How did lithium-ion batteries work? And how does this contribute to their potential dangers? Last week riskbites looked at the hazards and risks of these batteries. This week we dive deeper into the science of how they work. Lithium-ion batteries are a great technology. They allow large amounts of energy to be squeezed into a very small volume and they allow that energy to be extracted very fast. This is good news for users of cell phones, computers and digital cameras. It's even better news if you have an electric car and want to drive it further than the corner store. And it's fantastic news for airlines where lighter planes reduce environmental impact and increase profits. But these benefits are not risk-free. Lithium-ion batteries store energy chemically and release it electrically. Lithium-rich materials such as lithium-cobalt oxide, the battery's positive electrode, is separated from a lithium-storing material such as carbon, the negative electrode. The stuff that separates the electrodes, the electrolyte, allows positively charged lithium-ions to move from one material to the other. This electrolyte is usually based on an organic solvent. When the battery's charged, lithium-ions are pushed up a chemical energy slope from the positive electrode into the negative one. Now we have an electrode stuffed with lithium that wants nothing more than to slip back down that energy slope to where it came from. But it can't do this without some help. In moving the lithium from one electrode to the other, a second energy slope has been created, an electrical one. Each lithium-ion that moves to the carbon is associated with an electron that would love to slip back down to the positive electrode. But it can't unless an electric connection is made. Making this connection allows the electrons to flow. And for each electron that makes the journey, a lithium-ion is kicked out of the carbon and slides down the corresponding chemical energy slope. Electrons flow, ions move, the battery discharges and work is done. So far, so good. The battery can store a lot of energy because you can squeeze a lot of lithium-ions, which are relatively small, inside the carbon electrode. And because the ions can move easily between the electrodes, the energy can be extracted fast, which means lots of power. So where are the hazards and what turns these into risks? The primary hazard, the thing that leads to the most safety problems with lithium-ion batteries, is the electrolyte. In many cases, this is flammable and corrosive, fine if it stays where it's supposed to, but not so good if it gets out. As last week's Risk Bites mentioned, the two things that you do not want to do with the lithium-ion battery are to mechanically compromise it so that the electrolyte is released or to allow it to get too hot. And the thing that you really don't want to do is to allow both to happen at the same time. The problem is, the properties that make lithium-ion batteries so useful also make them potentially dangerous. As those lithium-ions roll down the chemical energy slope, they release energy in the form of heat. The more electrical current that's drawn, the more ions roll down the slope and the hotter the battery gets. Usually, great care is taken to limit the current that can be drawn, but if the battery short circuits, things can get very hot, very fast. This is not a problem if the battery remains intact, but if there's a mechanical breach, the subsequent release of electrolyte into a hot environment could be a fire and corrosion hazard. Because of this, an internal short circuit is the last thing you want. Lithium-ion batteries have an insulating membrane between the electrodes to prevent this from happening, but if this is compromised, electrons flow, ions move, and we have a problem. To make matters worse, the hotter the battery gets, the more readily the lithium-ions roll down the chemical energy slope and the faster things heat up. In the worst case, this positive feedback loop leads to thermal runaway and a battery that thinks it's an incendiary device. Internal short circuits can be caused by manhandling, but they can also come about in other ways. As the negative electrode becomes stuffed with lithium atoms, it expands. Too much lithium and this expansion can mechanically stress the battery and compromise the internal insulation. Overcharging can also lead, in some cases, to electron conducting metallic deposits between the electrodes. Good news for electrons, not so good for anyone using the battery. Well designed lithium-ion batteries that are used sensibly are relatively low risk as the inherent hazards are well contained. But as with many complex technologies, a great deal of diligence is needed to ensure the risks remain low, irrespective of the hazards. For more information on lithium-ion batteries, make sure you check out the links below and stay safe.


