Roswell 1947 - newspapers in 1947

Grounded 'Flying Disc' Altitude Weather Balloon

FORT WORTH, July 9 -- (UP) -- Examination by the Army revealed that the mysterious object found on a lonely New Mexico ranch was a harmless high altitude weather balloon - not a grounded flying disc.

Meanwhile reports of flying objects continued to pour in, from Palestine, Texas, sayinf flying balls of fire were observed.

Army weather experts in Washington, however, discounted any idea that such weather balloon might be the basis for the scores of reports of "flying discs."

Brig. Gen. Donald N. Yates, chief of the AAF Weather Service, said only a very few of them are used daily, at points where some specific projects require highly accurate wind information from extreme altitudes. Wihout field reports he would not hazard a guess on a precise number, he said.

For ordinary purposes, General Yates told a reporter, the AAF uses baloon-borne radio soundes much on the order of those employed by the Weather Bureau, tracking them with radio direction finders.

Those instruments consist of a milky-white balloon five or six feet in diameter with the automatic radio transmitting apparatus suspended below in a package about cigar box size.

During the war, General Yates said, the radar target method of wind checking was standard practive because of the high degree of accuracy needed.

The Weather Bureau said it uses none of the radar target balloons at land stations. some are used from Coast Guards vessels in the Atlantic, bureau officials said, but they normally blow eastward toward Europe.

Between the Army and the Weather Bureau, hundreds of weather balloons without the metallic target are released daily from points all over the country.

Ivan R. Tannehill, Weather Bureau chief forecaster, point tout, however, that such balloons have been in use for many years. He said they were unlikely to have been mistaken "all over the country and all in one week" for mysterious objects speeding through the sky at supersonic speeds.