^[2][5]
• DuBose's 1947 remarks. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of 9 July 1947, as quoted on roswellproof.com, DuBose explained to reporters that tinfoil objects "of the type used on the kite" had been used in Europe to confuse German radar and on life rafts in the Pacific for air-sea rescue.^[10]
• Wright Field. Part of the material was flown on to Wright Field, where Colonel Marcellus Duffy, who had worked with Project Mogul, identified it as balloon equipment.^[2]

The affidavit

The one-page affidavit, reproduced by Gross, was signed by "T. J. Dubose" on 16 September 1991 and witnessed by a Florida notary public. DuBose was then 89.^[1][7] In it he stated the following.^[1]

• His post. He had retired from the Air Force in 1959 as a brigadier general. In July 1947 he was a colonel at Fort Worth Army Air Field, serving as Ramey's chief of staff.^[1]
• McMullen's call. In early July he received a phone call from Major General Clements McMullen, deputy commander of Strategic Air Command, asking what was known about the object recovered outside Roswell "as reported in the press".^[1]
• Sent to Fort Worth. DuBose called Colonel William Blanchard, commander of Roswell Army Air Field, and "directed him to send the material in a sealed container to me at Fort Worth".^[1]
• On to Washington. When the plane from Roswell arrived, he asked the base commander, Colonel Al Clark, to take the material personally to McMullen in Washington in a B-26.^[1]
• On to Wright Field. McMullen told him he would send it by personal courier on his own plane to General Benjamin Chidlaw, commanding general of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field. "The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy."^[1]
• The cover story. "The material shown in the photographs taken in Maj. Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press."^[1]
• No payment. He had not been paid for the statement, which was "the truth to the best of my recollection".^[1]

The earlier version of this article said Blanchard sent the material "on McMullen's orders". In the affidavit DuBose says he himself called Blanchard after McMullen's call.^[1] In his 1991 interviews, by contrast, he said McMullen had bypassed Fort Worth and told Blanchard directly.^[5]

The 2024 congressional timeline compiled by Michael Shellenberger summarises the affidavit under 8 July 1947.^[8] A second entry, under 16 September 1991, adds that DuBose described the information as "more than" Top Secret, and said McMullen told him the secrecy came from the President.^[9] Those two details come from material on roswellproof.com and are not in the affidavit text read here.^[1][9]

The Shandera interviews

Months before signing the affidavit, DuBose gave a very different account to Jaime Shandera. Shandera was a television producer and associate of the researcher William Moore, and had helped promote the Majestic 12 documents later found to be fraudulent.^[5] Shandera interviewed DuBose by phone and then at his Florida home, and published the result in the MUFON UFO Journal in January 1991 under the title "New Revelations about Roswell Wreckage: a General Speaks Up".^[5]

• No switch. In these interviews DuBose insisted the debris in the photographs was the real material from Roswell. "Oh, bull! That material was never switched!" he said of researchers who claimed a weather balloon had been substituted.^[5]
• Not a balloon. He also said the material was "no damn weather balloon". Shown the photographs, he said: "That's the material that Marcel brought into Ft. Worth from Roswell."^[5]
• "Junk". He described opening a canvas mail pouch in Ramey's office and finding "a bunch of trash". "It was cold potatoes as far as I was concerned... We didn't know what it was. It just looked like junk."^[5]
• Sent to McMullen. He said McMullen then ordered him to lock the debris from Ramey's office in a container and send it to Washington by trusted courier. He sealed a mail pouch to the wrist of Colonel Al Clark and put him on a B-25. McMullen told him to "wipe it out of my mind and never talk about it again".^[5]
• The weather story. He agreed the weather-device story was a cover "to quiet the press", but said he did not recall whose idea it was.^[5]
• Marcel. He praised Marcel as "very honest" and said he himself had never been at the crash site.^[5]
• Never told before. He said he had never told the McMullen story to anyone before Shandera asked.^[5]

Gross found the article "one of the most stunning" on Roswell because of its contradictions. DuBose called the photographed debris the real Roswell material and denied it was a balloon, yet the photographs plainly show a balloon radar target.^[5] Gross also could not see why debris that had been shown to the press and explained as a radar target would then need to be sealed, couriered to Washington and never spoken of again.^[5]

