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Interview with W.W. "Mac" Brazel
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Interview with Mac Brazel
Roswell Daily Chronicle, July 9, 1947 |
W.W. Brazel, 48, Lincoln county rancher living 30
miles south east of Corona, today told his story of finding what the army at first
described as a flying disk, but the publicity which attended his find caused him to add
that if he ever found anything short of a bomb he sure wasn't going to say anything about
it.
Brazel was brought here late yesterday by W.E. Whitmore, of radio station KGFL, had his
picture taken and gave an interview to the Record and Jason Kellahin, sent here from the
Albuquerque bureau of the Associated Press to cover the story. The picture he posed for
was sent out over the AP telephoto wire sending machine specially set up in the Record
office by R. D. Adair, AP wire chief sent here for the sole purpose of getting out the
picture and that of sheriff George Wilcox, to whom Brazel originally gave the information
of his find.
Brazel related that on June 14 he and 8-year-old son, Vernon were about 7 or 8 miles from
the ranch house of the J.B. Foster ranch, which he operates, when they came upon a large
area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and
sticks.
At the time Brazel was in a hurry to get his round made and he did not pay much
attention to it. But he did remark about what he had seen and on July 4 he, his wife, Vernon, and a daughter Betty, age 14, went back to the spot and gathered up quite
a bit of the debris.
The next day he first heard about the flying disks, and he wondered if what he had found
might be the remnants of one of these.
Monday he came to town to sell some wool and while here he went to see sheriff George
Wilcox and "whispered kinda confidential like" that he might have found a flying
disk.
Wilcox got in touch with the Roswell Army Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a man in
plain clothes accompanied him home, where they picked up the rest of the pieces of the
"disk" and went to his home to try to reconstruct it.
According to Brazel they simply could not reconstruct it at all. They tried to make a kite
out of it, but could not do that and could not find any way to put it back together so
that it would fit.
Then Major Marcel brought it to Roswell and that was the last he heard of it until the
story broke that he had found a flying disk.
Brazel said that he did not see it fall from the sky and did not see it before it was torn
up, so he did not know the size or shape it might have been, but he thought it might have
been about as large as a table top. The balloon which held it up, if that was how it
worked, must have been about 12 feet long, he felt, measuring the distance by the size of
the room in which he sat. 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. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have
weighed maybe five pounds.
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.
No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate
that some sort of attachment may have been used.
Brazel said that he had previously found two weather balloons on the ranch, but that what
he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these.
"I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon," he said.
"But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time
getting me to say anything about it."
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