All language subtitles for Historys Greatest Mysteries S06E01 1080p WEB h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

- Tonight, a strange discovery
in the New Mexico desert

sparks a mystery that's
endured for nearly 80 years.

- We know something crashed

in that sheep field
out in Roswell in 1947,

but the parts of the
puzzle just don't add up.

- I-beams, silken
strands of fiber optics.

No one is able to identify
this strange material.

- This was a 200-yard
swath of debris

which, when it was
all gathered up,

only weighed five pounds.

How is that possible?

- The deeper researchers
dig into what witnesses saw,

the more questions are raised.

- Were they actual aliens
or human guinea pigs?

- Whether people are
skeptics or believers,

something crashed, but
the question is, what?

- We know that there
was a government coverup

because the government
admitted as such,

but we don't even know if
that's the whole story.

- Now, we'll explore
the top theories

surrounding one of America's
most infamous incidents.

- This would possibly explain
all the different elements

of the Roswell crash.

Some people saw bodies,
some people didn't.

- By now, there's so much
speculation, we don't know,

and we may never know.

- What really fell out of
the sky in 1947 in Roswell?

[dramatic music]

- [Laurence] June 14th, 1947.

80 miles northwest of
Roswell, New Mexico,

a sheep rancher named Mac Brazel

comes across something
highly unusual.

- He was tending to
some of the sheep and

he noticed that they wouldn't
cross a particular field.

- So he sets out and explores

and finds this debris field
in the middle of nowhere.

It looks like something
was moving at a high speed

and crash-landed and just
spread out there for 200 yards.

- Given the remote
nature of this site,

the logical conclusion must be

that this thing could only
have come from the sky.

- He wants to bring it in

and turn it over
to some authorities

out of concern that it might be
some form of aviation accident.

- [Laurence] But Brazel's
trip to Roswell is delayed,

and by the time he reaches
the sheriff's office

with the crash debris,

two other Roswell residents
have also witnessed something

they can't explain.

- On July 2nd,

Dan Wilmot is
sitting on his porch

with his wife Mary Grace,

and suddenly they see this
strange object in the sky.

It's oval shaped, it's
very brightly illuminated

as if it's got its own
internal light source,

and there's virtually no sound.

- The object was about 10
to 20 feet in diameter.

He thinks it was moving around
4 to 500 miles per hour.

And they observe it
for about a minute

and then it goes away.

- [Laurence] After Brazel
delivers the material,

the concerned sheriff
immediately calls

the nearby Army airfield.

- The Roswell crash took
place against the backdrop

of the modern flying
saucer phenomenon.

This all started
on June 24th, 1947,

with Kenneth Arnold,

a pilot flying light aircraft.

- He claims that he has seen
nine disc-shaped aircraft

flying in formation
near Mount Rainier

flying at 1,200 miles an hour,

which is three times as fast
as the fastest aircraft.

And the media really
takes this up.

- [Laurence] Newspapers
quickly dub the objects

"flying discs," or
"flying saucers."

- After his report
becomes publicized,

it inspires other
people to purport

that they have also seen
bizarre phenomena in the skies,

and we are in the midst
of flying saucer fever.

- In that period between
June and July 1947,

there are hundreds of people

who report seeing flying
saucers in the sky.

- Banner headlines,
day after day,

through every news source
around the country.

What are these flying saucers?

Where are they from?

But what Brazel discovered is
an altogether different story.

It's nothing fleeting
in the nighttime sky.

It's something recovered.

It's something that had crashed.

- It escalates the
whole situation

to a completely different level.

The Army takes this
extremely seriously

and they actually send one
of their brightest and best,

the base intelligence
officer Jesse Marcel,

out to investigate.

They know that whatever it is,

it's not a US military
aircraft crash.

So now the situation is this.

If it's not the US
military, who or what is it?

- [Laurence] On July 8th, 1947,

the Roswell Army Airfield
puts out a press release

saying that they have found
pieces of a flying saucer.

- We've had two weeks
of flying saucer fever

and now the US military
have one of these things.

The press release goes out
and it's near hysteria.

