The crash of a US troop balloon on a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico during July 1947 is what sparked the now-legendary Roswell event. In the years that followed, conspiracy theories took hold, suggesting the wreckage was actually a flying saucer and that the US government had actively concealed the truth. On 8 July 1947, Roswell Army Air Field put out a news release announcing the recovery of a "flying disk" from a property near Roswell. Almost immediately, the army retracted the announcement and declared that the collapsed item was nothing more than a conventional weather ball.
These events remained largely unknown to the public until the end of the 1970s, when a retired lieutenant colonel revealed to a UFO researcher that the weather balloon explanation had been a cover story all along. That revelation opened the floodgates — ufologists began advancing an increasingly elaborate series of constellations, each claiming that an alien spacecraft had collapsed and that the army had recovered alien inmates who were subsequently hidden from the world.
A report issued by the US Air Force in 1994 identified the crashed item as a nuclear test balloon connected to the Mogul project. Then, in a second Air Force assessment published in 1997, the accusations involving "aliens corps" were attributed to a likely reduction of high-altitude test stupidities.
Despite these official explanations, conspiracy theories about the occurrence have persisted, and the Roswell story continues to be well publicized. The incident earned the distinction of being considered "the world's most renowned, investigated and denied allegation of UFOs."
An expert on the ranch named William "Mac" Brazel came across clusters of wreckage at Foster ranch at the end of June or early July 1947, roughly 50 kilometers from Roswell. While Brazel originally identified the substance at the beginning of July, other sources stated that the garbage had actually been uncovered in June.
Walter Haut, the public information officer of RAAF, produced a press release on 8 July 1947 stating that local employees of the 509th operational group had taken up a 'flying disk' on a property near Roswell. The report was acquired by numerous news sites almost instantly.
The flying disk rumors picked up considerable momentum after the intelligence unit of the 509th Eighth Air Force Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field was fortunate enough to acquire a disk through a local rancher and a Chaves County Sheriff's officer.
Without telephone services available, the rancher stored the disk until he was able to call the sheriff's office, which in turn reported the matter to Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence.
Immediate action followed, with records documented at the rancher's residence. The Roswell Air Force examined the material, and it was subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to a higher command.