Those who saw the debris at the time unanimously and independently reported seeing hieroglyphs or symbols on the fragments. But what is the significance of this?
Illustration
And more: These symbols were said to be on a purple-colored tape. There were even reports of initials, as mentioned in several newspapers.
For example, the Middletown Times Herald newspaper reported on July 9, 1947:
Brazel told reporters that he had found weather balloon equipment before, but had seen nothing that resembled his latest find.
Those who saw the object said it had a flowered paper tape around it bearing the initials “D. P.”
Middletown Times Herald 1947 July 9
RANCHER MAC BRAZEL
On June 14, 1947, rancher William Mac Brazel discovered debris on the Foster Ranch.
According to official reports, the debris came from a weather balloon, which was later identified as part of the remnants of Project Mogul. Specifically, it was said to involve a radar reflector. From the ground, the balloon’s position was tracked using radar.
Project Mogul was a highly classified initiative by the US Army Air Forces that utilized high-altitude balloons equipped with microphones. Its main objective was to detect long-distance sound waves produced by Soviet atomic bomb tests.
These photos show a radar reflector attached beneath a balloon. Additionally, a radar system mounted on a vehicle can be seen in the background:
*AI colorized and adapted for analysis purposes. Attribution for original photos from 1947 to: “Courtesy, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Photograph Collection, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library, Arlington, Texas.”
Fort Worth Army Air Field. Likely photographed on the same day as the images above.
Radio operators at Fort Worth Army Air Field (1940s)
But what is the connection between the radar reflectors, the purple-colored tape, and the symbols or hieroglyphs? Or were they inscriptions on fragments not of this world? Let’s take a closer look at the witnesses’ statements:
The following statements were made by Sheridan Cavitt: (Witness directly on-site)
It was small amount as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, well at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil, something of that type. I thought it was a weather balloon. – It looked to me, somebody lost a weather balloon. I also vaguely recall some sort of black box (like a weather instrument).
The rancher Mac Brazel himself stated the following: (Witness directly on-site)
The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. – When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction.
Statement regarding the debris by Jesse Marcel: (Witness directly on-site)
I saw – well we found some metal, little bits of metal, but basically we found some materials that were hard to describe. I’d never seen anything like it, and I still don’t know what it was. We picked it up, anyway. One thing, one thing… – One thing I remember, I remember this very distinctly. I wanted to burn a piece of this thing, but all I could – what I had was a lighter, since I’m a big smoker anyway. I lit the lighter under a piece of this stuff, and it didn’t burn. – There were inscriptions. Something indecipherable. I personally had never seen anything like it. Um, I call them hieroglyphics. I don’t know if they were ever deciphered or not. – Small rods, thin rods, strong rods that you couldn’t bend or break, but it didn’t look like metal. It looked more like wood. – They were of varying sizes. They were, as I can recall, perhaps three-eighths of an inch to a quarter of an inch wide and of about all sorts of lengths. None of them were very long. – The largest ones: I would say about three feet – Weight: You couldn’t even tell you had anything in your hands – just like you were holding balsa wood. – It was a solid rod, rectangular rods, just like you would have a lath. Various lengths, and along some of them there were little inscriptions, two-color inscriptions if I remember correctly – like Chinese writing. Nothing that you could make out what it would say. – Was it all in this shape, long and thin? All the solid rods were like that. There was the other material there that looked very much like parchment that also didn’t burn. Obviously, I – I’m not speculating – I was familiar with really all the methods of weather observation devices that were used by the military, and I couldn’t identify any of this stuff as weather observation devices.
Statement regarding the debris by Loretta Proctor (former neighbor of rancher W.W. Brazel):
Brazel came to my ranch and showed my husband and me a piece of material he said came from a large pile of debris on the property he managed. The piece he brought was brown in color, similar to plastic . . . . ‘Mac’ said the other material on the property looked like aluminum foil. It was very flexible and wouldn’t crush or burn. There was also something he described as tape which had printing on it. The color of the printing was a kind of purple …
Statement regarding the debris by Bessie Brazel Schreiber (daughter of W.W. Brazel, 14 years old at the time of the incident):
Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape. The tape was about two or three inches wide and had flower-like designs on it. The ’flowers’ were faint, a variety of pastel colors, and reminded me of Japanese paintings in
which the flowers are not all connected.