- The public takes
it a lot seriously

than could have
possibly been expected.

- [Laurence] Later that day,

Major Marcel flies
the debris to Texas

for further examination.

- They arrive in Fort Worth.

General Roger Ramey,

head of the Eighth Air Force
at Carswell Army Airfield,

wants to have a
press conference.

- Then, something
really weird happens.

Within 24 hours of
telling the world

that the US military has
recovered a flying saucer,

they flip the narrative.

[tense music]

- General Ramey
announces to the press

it was all a mistake, it
was all a overreaction.

It's nothing more than a
very standard weather balloon

with a radar reflector kite.

- To help alleviate
concerns from the public,

they release a photo
with Major Marcel posing

with what is said to be debris
from this weather balloon.

- The cover story
was totally believed.

Roswell just disappears from
the narrative for 30 years.

- [Laurence] All is
quiet until 1978,

when Major Jesse Marcel
opens the floodgates

on Roswell witness statements.

- Marcel is 71 years old, he's
retired from the military,

but after 30 years,
he finally decides

that it's time to go public

with the secret that
he's been hanging onto

for all this time.

- Jesse Marcel does an interview

with astronomer
Stanton Friedman,

during which he confesses
that he was told

to stick to the story that
this is a weather balloon

and nothing else.

- Marcel claims those were not
actually all of the materials

that he had recovered from
the site near Roswell.

There's much more debris
that's not in the photos.

And he describes the
material that he found

as being not of this Earth.

[tense music]

- There are silken strands like
microfilament fishing line.

There are I-beam structures
of a pinkish-purplish hue

with strange symbols that
run the length of each piece.

And then Marcel describes the
most amazing material of all.

Paper-thin, metal-like material,

practically weightless
in your hands.

This material you can crush,

you can fold, you can crease,

and each and every time,

it assumes its original
shape and size.

- Today, we call this type of
alloy a shape memory alloy.

Shape memory alloys
weren't widely manufactured

until the 1960s, though,

and the crash was in 1947.

- It's easy to see why
people would believe Marcel.

He's a credible source,

he's a former
intelligence officer,

and he is now saying

that what the government
said is not true.

And this really is the
beginning of this idea

that there really might be a
massive government coverup.

- [Laurence] After
speaking with Marcel,

Friedman begins collecting

dozens of other witness
accounts from Roswell

that describe a second crash

and a massive coverup
of who was in it.

- It's one thing to
hear Jesse Marcel say

that it wasn't a weather balloon

and that whatever fell out of
the sky came from outer space.

But these are witnesses

who are claiming to
have seen something

that wasn't even human.

- The same day that
Jesse Marcel came back

with the debris from the ranch,

a local mortician, Glenn Dennis,

also gets drawn into a very
weird part of the story

because as well as
being a mortician,

he sometimes drives
an ambulance.

- He was delivering an
injured person to the airfield

when he witnesses the
arrival of these materials

and he also sees this beam

with purple and pink
hieroglyphic writing on it.

- And he says,
because of his work

in the local funeral
home, he is asked,

"Do you have a number of
child-sized caskets?"

And of course, he's horrified.

And only later do people
start to put this together

and say, "Well, wait a minute.

Maybe it wasn't dead
kids, but dead aliens."

[tense music]

- One of the witnesses
who comes forward

all these 40 years later

has some details and evidence

of a second crash
site near Roswell.

- A crew chief with the
Roswell Fire Department,

named Dan Dwyer, comes forward

and he wants to talk
about the crash

that he'd heard about on
the plains of San Augustin.

He says that he and another
fireman go to the site,

but when they get
there, they find

that there's a government
recovery effort taking place.

Well, if this is
just a regular crash,

why is the government involved?

- Dwyer claims to have witnessed

essentially the collection
of alien bodies.

He says there were two
of them on stretchers

inside mortuary bags

and a third one that appeared
to be severely injured.

- Dwyer is not the only person

who reports bodies
at this crash site.

An Air Force sergeant
named Melvin Brown

claims that he was sent there
to guard the crash site.

While he's there, he claims
that he sees two alien bodies.

