July 9, 1947, Brawley (Calif.) News, Front Page
'TWAS WEATHER KITE; "FLYING SAUCER" FOUND NEAR BRAWLEY
Northend 'on Beams' in Try to Solve Mystery of Objects Reported in Air
A little late, perhaps, but on the beam is Imperial Valley on this "flying saucer" business, and more to the point it's the northend that's on the beam.
Yep, one of the dinguses has been found right close to Brawley six miles east on the Wiest road. It lies before this writer at this very moment. The object was found this morning early by B. F. Clayton, 145 B. St., Brawley, as he was driving his car along the highway.
The thing itself is a wreck. But it has been reassembled to the point where it readily can be identified as the type of kite used by the weather bureau for wind direction and velocity. It is made of heavy paper with tin-foil coating which makes it glisten no end up in the air with the sun's rays reflecting from its shiny sides.
NOT FAST
The contraption is easy to see when within seeing distance, but it must be left to the imagination to see it moving any 500 or 1200 miles per hour, as some of the "saucers" have been reported as doing. It is carried by an ordinary gas-inflated balloon and entirely is subject to the whims of the wind. And no one yet has ever heard of wind velocity to the tune of the imagination of the persons who have or have not seen the "flying saucers."
The Northend doesn't claim to have settled the mystery of the "saucers" but it does actually have one of the probable explanations for the nation-wide spree of hallucination.
The kite was taken to the Brawley police station by Clayton and Chief Joe Gabard turned it over to the Brawley News where it is on display.
An inquiry at the El Centro Naval air station brought the information that the station does not use this type wind indicator. Just a plain balloon, the commander said.
NEAREST PLACE
He nearest likely place from which the kite-balloon thingamabob may originate is near Yuma, and it is not known definitely that this is the case. One of the kites was found near Roswell, New Mexico, this week.
Reason for the tin-foil covering, is that the course of the kite is followed by radar which makes it possible to chart it farther away and higher up than the ordinary balloon.
From the condition of the northend find, the kite went through a heavy blow as it was a wreck and somewhere in its course its carrier mate really has "gone with the wind." The balloon carrier will burst at a certain altitude or it may collapse from gas leakage, experts point out.
Meanwhile, the United Press reported reports of flying saucers whizzing through the sky fell off sharply today as the army and navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors.
One by one, persons who thought they had their hands on the $3000 offered for a genuine flying saucer found their hands full of nothing.
Headquarters of the 8th army air force at Forth Worth, Texas, announced that the wreckage of a tin-foil covered object found on a New Mexico ranch was nothing more than the remnants of a weather observation balloon. AAF headquarters in Washington reportedly delivered a "blistering" rebuke to the offers at the Roswell N.M. base for suggesting that it was a "flying disc."
A 18-inch aluminum disc equipped with two radio condensers, a fluorescent light switch, and copper tubing found by F. G. Harston near the Shreveport, La., Business district was declared by police to be "obviously the work of a prankster."
U.S. naval intelligence officers at Pearl Harbor investigated claims by 100 navy men that they saw a mysterious object "silvery colored, like aluminum with no wires or tail," sail over Honolulu at a rapid clip late yesterday. The description fit a weather balloon, but five of the men familiar with weather observation balloons swore that it was not a balloon.
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VICTORVILLE (Ca), July 9 (UP) A weather balloon and its kite were turned over to the army air base today after a prospector, Frank Cedar, found it in the desert 35 miles from here.
The gadget contained radio equipment that would record weather conditions as the balloon ascended 12 miles up.