Statement regarding the debris by Irving Newton:
Newton was a weather officer assigned to Fort Worth, who was on duty whenthe Roswell debris was sent there in July, 1947. He was told that he was to report to General Ramey’s office to view the material. while I was examining the debris, Major Marcel was picking up pieces of the target sticks and trying to convince me that some notations on the sticks were alien writings. There were figures on the sticks, lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings, with no rhyme or reason
Particularly interesting is the statement of Jesse Marcel Jr., the son of Jesse Marcel:
Statement regarding the debris by Jesse Marcel Jr. (Son of Major Jesse Marcel):
One night, I was awakened by my father in the middle of the night. He was very excited about some debris he had picked up in the desert. The material filled up his 1942 Buick. He brought some of the material into the house, and we spread it out on the kitchen floor. There were three categories of debris: a thick, foil-like metallic gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plastic-like material, like Bakelite; and there were fragments of what appeared to be I-beams. On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. The writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved, geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to Russian, Japanese or any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics, but it had no animal-like characters.
In 1989, Jesse Marcel Jr. created a drawing from memory depicting the symbols he had seen:
Jesse Marcel Jr. (all characters in violet)
The Official Reports
If you refer to the official explanations from that time, they mention a radar reflector. This was further confirmed by research conducted in the 1990s. The difference, however, is that it was admitted that the debris was not from a weather balloon but rather part of Project Mogul. Radar reflectors were also used in this project to help determine positions. Key witnesses involved provided clear evidence, and notably, the Roswell Report cites several interviews supporting these claims.
Project Mogul was primarily tested in the 1940s near the Alamogordo Army Air Field (now Holloman Air Force Base) in New Mexico. This location was chosen because it was remote and provided optimal conditions for conducting secret experiments.
One of the key figures involved in the development of Project Mogul was Charles B. Moore.
He was instrumental in developing and testing the high-altitude balloon systems used in the project. Moore’s expertise in atmospheric physics and his work on radar targets were crucial for the success of the experiments.
He helped design the balloon configurations that could carry sensitive equipment, such as microphones and radar reflectors, to the required altitudes for long-range sound wave detection.
Moore contributed to integrating radar reflectors into the system to help track the balloons during their flights. These reflectors were necessary for monitoring the position and movement of the payloads.
He was involved in launching and recovering the balloon systems, collecting data, and analyzing the results to improve their performance.
If it was indeed a radar reflector whose debris was observed, Charles B. Moore would be the exact person who should recognize it and be knowledgeable about its construction.
Photo Courtesy of Charles B. Moore
Pan American World Airways Bag (on the left)
The following statements were made by him in an interview for the official Roswell Report:
I do remember every time I prepared one of these radar targets for flight, I always wondered why these figures were on the tape. There was always a question of why they were there, when this purplish-pink marking on the debris came up, I immediately remembered this sort of marking. Other people, I have a letter from one of my technicians, who says oddly he remembers the same marking.
Albert Trakowski was our project officer. He and I served together under Colonel Duffy in the Air Force
Liaison Office …
Anyway, Albert Trakowski was the Watson Laboratory
project officer on this. When I raised this question to him he said he had talked to John Peterson, one of Colonel Duffy’s procurement men, and they were joking about these markings on the tape. I have a letter that I can give you a copy of in which I
quote Trakowski in saying, “What do you expect when you have your targets made by a toy factory in Manhattan?”
>>> So essentially, the original targets were made by a toy company?
Well, it’s either a toy company or a garment
manufacturer in the garment district in Manhattan, or it was by a novelty company. I talked to Ed Istvan who was another one of the Air Force liaison office people who stayed in. Istvan lives in your area. I can give you documentation on these things.
Istvan says that it was some outfit that extruded toothpaste tubes and he got involved with them because they made radar chaff. In the early days of this effort, there were a number of different targets made.
>>> So the symbology on the tape was only related to the radar reflectors.
That’s correct.
>>> You said you often wondered why those markings were on there. Had you ever resolved that for yourself?