- Dennis, Dwyer, and Brown
aren't the only ones.

There are many more witnesses

who are claiming
they saw something.

Now, whether it's debris or
bodies or lights in the sky,

whatever crashed in
Roswell that night

led to people insisting

that they saw something
extremely unusual.

- When you take into account

all of these
eyewitness testimonies

and people seeing
these strange things,

it's easy to see why this flying
saucer theory might endure.

- We may never
know what happened,

but we have credible
witnesses who have seen things

that are difficult to explain

and make it hard for the
theory of the weather balloon

to really hold up.

- [Laurence] Despite
a flurry of additional

eyewitness accounts
in the 1970s and '80s

detailing new theories on what
really happened at Roswell,

the Air Force
consistently maintains

that what crashed was
only a weather balloon.

- Part of the reason they
stick with that story

is the story's working fine.

- With the exception of
arguably a niche community,

there's been no one
really challenging

the official narrative.

- Finally, in 1993,

a congressman from New
Mexico, Steven Schiff,

starts to pressure
the federal government

to release more information.

- [Laurence] In 1995,
the government releases

"The Roswell Report:
Fact vs Fiction."

It includes a shocking
new revelation.

What crashed actually belonged

to a classified military
program called Project Mogul.

- The Air Force said,

"We were keeping a
secret from people,

but the secret we were
keeping wasn't aliens.

It was a spy program,
highly classified."

[tense music]

- In 1947, the United States is
the only nuclear power on Earth.

It's very clear to
the Americans, though,

that the Soviets
desperately want

to develop their
own atomic weapon,

but we don't have a
good way of knowing

how well the Soviets are
doing in that pursuit.

- Project Mogul is
spearheaded by Maurice Ewing,

a US geophysicist,

and is basically this
operation by the US government

to develop spy balloons

to sense the detonations
of atomic weaponry

all the way around the
globe by the Soviet Union.

- The idea is to put
microphones on weather balloons,

send 'em to this high altitude,

so if a particular
nuclear blast goes off

and three of these microphones
receive that signal,

they can triangulate back
to its original source.

- This is what makes a
high-altitude balloon

such an effective tool here

because it can
float, remain steady,

and be in the air for
a really long time.

- Some of these weather balloons

associated with Project
Mogul are enormous.

They're 400 to 500
feet in diameter.

They're built to hover in place

and they fly at 100,000
to 200,000 feet.

- They have to be able to carry
500 pounds worth of equipment,

they have to be both
lightweight and really strong,

so they need to be made

of really, really advanced
composite materials.

They also have
metallic substances

that are very light reflective,

so they might appear to glow.

- Based on the
shape, the dimension,

and the behavior of the
Project Mogul balloons,

you can see why
somebody might conclude

that these objects
are flying saucers.

- [Laurence] Between
1947 and 1949,

Project Mogul conducts a total

of 110 top secret
research flights.

- Most of these
tests are happening

initially on the East Coast,

but there's too much
commercial traffic,

so they decide to launch
these balloons instead

from Alamogordo Airbase
in the Tularosa Basin

in Southern New Mexico.

- According to declassified
documents about Project Mogul,

the first flight
launched from Alamogordo

goes as far as
Arabela, New Mexico.

- Supposedly, on June 4th, 1947,

it came smashing down to Earth

with all of its radar
reflection materials

and other sensors.

- Looking back at
the old photos,

we see what looks
like radar reflectors,

we see what looks like
shredded polyethylene plastics.

The average person in 1947

wouldn't know
anything about that.

- It doesn't really
look like parts

of a terrestrial aircraft,

and so they're fairly
certain of what it's not,

but that doesn't mean that
they actually recognize

what it is.

- Even the highly-trained
people like Jesse Marcel

wouldn't recognize
all of this material,

so they'd be saying,
"Yeah, look,

I know what a weather balloon
looks like and this ain't it."

- [Laurence] The report
also has an explanation

for the purple hieroglyphics
described by witnesses.

- The engineers that
cobbled together

some of the early
balloons for Project Mogul

had to use whatever
materials they had available.