Warum unser Web nachhaltiger werden muss und wie wir das anstellen. Und eurer Referent ist der Niklas.  Ein großer Applaus bitte für Niklas. Dankeschön. Danke. Danke, dass ich hier sein kann. So, heute reden wir über das Planet-Friendly Web. Welche Effekte hat das Internet auf der Welt? Und wie können wir sie ändern und wie können wir sie minimieren? Aber bevor wir beginnen, müssen wir über dieses Bild von Professor Julia Steinberger. Mit dieser Illustration hat sie versucht, 4-8-Jährige zu erklären, was Klima-Veränderung wirklich bedeutet, was Greenhouse-Gasses wirklich tun. Und es war wirklich interessant für mich, wie leicht es sein kann. So, im Prinzip ist es so, dass wir eine Atmosphäre um unsere Erde haben, und das macht es sicher, dass unsere Erde nicht durch den Sonnenblatt geblieben ist, sondern dass es auch warm ist.   So, dass unsere Erde schwerer ist. Das bedeutet, dass als unsere Erde schwerer ist, das Wasser-Zirkel wird ändern. Auch mehr Wasser wird ein Teil der Atmosphäre sein. Das Problem ist, dass es so etwas wie diese gibt.   Also, wir fühlen das, z.B. mit Hurricane Dorian in den USA, in Amerika. So, Schööpfer, wer hat das vorhin gesehen?  Oh, ein paar Leute, das ist schön.  Was Sie sehen, sind 100 Streifen. Jede Streifen repräsentiert ein Jahr und hat die gewöhnliche Temperatur in diesem Jahr.  Und man kann genauer sehen, dass das die Klima-Streifen-Version für Deutschland ist.   Aber wir sind auch von dieser Stelle geimpft. Also, talk to the forest keepers, they are already noticing the effects in their everyday life. Und wir in our everyday life, or most of us, they are aware of this. They try to act sustainably by, for example, purchasing organic products. They are not buying coal energy. They might ship parcels climate-neutrally. So these are things that we do actively in our everyday life because the environment is important to us, but not in our professional life. So this most often doesn't go beyond, please think of the environment before printing this email. Most of you have probably seen this before in some email from some company. For many, this is the only connection between environmental protection and their professional life. Who of you has seen this on a website before? Show of hands. So, less hands here. We can see text like, I've seen previously quite often, but this here is not so common. A radical example of a website that does it differently is the low-tech magazine. I don't know who of you knows this, but you can see this yellow area here. The yellow area shows how much battery the server has left. The server is only powered through solar energy collected at some balcony in Barcelona. There's a little respiratory pie there with a solar panel attached to it. And if the sun is not shining for a duration that's too long, then this will be reflected here on the website in the photo. You can see some uptime statistics. Two weeks are left if the battery is depleting. For example, if the sun isn't shining enough or too many people are reaching out to load this website. We often talk about flying less because flights are very harmful to the environment. There's 830 million tons of carbon dioxide caused by the flight industry globally. But the thing we talk and think about less is the internet, which emits roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide. It's sad that until 2020 the internet is going to emit twice as much as flights. But we never talk about this. We never talk about changing our streaming behavior. We never talk about if we really, really need that website with the big pictures, but we mostly talk about flights. And this is what I'm trying to change with my talk today, because we need to keep in mind that the internet is made up of data. Data is essentially electrical impulses and those need energy. And energy production causes greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide specifically. This is a very simple formula we need to keep in mind when we code websites or develop digital products. Data as energy is carbon dioxide. I think most of you are aware of how the internet works. But not so long ago, when advertising was printing flyers or magazines were printed, this was a difference. Back then we had the printing process which used resources once. Then we had to distribute that and transport paper, etc. Then it doesn't matter how many people read this newspaper or how long it stays in our cupboard, it doesn't use any additional resources. It's different with digital products. Digital products use the most energy when they're being used intensively. For example, because packets are being sent to the DNS server, to the web server and then they're getting sent back. All this uses energy and the more people use a product, the more energy is used and is needed. What we need more of is cool people who think about making our products more sustainable. We often have people who really, really think hard about how the economic sustainability. We also have people who are concerned with the search engine rank of the page. We have people thinking about at best the accessibility of the page but which we don't have today. Our professional people who are concerned with the sustainability of a site or how it might be designed more energy efficiently. Which features might need less energy than others? We need more of this. In the next 30 minutes you're going to get a crash course about this professional. I've distributed this talk into three parts. The first part is about energy, which energy is used to run my page. Then there's about the resources I send and then finally we're about the responsibility towards our users. Before we start with that, let me introduce myself. I'm from Schwerin and I'm very concerned with the influence of technology on the environment and on people and the positive impact that can be made here. Let's start with energy. Energy is the most simple topic. Facebook started very early by