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The world's famous UFO case started on the 2nd of July 1947, when some people saw a flying saucer crashing on the Foster Ranch near Corona, New Mexico ( The nearest military base was at Roswell). That happened during a severe thunderstorm.
The next day, William Brazel and his seven year old neighbour Dee Procter found remains of a crashed flying saucer. The wreckage was spread out over an area more than half a mile.
On the 6th of July 1947 Brazel Brazel showed pieces of the wreckage to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox. After showing him the pieces, Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field (AAF) and spoke to Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer. He drove back to the sheriffs office and inspected the wreckage himself. Marcel reported to his commanding officer,
Colonel William Blanchard. The Colonel ordered Marcel to get someone from the Counter Intelligence Corps and to go to the Ranch with Brazel and collect all the wreckage they could get into their two vehicles. The wreckage which Brazel had left at the sheriffs office was collected by some military police and was then flown to the Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth and then to Washington.
7th July 1947, Marcel and Sheridan Cavitt of the Counter intelligence Corps went to collect wreckage from the crash site and loaded it onto their vehicles. Marcel told Cavitt to go on ahead and after Marcel filled his vehicles he drove home to show his wife and son some of the strange material which he had found.
At around four o'clock p.m. the same day, Lydia Sleppy at the Radio Station in Roswell started to transmit a story on the teletype machine about a crashed flying saucer, but it was interrupted, supposedly by the FBI.
8th July1947: At around midday Colonel Blanchard at Roswell AFF ordered Second lt. Walter Haut to issue a press release telling the country that the Army had found the remains of a flying saucer. In the afternoon General Clemence McMullen ordered Colonel Thomas DuBose to tell the Eighth Air Force Commander, General Roger Ramey to delete the flying saucer story and create a cover up story, also to send crash material to Washington immediately. Later on in the afternoon Ramey gave a press conference, he went on to say how that what had crashed at Corona was in fact not a flying saucer but a weather balloon. He showed the press the remains of a weather balloon to make the story more convincing.
The Los Angeles Herald Express, Chicago Daily News, The San Francisco Examiner and the Roswell Daily Record were the only evening papers to run the Flying Saucer story. The New York Times, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune were morning papers and carried only the cover up story with the weather balloon until the next morning.
Soldiers were sent at some point to the field of debris on the Foster Ranch along with guns to limit access to the field and a search was launched to find the main body of the saucer. It was found within a day or two and a couple of miles form the saucer several bodies of small humanoids were found.
The military took Brazel into custody for about a week and while he was on the streets he was escorted by the military. His behaviour made people who knew him curious for when he passed them in the street he didn\'t recognise them. Following this period of detention Brazel repudiated his initial story.
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