- Despite this being a
highly-classified program,

this was still the
post-war period,

there were some shortages,

occasionally even the
military had to just make do,

and apparently they used

some commercially
available adhesive tape.

- The tape that they're using

is actually just some
leftovers that were unsold

from a children's toy company.

It's designed to attract
a child's attention.

It's just covered with colorful
shapes and pink and purple.

- This tape is what
the government explains

as the source of those
eyewitness reports

of the purple and pink
hieroglyphics on the metal beam.

- [Laurence] By 1949,
two years after Roswell,

Project Mogul is
completely shut down.

- For a number of reasons,

Project Mogul was
terminated in 1949.

Cost, security,
practical concerns,

the most obvious of which
was that by that time,

the Soviets had
detonated their own bomb.

- So we know they have it

and there is no longer
any need to listen for it.

- Despite the declassification
of these documents,

rumors persist
that the government

is not being
entirely transparent.

- The government's
explanation of Project Mogul

seems to make sense and
it seems to be consistent

with what people saw,

except that there's
all these witnesses

who claim that they saw bodies.

There's nothing in Project
Mogul that included bodies.

So what is the story there?

- [Laurence] In the 1990s,

five decades after
the Roswell crash

first made headlines in 1947,

the public's demand for
answers reaches a fever pitch.

- By the 1990s, Americans
have been through Watergate,

Iran-Contra and the Vietnam War,

and Americans realize that
the federal government

and particularly
the US military,

is keeping a lot of secrets.

- And it makes sense that
the Project Mogul disclosure

by the US government

is met with some skepticism,

because UFOs, alien abductions,
visits from another planet,

this was all in the zeitgeist

and it was reflected by
the movies and TV shows

that we were watching.

We've got "Star Wars,"
"Independence Day,"

and "Close Encounters
of the Third Kind."

Aliens were at the
top of people's minds.

- And a lot of Americans
still genuinely believe

that aliens landed in
Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

- It hasn't gone away.

Roswell continues
to grow in relevance

and there's more and more
talk about the bodies.

The Pentagon is compelled to
come up with an explanation

because balloons
don't have pilots.

- [Laurence] Two
years after the report

revealing Project Mogul,

the government offers
a new explanation.

- In 1997, the Air Force
puts out its second study

called "The Roswell
Report: Case Closed."

- 1997 is the 50th anniversary
of the Roswell incident

and of course, the Pentagon
has to go and spoil the party.

First they double
down on Project Mogul,

but then they address
the issue of the bodies

and they say it's all due

to a program called
Project High Dive.

- After World War II, plane
technology revolutionized

and they began flying
faster and higher

than anyone had ever
thought possible,

and the Air Force wondered,

if our pilots have to eject
at this very high altitude,

could they survive a landing?

- So hundreds of mannequins are
deployed from the atmosphere

and studied as they
tumble back towards Earth.

[tense music]

- There are at least 67 of
these High Dive mannequin drops

in the Eastern New Mexico area.

- Some of 'em begin to
spin at very high rates

and that sends them off course

and some of them actually
land in civilian areas.

- The Air Force concludes
the most likely explanation

for people claiming to
have seen dead alien bodies

was that it's possible that
they actually had come across

the aftermath of a
high altitude situation

where something went wrong

and the experiment came
plunging back to Earth.

- So, Project High Dive

regularly sent
scientists and soldiers

to recover these mannequins

regardless of where they fell,

even in the most remote places.

So the people that
are coming forward

and claiming to have witnessed
soldiers with alien bodies

might in fact have
just simply seen

one of these recovery efforts.

- Given the velocity

with which these
mannequins hit the ground,

you can see why witnesses
might have understood them

to be small alien bodies,

because they likely shattered
and were mangled upon impact.

- [Laurence] Though this
theory provides one explanation,

it raises new questions.

- At the press conference
in which the Air Force

is unveiling this report,

the media points out that
the report explicitly says

that Project High Dive
occurred in the 1950s

while the Roswell
events happened

a couple years
before that, in 1947.