Only what Albert Trakowski told me, that our friend
John Peterson, the procurement man, was just joking, “What else do you expect when you have your targets made by a toy factory?”
>>> So essentially you’d say there were no radar reflectors in New Mexico until 1947 until this appeared?
That’s my opinion.
Charles B. Moore also created a drawing of the symbols from his memory, just like Jesse Marcel Junior:
Charles B. Moore 1992
A similarity between the symbols and Jesse Marcel Junior’s version can also be observed.
Jesse Marcel Jr. 1989
Of course, Albert Trakowski, mentioned by Charles B. Moore, was also interviewed and provided very insightful answers:
Photo Courtesy of Albert Trakowski
>>> Charlie Moore has indicated that some of the balloons they tried during the early experiments were the relatively new types of reflectors that probably had never been used in New Mexico before, the M307B model, and that Ed Istvan had gone to several essentially toy manufacturers, to try to
get some of these reflectors made.
That’s correct. … It was the Signal Corps’ responsibility to procure those targets; it was not the responsibility of our and Colonel Duffy’s office. … It was on such an occasion that Ed Istvan acted to line up contractors for these targets.
>>> Do you recall any of the contractors he may have worked with?
No, I don’t remember them by name. They were not within my purview at the time. As I have told others, including Mr. Pflock, we had an outstanding expeditor on our staff, on Colonel Duffy’s staff, by the name of John E. Peterson. Jack Peterson was a major at the time. He was a prewar graduate of Harvard Business School, and he knew business operations inside and out. Again, he was an extremely energetic fellow. He was very, very valuable and successful at breaking loose stuck contracts and stuck production and things that weren’t moving as fast as they should. During the war that was very important.
Jack monitored the procurement of these radar targets, and I believe Ed Istvan either worked for or alongside Jack Peterson, and I remember when they finally … Now this was all not under my purview,
but I worked in the same building with them, and I knew Jack very well, he was a very good friend and we talked and joked with each other a lot.
I remember so clearly when the contractor for these targets was selected, and Jack thought it was the biggest joke in the world that they had to go to a toy manufacturer to make these radar targets. Then it was even a bigger joke when it turned out that because of wartime scarcities of materials, the tape that they used to assemble these targets, the reflecting material on the balsa frames, was some kind of a pinkish purple tape with a heart and flower design on it. This was, again, a big flap.
>>> Did you ever see any of those?
Yeah, I saw some of them. Not in connection with my work, but they were around the office. The prototypes were around the office, and the first production runs were there.
Examples of advertising materials and adhesive tapes from the 1940s and 1950s:
In the photos from the press conference, we were unfortunately unable to identify any tape with symbols. The quality of the photos is simply not sufficient, or they were taken from angles that do not allow for a more detailed analysis in this regard.
The photos were also sent to a national organization in the 1990s for the Roswell Report, to be digitized and subsequently subjected to photo interpretation and analysis. This organization was further tasked with examining the digitized photos for any indications of the flowered tape (or hieroglyphics, depending on the perspective) that were reportedly seen by some individuals who observed the wreckage before it arrived in Fort Worth. On July 20, 1994, the organization reported that even after digitization, the photos were of insufficient quality to reveal any of the details sought for analysis.
Roger Ramey: (Wednesday, Jul 9, 1947).
“One Disk Tale Exploded by Army as Others Fly.”
”Fort Worth Star-Telegram”. Evening edition. Page 1.
Public domain
Thus, 99 percent of the mystery surrounding the purple-colored tape and the symbols has been resolved. Despite thorough research, we were unfortunately unable to determine which toy factory produced the radar reflectors at the time. There were many potential companies in Manhattan, most of which were small businesses that didn’t last very long. Identifying the manufacturer of the tapes proved to be even more elusive. The initials “D.P.” reportedly on the tape could not be definitively attributed to any company. These initials may not necessarily represent the manufacturer; they could have been part of a number, a serial code, or a model number.
This remains a mystery unless an old tape from the 1940s surfaces that features these initials. Unfortunately, due to their composition, most old tapes have already disintegrated or were discarded long ago. After all, almost no one would intentionally preserve adhesive tapes for 80 years. However, with some luck, one might still emerge—perhaps from an old attic, basement, or warehouse.