Crash at Corona

by Stanton T. Friedman

On July 8, 1947, the Public Information Office at the Roswell Army Air Field released a statement that said the remains of a "flying disc" had been recovered from a ranch near Corona, New Mexico. The story was released to the wire services and appeared in the evening editions of newspapers across the country. Within hours, however, this story was replaced by the Pentagon's official account that the disc was simply the misidentified radar reflector from a downed weather. Balloon. And so began the government's successful forty-year conspiracy to conceal the truth. The wreckage, consisting of I-beams with unrecognizable symbols and ultralight, indestructible foil, metal, and plasticlike material, thoroughly baffled the experienced airmen and intelligence officers who examined it. The military immediately quarantined the crash site, gathered every scrap of the debris, and flew much of it to the U.S. Eighth Air Force Headquarters where it. Disappeared from the public eye. In his determined,