- Faced with this
apparent contradiction,

the Air Force presents an idea

that it's basically in the
heads of the witnesses.

They put forward what is
known as time compression.

- Time compression is

when people are remembering
important events

at a distance of many decades.

They may conflate
two important events

and remember them as though
they happened at the same time.

However, it seems unusual

that people would've
compressed together

memories of such import.

It's possible, it's possible,

but it also kind of
strains credibility.

- And that caused a
lot of UFO researchers

to be absolutely convinced

this was just another
government coverup.

- Despite what the
Air Force is saying,

many of these Roswell witnesses
stand by their memories.

So if we believe that
they saw actual bodies,

where did they come from?

- It may be that there
is a darker explanation

connected to some
of the phenomena

associated with Roswell.

There's still questions
that remain unanswered.

- By the end of the 1990s,

the United States
military had admitted

that its initial statement
about the Roswell crash

was intentionally misleading,

and has offered two very
different explanations

for what witnesses
claim they saw in 1947.

But in 2000, a Polish
journalist's research uncovers

But in 2000, a Polish
journalist's research uncovers

a shocking new possibility

for what actually fell
out of the sky in Roswell.

- We still haven't
got all the answers.

It's still a mystery.

But now there's a new
theory which suggests

that the reason the government
is covering all this up

is because it involves
Nazi technology.

- There are a lot of
people that are convinced

that what was actually witnessed
in the American Southwest

were secret Nazi programs.

- People forget
that in many areas,

Nazi technology was
actually much more advanced

than Allied technology.

The Nazis developed the first
operational jet fighter.

The Nazi V-1, and in
particular the V-2,

were super weapons developed
by Wernher von Braun.

The Allies were desperate to
get their hands on Von Braun

and all the other people
who worked with him.

- Following World War II,

the United States government
started Operation Paperclip,

which brought around
1,500 German scientists

to the United States

and put them to work developing
all kinds of technology

for the American military.

- And Paperclip was not
just highly classified,

but very sensitive

because, of course, we just
had the Nuremberg Trials.

We just had the footage
of the concentration camps

and people were outraged.

Bringing some of these
Nazi scientists over

and putting them on the payroll,

that would not have played
well with the US public.

- Some people think
that the Roswell event

is related to early tests

of these former Nazi
scientists and engineers

performing work in the US.

[tense music]

- In 2000, the Polish
journalist Igor Witkowski

publishes a book about the
research and development

of a particular type of German
aircraft known as Die Glocke.

- This top secret German
aeronautical program

called Die Glocke, or The Bell,

is essentially a vertical
takeoff and landing aircraft.

The idea is to have a jet engine

that effectively
fires straight down,

providing lift, kind
of like a rocket,

but with an air-breathing
jet engine instead.

By changing the direction of
the vanes within the aircraft,

you would be able to
then move it laterally

throughout the sky.

- Any advanced Nazi
rocket technology

would have been developed
by Wernher von Braun.

Even though the Nazis
never unleashed Die Glocke

on the battlefield,

the Allies specifically
pick up Von Braun

so that he can bring
his designs with him

to an Army research base
at White Sands, New Mexico.

- The book describes
this incredible machine

as a glowing, bell-shaped object

not too dissimilar from the
shape of a flying saucer.

- The similarities in shape,
size, color, and movement

between Witkowski's
description of the Glocke

and other witness reports

lead to the theory that
Von Braun is actually

developing and testing a
prototype of the Glocke

for the US military in 1947.

- Witkowski claimed that the
propulsion system for the Bell

was something called Xerum 525.

This is apparently
a purple fluid

that's radioactive
and/or poisonous.

- The night of the
Roswell incident,

a number of eyewitnesses report

that the objects
they saw in the sky

did glow with a kind
of blue-violet glow,

which is the color
of the Xerum 525 gas.

- So, according to this theory,

it was flown from White Sands

and it fell apart
during the test,

and they found a material at
Roswell on the Foster Ranch.

- Allegedly the bodies of the
aliens that were found there

were actually human bodies,

the bodies of test pilots

who were selected
for their small size

in order to fit
into the prototype.