switching their data centers to renewable energy. Facebook, Google, Rockspace and Salesforce joined them but there's still products and companies who refuse that or aren't very transparent like that. Twitter doesn't publish any transparency reports which energy they use to run the data centers. It is estimated that the energy they use is 5% renewable and we need to change that. It's rather easy to see if a site uses renewable energy or not. There's the Green Web Foundation. If you call up a website, you see this screen. You can enter the domain there and then you get results on whether they use renewable energy or not. Also, if you run a website yourself, then you can access a registry of green hosters. So if you realize your hoster doesn't use renewable energy, you can see who to switch to who uses renewable energies and move your website. If you've done that. Then you've already achieved a lot. So now we talk about the resources. Which resources do I send over the wire? So there's a really cool tool which helps us estimate how far I've already come. It's called Caribbean Calculator. So I've done this for Wikipedia here. So you can just enter a domain and then you get a little report. So Wikipedia emits about 0.22 grams of CO2 per visit. They use sustainable energy. That's nice. And then if you enter the correct number of page views, then you get a calculation of how much CO2 is really being used up or created by this website. And you get some comparison values. The issue that we have is that we have faster and faster bandwidth. So we don't really have to care anymore about the size of a website. This graph shows how the average size of a website has changed over the years. Right now we are at 3.5 megabytes as the size of an average website. 2011, this looked much different. So if we look at the yellow area here, that's the HTML part of the website. That's the stuff that is actually relevant because it's the content. And that part is actually getting smaller instead of larger. So we have less content on our website. We want to say less, but our website is getting bigger. And that's because we're using more and more images, even more high resolution pictures, more videos. And that's really not necessary because we don't have anything additional to say. Why should we increase the size of our website? A different aspect of this is advertisement. This is a graphic created by the New York Times. And it shows in yellow which part of the size of a website is actually advertisement on news website. And which part is the content, that's the blue part. And you can see the absolute mismatch. But first you have to load 15 megabytes of tracking scripts and all that sort of stuff before I can actually see the content that is only 4 megabytes in size. So there is definitely potential to optimize this. The large advertisement corporations like Apple, Google and Co. They are trying to change this a little, but at the moment there is just a huge mismatch. So not only is it important because of privacy and security to use ad blockers, but also from an ecological perspective. This is an example. It's webspeed.net and you can enter a URL and see how much energy I could save with an ad blocker, how many requests to just be able to evaluate how much is using an ad blocker really worth. Then there is also this nice tool for all of you who are programming websites themselves. This is really interesting. It's called the performance budget calculator. Is any of you using during the creation of websites a performance budget? One to three hands are shown nice. So this is about defining that my website will load on an adge network within five seconds for example. So that's my budget that I have that I can translate to resources. So if I enter my goal here and the type of connection and then how much time it should take to load this website, then I get an approximation of how much data I can put on my website, how much space I have for HML, CSS, etc. And the advantage is that I have to really think about what I should put on my website and what I should not put on it. And this is really cool if you define this goal and then the customer wishes for a new feature and then you can talk to the customer about it and you can then say we can do this but then we will miss our performance budget or we have to remove something else. So then you have a concrete measurement with this tool to work with. So I have an example here that I brought with me. Two years ago I was using a large German publisher with four letters as an example but they didn't find it so cool and they asked me nicely to please stop using them as an example. So now I am using Wikipedia So I did some napkin math So there are of course many more aspects but I just wanted to show you the dimension of what we are talking about here if we change something. So I looked at the front page of Wikipedia so what is loading each time I look at Wikipedia and that's of course the logo. The logo, I downloaded this on my computer and I checked the size 45 Kilobytes doesn't sound so large sounds small and then I checked this image with ImageOptim it's a free tool for Mac but there's also others and it compressed the image for me losslessly and you can see here a saving of 56.5% that you could achieve to end up with about 20 Kilobytes Wikipedia has 170 million page views per month multiplied by the saving 25 KB and would remove some caching then you end up with 4300 Gigabytes of traffic that you could potentially save with this According to the Federal Environmental Office we need about 5.000 Watt hours of energy to send a Gigabyte of data if I put this into my calculation then I end up with 15.000 Watt hours of energy that I could save with this measures that's about 10 single households of energy usage so pretty big numbers we're talking about here that's about 7 tons of CO2 emissions that we could save each month with this measure so how much is 7 tons actually