Conflicting statements

• August 1990. The unsigned sceptical website The Roswell Files, quoted by Gross, says that Don Schmitt and Stanton Friedman interviewed DuBose in August 1990, when he was nearly 90, and used "regressive hypnosis" to help his memory.^[1]
• What he said then. According to that site, when asked if he had ever seen the real Roswell debris, DuBose answered "a resounding NO!!!". Asked whether the debris on Ramey's floor came from Roswell, he said "No".^[1] Shandera, for his part, described a videotaped interview with Friedman and the Fund for UFO Research in summer 1990 and complained that it had never shown DuBose the photographs.^[5]
• Late 1990. To Shandera, DuBose said the photographed debris was the Roswell material and was never switched.^[5]
• September 1991. In the affidavit he called the photographed material a weather balloon and a cover story.^[1]
• Other details. The aircraft that took the material to Washington is a B-25 in the interview and a B-26 in the affidavit.^[1][5]

The earlier version of this article attributed the August 1990 interview to "Roswell researchers"; the sources read here name Schmitt and Friedman, and say hypnosis was used.^[1] The Wikipedia account of the incident mentions only the 1991 affidavit, quoting its cover-story sentence.^[2] The researcher Kevin Randle, one of those Shandera criticised, later posted the affidavit on his blog in May 2007.^[4]

The radar-target argument

• The sceptics' case. The Roswell Files argued that the debris in the photographs included an ML-307 radar target and balloon rubber. It said such targets were not in use at either Fort Worth or Roswell, so it was hard to see where a substitute could have come from, let alone one that looked weathered.^[1]
• Newton. Newton recognised the targets from the Battle of Okinawa, where they were used for gun-laying, rather than from his weather work.^[1]
• The counter-argument. The pro-crash site roswellproof.com argues the opposite. It says the debris in the photographs was a single ordinary balloon and radar target, too little for a multi-balloon Mogul train, and that the weather story was therefore a cover.^[10] It reads DuBose's account of an earlier, secret shipment as explaining why, according to an FBI telegram, Wright Field did not agree with the balloon identification.^[10]
• McMullen's son. The same site reports 2022 speculation by Anthony Bragalia that McMullen later posted his son to Roswell as an "inside-man", which it notes is speculation.^[10]

Official explanation

The Air Force's 1994 report agreed that the weather-balloon story had concealed something, but concluded it was Project Mogul and not a spacecraft.^[2]

• Project Mogul. Mogul was a top-secret program that flew microphones on high-altitude balloon trains to listen for Soviet atomic tests. One of its flights, New York University Flight 4, was launched on 4 June 1947 and came down in the desert near Roswell.^[3]
• The FBI telegram. On 8 July 1947 the FBI's Dallas office reported to J. Edgar Hoover that Eighth Air Force headquarters described the object as resembling a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector.^[3]
• Roswellproof's reading. According to roswellproof.com, the Air Force report alludes to DuBose's account of the shipment in an attachment without naming him, which the site calls a distortion.^[10]

The earlier version of this article said DuBose died in February 1992. His date of death is not given in the sources read here.

People and topics

• Thomas DuBose — Eighth Air Force chief of staff in 1947 who appears in the Fort Worth balloon photos and later called the balloon story a cover.
• Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
• Fort Worth — The Texas city where the Roswell debris was shown to the press in 1947.
• Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — The Ohio air base that housed Project Blue Book and is linked to the Hangar 18 legend.
• Roger Ramey — Eighth Air Force commander who presented the Roswell balloon in 1947.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Clements McMullen — Strategic Air Command deputy commander named in the DuBose affidavit.
• Strategic Air Command — The Air Force command that controlled U.S. nuclear bombers and missiles.
• Jaime Shandera — TV producer who received the MJ-12 film in 1984.
• Jesse Marcel — Intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group who recovered the Roswell debris in 1947.
• Project Mogul — A secret Army Air Forces program using balloon trains to detect Soviet nuclear tests, blamed by the Air Force for the Roswell debris.

On the Timeline

• Art McQuiddy and the Roswell press release (8 July 1947) — Roswell newspaper editor Art McQuiddy says the base announced a recovered disc, then asked him to call it a weather balloon.
• Robert Shirkey affidavit on the Roswell debris flights (8 July 1947) — Lt. Robert Shirkey's affidavit says he saw debris loaded for flights from Roswell to Fort Worth and Wright Field.

See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Roswell incident”, “Project Mogul”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.