ParaTracker: Articles - Roswell UFO Crash
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The Roswell UFO Crash - Walter Haut Speaks From the Grave
By Bill Knell
Walter Haut died in 2005 at the age of 83. The loss was as great to the UFO Community as it was to the Town of Roswell, New Mexico where Haut lived. It can easily be argued that
his actions over almost sixty years helped put Roswell on the map. Those actions began while he was the Public Information Officer at Walker Air Force Base in July of 1947.
The base formerly known as Roswell Army Air Base transferred from the Army to the newly created Air Force in June of 1947, but was still in a transitional stage in July of 1947 when
the UFO Crash occurred. Most people still referred to Walker as the Roswell Army Air Base at that time. Despite the identity crisis, there was no doubt about who was in charge. That
would be Colonel William Blanchard, the Base Commander.
Walter Haut says he received a call from Colonel Blanchard on the morning of July 8, 1947. According to others that live in Roswell, the two had been lifelong friends. If that’s correct, it
wasn’t surprising that Blanchard took the time to tell Haut the tale of the Roswell Crashed Saucer. In a 1993 affidavit, Haut says of his conversation with the Colonel:
“I received a call from Col. William Blanchard, the base commander, who said he had in his possession a flying saucer or parts thereof. He said it came from a ranch northwest of
Roswell, and that the base Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel, was going to fly the material to Fort Worth.”
“Col. Blanchard told me to write a news release about the operation and to deliver it to both newspapers and the two radio stations in Roswell. He felt that he wanted the local media
to have the first opportunity at the story. I went first to KGFL, then to KSWS, then to the Daily Record and finally to the Morning Dispatch.”
“The next day, I read in the newspaper that General Roger Ramey in Fort Worth had said the object was a weather balloon. I believe Col. Blanchard saw the material, because he
sounded positive about what the material was. There is no chance that he would have mistaken it for a weather balloon. Neither is their any chance that Major Marcel would have
been mistaken. In 1980, Jesse Marcel told me that the material photographed in Gen. Ramey's office was not the material he had recovered. I am convinced that the material
recovered was some type of craft from outer space.”
I met Walter Haut on several occasions in Roswell. While I respected his willingness to come forward as he has and contribute so much to the town in terms of helping to establish
and promote the UFO Museum, I was always concerned about his statements. Due to my father’s military service with the Air Force and my own time spent in the USMC, I always
wondered about the events that allegedly occurred at the Roswell Base when the crash occurred and the credibility of the witnesses that came forward.
My concerns were wrapped around the sequence of events that occurred and the way everything was handled by the top brass at the Roswell Base. I can’t imagine a Base
Commander with the rank of Colonel putting out a press release like the one Walter Haut was ordered to draft without one or more consults with the general in overall charge of the
Base or someone else at the Pentagon.
The new information from Haut quells some of my trepidations by placing General Ramey at the Base and in the mix of original decision making, but also adds another mystery. Most
people like to cast Ramey in the part of the Puppet Master that ordered the cover-up. If he was present at the meeting held on July 8, 1947 in Roswell, that theory seems unlikely. It
would be completely ridiculous to believe that Blanchard would order a press release with Ramey’s knowledge saying that they had recovered parts of a crashed Flying Saucer one
moment, than retract everything and completely change the story a couple of days later. It would be ridiculous unless Ramey was even smarter than we all thought possible.
General Ramey was deeply involved with the post World War II Atomic Bomb Project as a member of Army Air Task Group 1.5 which was responsible for the testing of the A-bomb on
Bikini Atoll. After an air crew chosen by Ramey missed their target and ruined most of the A-Bomb test results, he managed to spin that completely around and become the darling of
the mass media. Knowing that the press was unlikely to take on a General or do anything to make the A-bomb look like anything but a successful weapon that might challenge the
territorial objectives of a very Stalinist Soviet Union, he simply told Reporters what they wanted to hear. He left any errors or problems created by his mistakes to be cleaned up by the
scientists involved. None of them would take him on knowing that the government was where their bread was buttered.