with 7 tons of CO2 budget you could fly from Hamburg to London 16 times return so that's really a large amount of CO2 that we're saving by compressing this logo which only takes about 2 minutes but this is of course not the only thing you could do Videos are a huge part of the global data transmissions about 60% of the worldwide data transmissions are video so video on demand is 34% 13% alone are just Netflix that's a big number Pornography with 27% is a big topic as well so maybe you can think about that this evening to keep this in mind there is a nice tool also made by the GreenWebFoundation co-developed by Chris Adams everybody of you probably knows Lighthouse if you're into web development to test your website on different parameters and what this foundation has developed is called Greenhouse and additionally to the other factors that Google is looking at anyway we also now calculate a sustainability score so that you can automatically test your website on sustainability but also Apple has now a feature in its Safari Browser they added a feature that allows you to check the energy consumption of a website visit to calculate this or to measure this but not only what happens on the page is important for the sustainability but also which language I use to program my website so for example if I look at the left column here C has the least has the best energy efficiency 2 years ago Python has one of the highest so this is also something to keep in mind when you're programming apps and what is the goal of that app and which language you should use I'm a huge fan of text only websites for example here you see NPR the National Public Radio from the States they have a text only website but also CNN for example has one and I thought to myself I don't earn my money creating websites with the best design but I should try also doing this with my own website and that's what I did I used only HTML and I really want to give this to you as a homework assignment please try to reduce things and if you if it is not noticeable then you can explain what is going on for example I did this I put my website looks broken to you read why so that people can understand why my website looks like this and then also link to my old website which had a very complex design but this of course saves a lot of bandwidth just to create some attention that is not only professional when it has an amazing design but also when it is sustainable CNN by the way they didn't start the text only website for ecological reasons but when Hurricane Irma hit New Orleans and the mobile network was pretty much down so they launched this site because it was the only source of information that people still had and could access so it's there's also this aspect now I have the green user experience checklist from Man Overboard which summarizes what you can do reduce images, optimize videos you could also deactivate auto play, use less difference funds etc I think you all know how to save data one thing I want to send you home with is that the best designed decision so if you are agreeing about whether a thing is necessary or not maybe just decide not to now last part of my talk, responsibility towards the user it's important to ensure that the user can avoid most unnecessary clicks I've heard that there are people who use SEO to get to their sites even if they don't have the information people look for so people come to their sites don't find the information and look for a new source so this is unnecessary data traffic we don't need this a clear navigational structure and clear communication helps a lot and the content should be accessible to everyone the problem is that idealistic arguments in communication with the customer, they don't help much this is why we need a business case for this the business case comes from Amazon and the Stanford University they conducted a study and found out that Amazon made more money with every second loading time they cut in their site it's a very concrete business case on why you should optimize your page but you can also win new users as we can see with CNN Lite we improve user experience sites load faster we spare the data volume of our users we can save money in hosting especially with big sites there's a huge impact and it also has an impact for search engines so what now everybody who feels obliged to web standards should keep this in mind in their future work the W3C has laid this down in the ethical web principles that the web should be a sustainable platform also there's a great community climateaction.tech it's a slack community there's also a community for you there's impact makers I can really recommend them really recommend to join them there's also Tim Frick thanks for some advice we'll see you in the next video thank you bye thank you thank you thank you go planet everybody do what you can and also if you're training new people professionally academically that you put this subject on the agenda because this is very very underrepresented here take it with you pass it on to your trainees, to your students and put it on the curriculum thank you for your attention and you're going to find all the resources and my sites under this link and now I'll take questions this is your applause thank you Niklas, thank you so much I didn't know that it is relevant which programming language you use learn something new again so we have some time for questions if you have a question if you have any questions just go to one of them and I will hopefully see you so let's start with micro number one thank you so much so what about more complex algorithms to compress data and then transfer them and then decompress them so what's more efficient is a smaller file size but more computational power so I cannot really answer that because you would have to calculate this on a case by case basis so on a general basis I cannot answer that I'm sorry thank you but maybe that's an idea that somebody could