The article below was published in the newspaper News-Journal, Mansfield, Ohio, USA, page 1, on July 9, 1947.
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(By United Press)
Reports of flying discs whizzing through the sky fell off sharply today as the army and navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors.
One by one, persons who thought they had their hands on the $3000 offered for a genuine flying saucer found their hands full of nothing.
Headquarters of the 8th Army Air Force at Ft. Worth, Tex., announced that the wreckage of a tin-foil covered object found on a New Mexico ranch was nothing more than remnants of a weather observation balloon. AAF headquarters in Washington reportedly delivered a "blistering" rebuke to officers at the Roswell N. M. base for suggesting that it was a "flying disk."
A 16-inch aluminum disc equipped with two radio condensers, a fluorescent light switch and copper tubing found by F. G. Harston near the Shreveport, La, business district was declared by police to be "obviously the work of a prankster."
U. S. naval intelligence officers at Pearl Harbor investigated claims by 100 navy men that they saw a mysterious object "silvery colored, like aluminum, with no wings or tail," sail over Honolulu at a rapid clip late yesterday. The description fits a weather balloon, but five of the men, familiar with weather observation devices, swore it was not a balloon.