Ramey used a similar tactic to take on the task of debunking Flying Saucer sightings even before the Roswell Crash, but he also added a new twist that would serve him well when
that situation fell into his lap. As Commander of the 8th Army Air Force, he was headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. General Ramey and Colonel Alfred Kalberer, his Intelligence
Chief, went to work on the famous June 24, 1947, sighting of nine unidentified objects by Kenneth Arnold. Instead of appearing before the press and offering some official explanation
regarding the sighting, Ramey used Kalberer to call the Arnold Sighting “Buck Rogers stuff” (Fort Worth Star Telegram, 7/1/47) and inferred that anyone seeing these things were
probably mistaking distant jet planes for something else.
General Ramey knew jets were new to most people, including pilots that were no longer with the military, and probably felt the explanation would do the
job without attacking Arnold’s credibility. Because Arnold was a former military pilot, distinguished private aviator, respected businessman, a member
of the local Sheriff's "aerial posse" search and rescue team of Ada County and a relief Federal Marshall, Ramey had to tread carefully.
Instead of attacking Arnold, he attacked the idea of UFOs as intelligently controlled Alien Spacecraft. By using Kalberer to casually respond to the saucer
sightings, Ramey intimated that the matter was of no great consequence. His spin worked very well. The press could speculate all they wanted as long
as they added the tag line that the military felt there was nothing to it.
After a few more sightings occurred just before the Roswell Crash, General Ramey and Colonel Alfred Kalberer continued their onslaught against the
idea that UFOs were anything but misidentified conventional aircraft. They also added a new twist. As civilians with little or no expertise began to report
saucer sightings, Ramey had Kalberer issue statements which indicated that the objects were probably figments of people’s imaginations. One such
statement read "we're not being invaded by planes from Mars" and likened the saucer reports to those of sea serpents (Ft Worth Star-Telegram, 7/2/47).
In an even more brilliant move, Ramey had Kalberer stop talking about figments of people’s imagination and start issuing statements to the press which
expressed concern about the ‘public hysteria’ being created by the saucer sightings. That introduced the idea that more sightings by more people didn’t
establish the credibility of UFOs as a real phenomenon worthy of study. Instead, it merely cemented the government claim that reports by untrained
civilians and former military pilots that were no longer in the briefing loop were causing something unreal to become something real in the minds of people. This was creating a
hysteria that might deflect from real reports of possible incoming attack aircraft from hostile nations and end up as a possible danger to commercial and civilian aviation as well.
Now that we look back at all this, Ramey had everything in place that he needed to completely and successfully cover-up the Roswell UFO Crash. By indicating that even the best
pilots and former military officers can sometimes make mistakes about what they see when not fully or properly briefed and setting in place the idea that all the saucer reports were
creating an hysteria that Aliens were everywhere, he had the perfect Roswell UFO Crash cover-up scenario right at his fingertips.
Ramey understood that a cover-up of the Roswell UFO Crash would require more than just a few catch phrases about Martians and comparisons to Sea Serpent reports. There were
too many witnesses and too much evidence. He knew that the press was going to find out about it and quickly descend on Roswell. So the very sharp General had others under his
command tell the world about the crash, and then stepped up to admit that they had made a mistake shortly afterward. Major Marcel was picked as the fall guy by default since he was
in charge of the initial investigation.
Ramey’s actions were brilliant from the standpoint of creating the perfect explanation for the Roswell Crash. He preserved the integrity of the military, enhanced his own reputation by
coming clean about the alleged error and created subsequent problems for all past and future UFO reports with his ‘public hysteria‘ and ‘misidentification‘ stories. Given the
manufactured candor that came from the embarrassing admission of Marcel’s alleged misidentification of the crash material, people would tend to believe that an honest mistake
had been made and soon forget about the entire event.