look at number two please hello my question is in the middle there was a rough approximation per request that so was about this and that CO2 so the difference between static websites and PHP scripts and all of that with database and so on was at the back end level that all fell under the table is there perhaps some more detailed view of this a comparison between static websites and for example WordPress I can definitely put some resources for that to the link collection behind the link that you can see here you're definitely right that in this calculation this definitely fell under the table I really wanted to break this down as much as possible just to give a rough approximation thank you number four please there is also somebody hello thank you for the talk my question in my company if you're not so important for example as a working student then it's really difficult to get these topics escalated to the important people what are some best practices that you could do to get this through the different levels of hierarchy in my company sorry I didn't really understand so once again so if you're not so important at this company and you want to make this topic known what are some ways to get this known and actually establish this at your company that's a good question so get on the nerves of these people that is probably the most efficient I mean you can probably also just calculate a lot of things on your concrete product so for example look at it and say so if we do this and that this will be the result we had one customer where they're running a large cinema franchise and now we reduced the resolution of the trailers and that allowed us to decrease the hosting cost significantly for example what you would have to calculate on a concrete basis what could I do and then just forward this calculation to the responsible and otherwise just try to get as many colleagues as possible on your side and you don't always have to start at the very top you don't have to start at the CEO or the department leader but you can also just in your everyday work try to realize that for example and if they're not agreeing then maybe you can escalate it to the next level and see what they think about it so that at some point it might become part of the workflow and definitely try to get colleagues on board so start small and then fight until the top so that's a job for company forensics number 5 and number 2 and then we also have internet questions so now first number 5 please thank you at our enterprise the issue is that we often deal with companies who often don't take into account the jump off rates a little bit louder please I don't was nothing hurt everything's okay so the question that I am asking is do you have other tips how to make large corporations aware that this is actually important well that really depends on your company that you're talking about there are some large corporations that that do their own Buckhams so that they can potentially put that topic into place I can't really say it's always difficult as a large company to just go to the highest level of hierarchy and say oh yeah I have an idea here I want to talk to you about this so then you just have to see one of the possibilities at your company and how you could proceed with this and if anything else I'm always a big friend of just starting fighting until you succeed so if you have concrete examples which you can bring forward then it's often easier to convince the leadership of the company to actually pull through this so the young man at number two please thank you for waiting thank you for the talk regarding the ad blockers I have a question so there are some publishers like Spiegel online or the standard of Austrian which say if you are using an ad blocker then you cannot view our website is there a strategy against this or a good argument against this so my strategy for this is to pay for content that I consume a lot so I understand that the publishers want to earn money with the content and they should journalism it costs money that's no question and the websites that I often look at that I consume a lot for those I pay simply and besides there's only the strategy of disabling the ad blocker for this particular page thank you one and a half minutes maybe one more question from the internet dear signal angel yeah you talked about the blue angel and that you are part of this can you talk a bit more about that and what are the criteria you said you are involved with this so I was involved with this in different expert rounds we met at the federal office for environment and different universities were also involved and together we worked on this we discussed criticized and changed and general this is just a certification that you can apply for as a software product and right now that's only applicable for native software that you saw on your computer so apps or other things are not relevant as of now but they're working on this the principle behind this is that either you succeed in all the criteria or if you don't you just don't get the blue angel so an example for this is that as energy efficient as possible and that your software runs on old hardware so that you can use them for longer and maybe that you can give a guarantee that a guarantee that hardware from the last 5-10 years is compatible for example so it's a very long catalog and who's interested can go to my address and then I can also perhaps send you this in advance great so thank you so much maybe a small or a large round of applause


Now let's take a look at a couple of objects in the small Magellanic cloud. At the heart of the SMC lies cluster NGC-602. The high energy radiation blasting out from the young stars is sculpting the inner edge of the outer portions of the nebula, slowly eroding it away and eating into the material beyond. Elephant trunk-like dust pillars point towards the hot blue stars and are all telltale signs of their eroding effect.


