CRASH AT CORONA - Stanton Friedman-pages

Page 181 of 242

Page 181 of 242
CRASH AT CORONA - Stanton Friedman-pages

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158 importance placed on this, several weeks later, a casual remark by Mac Brazel's son, Bill, to the effect that he had collected a few bits of wreckage, quickly led to a visit by official persons who confiscated it. The intensive searches of the crash site near Corona almost certainly coincided with the expanded search of the surround- ing area for the remainder of the craft, since it was obvious that the material found on the sheep ranch could not have been the entire vehicle. A day or two after the start of the major recovery effort, and almost a week after the crash at the ranch, the rest of the craft was located several miles from where the original debris had been found. At about the same time, three (or possi- bly four) bodies were found in what was assumed to be escape capsules, within a mile or two of the main body of the craft. This discovery was probably made from the air, by airplanes or helicopters from Roswell AAF or some nearby base such as Alamogordo. Once trucks had brought back as much of the wreckage as they could carry to Roswell AAF, it had to be stored in a large, secure building, where it was guarded carefully while trusted men inside packed it for shipment to locations where it could be calmly studied, tested, and analyzed. The bodies had to be pre- served against further deterioration, using whatever techniques could be adapted from contemporary embalming practice. The limited amount of wreckage brought back from the ranch to Roswell AAF by Marcel and Cavitt was loaded into the bomb bay of a B-29 bomber and flown to Fort Worth, where General Ramey took over the operation, clamping down on all talk and replacing reality with the tale of the weather balloon. It is assumed that some or all of the material was quickly flown on to Wright Field, because of the testimony of several aircrew members and a July 8, 1947, FBI teletype message stating "disc and balloon being transported to Wright Field by special plane for examination." The limited ability of a B-29 to carry a large volume of cargo would restrict its usefulness as an impromptu freighter. Just how many airplanes were used to ship all the material CRASH AT CORONA