Cont. Pg 2
By Bill Knell
Walter Haut died in 2005 at the age of 83. The loss was as great to the UFO Community as it was to the Town of Roswell, New Mexico where Haut lived. It can easily be argued that
his actions over almost sixty years helped put Roswell on the map. Those actions began while he was the Public Information Officer at Walker Air Force Base in July of 1947.
The base formerly known as Roswell Army Air Base transferred from the Army to the newly created Air Force in June of 1947, but was still in a transitional stage in July of 1947 when
the UFO Crash occurred. Most people still referred to Walker as the Roswell Army Air Base at that time. Despite the identity crisis, there was no doubt about who was in charge. That
would be Colonel William Blanchard, the Base Commander.
Walter Haut says he received a call from Colonel Blanchard on the morning of July 8, 1947. According to others that live in Roswell, the two had been lifelong friends. If that’s correct, it
wasn’t surprising that Blanchard took the time to tell Haut the tale of the Roswell Crashed Saucer. In a 1993 affidavit, Haut says of his conversation with the Colonel:
“I received a call from Col. William Blanchard, the base commander, who said he had in his possession a flying saucer or parts thereof. He said it came from a ranch northwest of
Roswell, and that the base Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel, was going to fly the material to Fort Worth.”
“Col. Blanchard told me to write a news release about the operation and to deliver it to both newspapers and the two radio stations in Roswell. He felt that he wanted the local media
to have the first opportunity at the story. I went first to KGFL, then to KSWS, then to the Daily Record and finally to the Morning Dispatch.”
“The next day, I read in the newspaper that General Roger Ramey in Fort Worth had said the object was a weather balloon. I believe Col. Blanchard saw the material, because he
sounded positive about what the material was. There is no chance that he would have mistaken it for a weather balloon. Neither is their any chance that Major Marcel would have
been mistaken. In 1980, Jesse Marcel told me that the material photographed in Gen. Ramey's office was not the material he had recovered. I am convinced that the material
recovered was some type of craft from outer space.”
I met Walter Haut on several occasions in Roswell. While I respected his willingness to come forward as he has and contribute so much to the town in terms of helping to establish
and promote the UFO Museum, I was always concerned about his statements. Due to my father’s military service with the Air Force and my own time spent in the USMC, I always
wondered about the events that allegedly occurred at the Roswell Base when the crash occurred and the credibility of the witnesses that came forward.
My concerns were wrapped around the sequence of events that occurred and the way everything was handled by the top brass at the Roswell Base. I can’t imagine a Base
Commander with the rank of Colonel putting out a press release like the one Walter Haut was ordered to draft without one or more consults with the general in overall charge of the
Base or someone else at the Pentagon.
The new information from Haut quells some of my trepidations by placing General Ramey at the Base and in the mix of original decision making, but also adds another mystery. Most
people like to cast Ramey in the part of the Puppet Master that ordered the cover-up. If he was present at the meeting held on July 8, 1947 in Roswell, that theory seems unlikely. It
would be completely ridiculous to believe that Blanchard would order a press release with Ramey’s knowledge saying that they had recovered parts of a crashed Flying Saucer one
moment, than retract everything and completely change the story a couple of days later. It would be ridiculous unless Ramey was even smarter than we all thought possible.
General Ramey was deeply involved with the post World War II Atomic Bomb Project as a member of Army Air Task Group 1.5 which was responsible for the testing of the A-bomb on
Bikini Atoll. After an air crew chosen by Ramey missed their target and ruined most of the A-Bomb test results, he managed to spin that completely around and become the darling of
the mass media. Knowing that the press was unlikely to take on a General or do anything to make the A-bomb look like anything but a successful weapon that might challenge the
territorial objectives of a very Stalinist Soviet Union, he simply told Reporters what they wanted to hear. He left any errors or problems created by his mistakes to be cleaned up by the
scientists involved. None of them would take him on knowing that the government was where their bread was buttered.