Oh, oh, sure, yeah, well that's east of Richmond, South Newport Airport. Yeah, I think Richmond was where a red man lived or in that vicinity. Yeah, Richmond, Virginia. Yeah. All right. And we got speed? Yeah. Okay. Oh, Phyllis, tell me about this period in 1947 during the summer when you came to see your father at Roswell. What did your father do in Roswell? My father was the sheriff of Chet's County. And they lived in the courthouse, the jail in the sheriff's quarters were in the same building. And they lived on the downstairs floor and then downstairs was an office with two rooms. And the jail was upstairs and the prisoners were taken into the office and then up the steps to the jail. And were you living with your folks in 1914? No, I wasn't living with them. I was there visiting. My husband and I were both students after World War II in Las Vegas, Mexico, in Highlands University. And we were there several years after World War II to finish up our degrees which we had started before the war. And our education had been interrupted by World War II. So we, in fact, but I sometimes did not go quite as much because I had a young son and he liked to stay with my mother. And if I was busy going to school and we also owned a little business and we worked in it. And so he'd stay there and probably he'd been there for a while. Or I don't know whether at that point I was actually in school or just going back and forth and staying up there while I was staying in the room. So you came to visit your father at his office one day in July, do you think? Yes, I came to. I was reading the, you could just walk into his office from the Sheriff's porch. The paper came out with this and I didn't read the paper. What do you remember about what the paper said? About the headlines and the lines also. And I don't remember what he told me about it before then or not. I don't know. But it was so interesting. And it's some way inside of me and I loved it and I wanted it to be true. And I went in to talk to him about it. And he was getting all these phones. And he had, I remember he came into the kitchen and told me that he had a bone eye with the phone calls. And that he had just talked to London people and that he was very excited about that. Because, well, the distance and the times, you know, it's not the same as faxing something or sending it off distance now. The world was a lot bigger back then. Yes, it was. And, you know, another thing about the World War, they hadn't really rebuilt things. All the things hadn't been rebuilt from World War II. Now in America, I know we weren't bombed, but they didn't build any washing machines, they didn't build any new cars, they didn't build anything, dryers. They did nothing because they spent all their time on the military and weapons and those things. So we had to wait a while to get a car. We had to wait a while to get a washing machine because it was from the market. So you've read about the swine saucer incident in the newspaper. You went in and asked him about it. What did he tell you? Ask him, do you think this is true? And he said, I don't know why when I was a little come all the way in here and brought that stuff that hadn't been important. And that he didn't, that he had to be something that he thought was important. And he had sent deputies out to see about it. And he thought, I'd see, so originally he thought it was true, but he didn't have any information. He was trying to send the deputies to get some more information. And by the way, the first thing he did was call the air force because that seemed to be important to him. And I said, why did you call them? And he said, because I have an agreement with them that if any airman is in trouble in Roswell, any kind of problem about any airplane or flight or anything like that, I'd call them immediately. We don't have room in our jail for those, and they come and take care of it. We'll just keep them a little while. They just held them until the MPs come here. And the flight, the same of you, felt that this had something to do with the air force or that was their business. He felt that was their big one. What happened? Did he send the deputies out? And he sent the deputies out. And I think, I'm of the opinion that he sent the deputies out once. And that they saw a large black area, blackened area, the grass, the rangeland. And that they came back because it was dark. And then when they came back, he had to wait until the next day to send them back again to find something else. And when they went back again, the army had blocked it off, didn't let them in. I don't know why just today, but it was called the army then. And see, I think Roswell told them how to get there, but they, you know, there's a long distance between Roswell and Corona. You can't see them somebody out and have them search over a large ranch or look for anything. And half of them really, I don't know what time they went, but it takes time. So the deputies were turned away by the army air force? Yes. And then I think it was then the next day that the army air force all came to the office and my sister came in. And what happened when you got to your private office?  We visited Roswell once a week. And when we arrived, I noticed that there were jeeps and some people, you know, from the air force there. And of course I went right in with my small child and my husband Jay went into the office and he said to my father, what's going on George? And he said, well, we've had a man come in saying that there is a fine saucer and bringing a piece of things. And said, I don't know what it is. And said we were investigating it. And he said, what was it? And he said, well, it looked like burnt grass out there. And my husband came back into the office, I mean back into the kitchen. My mother prepared the meals for the prisoners and we were in the kitchen. And we didn't discuss it anymore or anything. And as the years went along, mother would say, oh, remember the time when we had the fine saucer and Roswell and papers were out? And where I live, I'm very isolated. I go 20 miles from my mail one way and 20 miles back. So I'm not accustomed to getting a newspaper very often. And I have no telephones. I have no electricity at that time because we're in the rural area. So it was another week, see then, before I probably went back to town and knew anything too particular about it because I didn't stay all night. I went in and turned around and came back and had milk out and had to get home too at night. So I really was not as familiar with it as Phyllis because she was staying all night there because she was going to school at the Las Vegas. But as the years went along, mother would always say, and I also know of an article that she wrote that said, we do not as to this day know whether it was a flying saucer or what because they told her, my husband, Mr. Wilcox, that she would say, don't you say a word? So he didn't and he was very calm about it.  