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150 In the Washington Post for July 9, 1947 (the day after Lieu- tenant Haut's news release had triggered a short-lived flurry of interest), was this reference to the cover story: "Brazell [sic] found the broken remains of the weather device scattered over a square mile of his land." A square mile? How does a little weather balloon and its flimsy, box kitelike radar reflector become spread out over more than six hundred acres? When a weather balloon comes to earth, it is either because it has developed a slow leak and cannot maintain its altitude or because it has gone too high, split, and let its helium gas escape more rapidly. Either way, the balloon descends in a pretty leisurely fashion. Disabled bal- loons do not come hurtling to earth like diving airplanes or reentering spacecraft. They float or flutter down, doing pre- cious little damage to themselves or to anything on the ground when they hit. If the balloon, or what was left of it, had no choice but to alight gently, what could have caused its payload to smash into so many pieces that they could cover a square mile of sheep ranch? Obviously, nothing! The metal foil and sticks that made up the radar reflector would have been bent or even broken, while the balloon itself would almost certainly have still been in one piece. But scattered far and wide? Hardly! Moreover, for the wreckage to be noticeable when spread over such a wide area, it would have to have come from some- thing far larger than any common weather balloon and reflec- tor. Pieces of one of those couldn't possibly have produced the strong reaction from rancher Brazel. A few newly emptied beer bottles would have made a greater impression. And there's the matter of the original conclusion that it was a "genuine flying disc" versus the later "balloon" explanation. Sheep rancher Brazel may have led a life of isolation, without even a telephone, but that doesn't mean he was naive or stupid. To survive, let alone prosper, in the ranching business in the 1940s demanded a degree of astuteness that would have can- celed out any realistic possibility that Brazel would have gotten all worked up over something as ordinary as a weather balloon. CRASH AT CORONA