- To keep the crash

of a Nazi-designed
super weapon a secret,

they would need
to pretty quickly

figure out a cover story.

- Given the fact that there was

this flying saucer alien
craze going on at the time,

the government would've
thought that, "Hey,

we could divert
your attention away

from what's really going on,"

and people could grab ahold

to this ridiculous
theory of aliens.

- According to this theory,

the story was shared, however,

without the approval of
higher ranked officials

and so it had to be
quickly retracted,

and that's why the story
of the weather balloon

was substituted for it instead.

When Project Paperclip was
finally declassified, however,

there is no mention of The Bell

or of the testing of
these propulsion systems,

so either it never
really happened

or it was completely covered up.

- [Laurence] In 2011,

Pulitzer Prize-nominated
journalist Annie Jacobsen

proposes a new theory
about the Roswell crash.

- Annie Jacobsen writes
a book contending

that what crashed in
that field in Roswell

was not in fact an
alien spacecraft,

but a Soviet aircraft.

- In 1947, the United States
is the only nation on Earth

that has the bomb.

The Soviets are
desperate to catch up

and need to do something
to maybe close the gap.

- Jacobsen's theory is that
the Soviets devise a plan

to make the Americans think
that they're under attack.

[tense music]

- Two German aerospace
engineers, the Horten brothers,

had been part of a
program in Nazi Germany

to try to create what we would
refer to as a flying wing.

To the outside observer,

it looks kind of like a
flat, almost oblong shape.

What the flying wing does

is tries to extend the
range of an aircraft.

The Germans were convinced

that if American cities were
threatened by German attack,

then the Americans would
not have the stomach

to continue the fight.

- Jacobsen argues that in
the years after the war,

the Horten brothers
went to the Soviet Union

and began to design
new technology

and work on projects
for Joseph Stalin.

- The brothers come up
with this disc-shaped craft

based on the plans
for their flying wing

that is made of
high-tech materials

that's really good at
evading radar detection.

- [Laurence] According
to Jacobsen's theory,

Joseph Stalin saw another
potential use for this aircraft.

- They want to develop nuclear
technology of their own

so that they can counter
American world domination.

- This plot is meant
to, as the theory goes,

buy Joseph Stalin more time,

and Russian scientists more time

to develop their atomic weapons.

- Stalin comes up with this plan
to distract the US military

by staging this fake invasion.

- Americans will
be so freaked out

and disturbed by
the idea of a UFO

that it will distract
the American people,

the American government,

and stop them from continuing
on with their atomic program.

- There is precedence
for pandemonium

being spurred by a
supposed alien invasion.

In 1938, there was
a radio reading

of Orson Welles' "The
War of the Worlds"

which was so convincing
that people actually thought

we were being invaded by aliens.

- Joseph Stalin is
pretty convinced

that the American
public is gullible

and he's willing to authorize

even the most
harebrained schemes

to try to convince the Americans

of the possibility of
invasion from outer space.

- As the theory goes, in the
first week of July 1947,

Stalin orders the flying disc
to be flown into US airspace.

- They decide that they're
going to stage this incident

in the southwestern part
of the United States

because there are a lot
of bases in that area.

- White Sands, Area 51, Roswell,

these are all places

where military technology
was being developed

and where the Soviets hoped

that they could distract
Americans from that technology.

- We don't know how
this flying disc,

if it was a Soviet
flying disc, crashed.

Was it shot down?

Did it crash of its own accord?

But however it happened,

the theory is that it
came down at Roswell.

- And what's funny about this

is that if Jacobsen's
theory is correct,

then the original story
put out by the military

saying that it was a flying
disc or flying saucer

that was recovered, is
pretty much the true story.

- Annie Jacobsen's theory
is this was all designed

to sow as much
confusion as possible.

But the military changed
their story within 24 hours,

and this second
official explanation

immediately scuppered
Stalin's plan

because if it's a
weather balloon,

clearly there's
gonna be no panic.

Now to close that nuclear gap,

Stalin's best bet then becomes
putting all the resources

into developing the bomb,

which the Soviet Union
actually does in 1949.