Ramey used a similar tactic to take on the task of debunking Flying Saucer sightings even before the Roswell Crash, but he also added a new twist that would serve him well when
that situation fell into his lap. As Commander of the 8th Army Air Force, he was headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. General Ramey and Colonel Alfred Kalberer, his Intelligence
Chief, went to work on the famous June 24, 1947, sighting of nine unidentified objects by Kenneth Arnold. Instead of appearing before the press and offering some official explanation
regarding the sighting, Ramey used Kalberer to call the Arnold Sighting “Buck Rogers stuff” (Fort Worth Star Telegram, 7/1/47) and inferred that anyone seeing these things were
probably mistaking distant jet planes for something else.
General Ramey knew jets were new to most people, including pilots that were no longer with the military, and probably felt the explanation would do the
job without attacking Arnold’s credibility. Because Arnold was a former military pilot, distinguished private aviator, respected businessman, a member
of the local Sheriff's "aerial posse" search and rescue team of Ada County and a relief Federal Marshall, Ramey had to tread carefully.
Instead of attacking Arnold, he attacked the idea of UFOs as intelligently controlled Alien Spacecraft. By using Kalberer to casually respond to the saucer
sightings, Ramey intimated that the matter was of no great consequence. His spin worked very well. The press could speculate all they wanted as long
as they added the tag line that the military felt there was nothing to it.
After a few more sightings occurred just before the Roswell Crash, General Ramey and Colonel Alfred Kalberer continued their onslaught against the
idea that UFOs were anything but misidentified conventional aircraft. They also added a new twist. As civilians with little or no expertise began to report
saucer sightings, Ramey had Kalberer issue statements which indicated that the objects were probably figments of people’s imaginations. One such
statement read "we're not being invaded by planes from Mars" and likened the saucer reports to those of sea serpents (Ft Worth Star-Telegram, 7/2/47).
In an even more brilliant move, Ramey had Kalberer stop talking about figments of people’s imagination and start issuing statements to the press which
expressed concern about the ‘public hysteria’ being created by the saucer sightings. That introduced the idea that more sightings by more people didn’t
establish the credibility of UFOs as a real phenomenon worthy of study. Instead, it merely cemented the government claim that reports by untrained
civilians and former military pilots that were no longer in the briefing loop were causing something unreal to become something real in the minds of people. This was creating a
hysteria that might deflect from real reports of possible incoming attack aircraft from hostile nations and end up as a possible danger to commercial and civilian aviation as well.
Now that we look back at all this, Ramey had everything in place that he needed to completely and successfully cover-up the Roswell UFO Crash. By indicating that even the best
pilots and former military officers can sometimes make mistakes about what they see when not fully or properly briefed and setting in place the idea that all the saucer reports were
creating an hysteria that Aliens were everywhere, he had the perfect Roswell UFO Crash cover-up scenario right at his fingertips.
Ramey understood that a cover-up of the Roswell UFO Crash would require more than just a few catch phrases about Martians and comparisons to Sea Serpent reports. There were
too many witnesses and too much evidence. He knew that the press was going to find out about it and quickly descend on Roswell. So the very sharp General had others under his
command tell the world about the crash, and then stepped up to admit that they had made a mistake shortly afterward. Major Marcel was picked as the fall guy by default since he was
in charge of the initial investigation.
Ramey’s actions were brilliant from the standpoint of creating the perfect explanation for the Roswell Crash. He preserved the integrity of the military, enhanced his own reputation by
coming clean about the alleged error and created subsequent problems for all past and future UFO reports with his ‘public hysteria‘ and ‘misidentification‘ stories. Given the
manufactured candor that came from the embarrassing admission of Marcel’s alleged misidentification of the crash material, people would tend to believe that an honest mistake
had been made and soon forget about the entire event.
Cont. Pg 2