- [Laurence] In 2017,

an unexpected new theory about
the Roswell crash emerges,

one that asks just how far
the US government might go

to keep its edge
in the Cold War.

- After World War II,

the United States government
recognizes this need

to keep tabs on
the Soviet Union,

and the best way to do that

is to develop high altitude,
reconnaissance aircraft.

- There is no such thing as
artificial satellites in 1947,

so what they needed was aircraft

that can fly over
enemy defenses.

- It became strategically
imperative for the United States

to fly reconnaissance aircraft
at ever higher altitudes.

Prior to 1947,

the highest altitude
anyone had ever flown at

in a fixed-wing aircraft
was 58,000 feet.

Mount Everest is
29,000 feet high,

and most commercial
aircraft fly at 36,000 feet.

You are talking significantly
above any of that.

- And the higher you go,

the density of the atmosphere
falls off exponentially

so there's less and
less oxygen available.

- So that creates all kinds
of challenges for the pilots.

A lot of pilots pass out,

lose consciousness sometimes
for minutes at a time.

The US government was going
to have to run a lot of tests

on how that would be possible.

- There is a theory that
the United States Air Force

was conducting human experiments

using individuals who would
not be missed by society.

[tense music]

- In 2017, British
researcher Nick Redfern

makes a connection

between these high-altitude
weather balloons

that were used for
these experiments

and what fell out of
the sky at Roswell.

- So it's Nick
Redfern's contention

that the Air Force
is going to use

these modified weather balloons

to start testing how
the body responds

to such extremely high altitude.

- According to Redfern's theory,

the people that were
being used in these tests

were pulled from
asylums, prisons,

and places where
no one would notice

and no one would complain
about them being missing.

- Redfern hypothesizes that
they attach these gondolas

to the balloon

and they put people
in the gondola

whom they are forcing to
engage in this experiment.

In the case of
the Roswell crash,

one of these balloons
separated from the gondola

and the balloon would've
crashed in one place,

the gondola with the bodies of
the victims in another place.

- This would possibly explain
all the different elements

of the Roswell crash.

Some people saw bodies,
some people didn't.

Some people saw
debris at this site

and others at a site
much further away.

You have two different crashes
of two very different things.

- According to Redfern,

one of the individuals
that he interviewed

worked at Fort Stanton,

about 30 miles
away from Roswell,

and claimed to have been
part of a recovery effort

rushing a grievously
injured individual

to the base facilities.

- One person was
treated for injuries

but apparently died
a week or so later.

Is this where we have the
story of the Roswell survivor?

- Redfern's theory has
some historic plausibility

because there was a project

where they did
experiments on people.

The American
government conducted

the famous Tuskegee experiment

where men who were
tested to have syphilis

were monitored instead
of being cured.

They were used as test subjects.

- By the time of
the Roswell crash,

the world is hearing
these stories

of concentration camp victims
being experimented on,

and the idea that you
could experiment on people

who weren't giving their consent

was condemned and banned
by the Nuremberg Code.

Certainly, the US
wouldn't want to be seen

as engaging in the same
behavior as the Nazis.

- Redfern alleges a
massive government coverup.

He claims that
government functionaries

destroyed all of the records
and cremated the bodies

as a means of covering
up the horrible research

that was being carried out.

- [Laurence] Like many
of the other theories

around Roswell, this one
only raises more questions.

- They would've used
adults in their tests,

but people who saw the bodies

claim that they
were child-sized.

So that doesn't square
with Redfern's theory.

- Whatever we believe,

whether people are
skeptics or believers,

Roswell is real,
something crashed.

But the question is, what?

It's not necessarily,

as the military would like to
say on Roswell, case closed.

- Today, the town of
Roswell has become

a thriving tourist
destination for UFO fanatics,

but that's only one of
the possible explanations

for what happened at Foster
Ranch over 80 miles away.

Whether this was the crash site
of a top secret test flight,

a Cold War scheme,

or something truly unearthly,

most of the eyewitnesses
have long since passed away

and the search for
answers continues.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.

[mysterious music]