Who told it not to say a word? The Air Force did. When they came and picked up the piece or whatever they did, she said they recommended him. That's what the words were in the little article she wrote and I had it because she wrote a great deal and she wrote an article on their four years at the county jail. They were not in the county jail, but that's what she said, four years in the county jail, but they were there as working people in the jail. So on the very back page of her article, she wrote the day the flying saucer was in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Do you remember what she said that day was? The date was not on the paper. That's the reason I don't. She said on the outside of this article, she said I sent this article to the Reader's Digest in 1980. See, she had typed it over if she had a whole bunch of type written things, but they did not accept it. That was written on the outside. She also said that she, I don't know whether she took the article or she spoke to the Historical Society in Roswell. It said Roswell Historical Society in New Mexico in 1980. So she might have taken the article over to the Historical Society. I do not know of it. Did your father describe to either of you what this material that Mac Brazell brought and looked like? Not to me. He said he brought some material with him and some junk. Like, I don't know what it is. That's the best I can do about what his words are. Right. Just about briefly. And about the Air Force Warning. They also, my mother had written on there, this is a real and true story. And she had spoken about it some after, you know, and I think, and she had talked to different members of the family that there was a crash and there were bodies in it, but that they could not say anything about it. She told my daughter. She had told people. I think maybe I had one conversation with her about it, but I could not recall it up well enough. But she talked about bodies? Yes. That she had heard that there were bodies recovered? Yeah. What about Mac Brazell? What happened to him during this period of time? Well, the Air Force took him right away and he really never came back to the Sheriff's Office. And the material was left there and the Air Force picked it up and took it away and then that was the end of it. And my father said, I said, what are you telling the people on the phone? He said, I don't have any information. I have to tell them. I don't know that it is. I don't really know. I haven't seen it. I can't get in there. The Air Force is handling it and I'm referring calls to the Air Force. Well, that's right. They didn't even answer. I don't think I'll get in there. According to some of the witnesses here. He said that he had had calls from all over from England, Germany. I can't imagine. She wrote it in this article, the names of places where they had the calls from that morning when we got to town. And it was quite exciting rushing around there a little bit. But I just didn't go in the office. I just stayed back in the kitchen with Mother and then she told us what my father had said. But she said that he was not to say one word and she didn't say anything either for years and years. Yeah, years and years. Now I see this four years in the County Jail so she had to write this article after 1951. Since she usually wrote things down sometimes very soon after they happened. I'm guessing it's in the 50s. 55 that she wrote it. We don't have any, we don't have any date. We don't have any proof. I would guess it in the late 50s too myself. That's just what we had talked about guessing it today. Late 50s or late 40s? Well, see this happened in 47. And then they were still in the sheriff's office until I believe it was 49. It may have been. Okay, so we're just adding some years on to that and saying that the title of the article is four years in the County Jail. So the only question is when did your mother write the article and not when this incident happened? Well, I know that. And we're trying to say we think that it was in the 50s. We think it was in the 50s. My father became very ill right after he came out of the sheriff's office. And she was traveling around trying to find the best doctors in everything in the world to help him. And she was very, very busy. And she had not started a business or had anything, you know, because she had just come out of this job. And he didn't have a job. So then she became a real estate agent in Roswell. And she did the work. And my father then passed on. And he died in 64, something like that. Out of 16. Can't remember what year. 58. 58? No, it was the 60th. We decided that. That's not the name of 62. Yeah, we're pretty close to that. What do you all hear about Mack Brazell's being detained by the Army Air Force? I didn't hear, Phyllis. Did you? Well, I don't know when I heard it. I know he was detained by the Army Air Force. And I know he was out there. But after all you know, we had just been through all this business here. Plus, we had been interviewed before. Plus, I have read the Roswell incident, the MJ-12. Listen to Stan Friedman talk. Okay. You've learned a lot of stuff. So I have, yeah, the last two years. When I heard his age, I was absolutely sure what you knew, when you knew it. That's true. I don't know what I knew about Brazell until after I read the book and after. When I talked to my father, he said, I don't know why Brazell would have brought that stuff in. And some way he indicated that he trusted probably because he was in a Mexico ranch. Came all the way crying to tell somebody, you know, I found something unusual and someone helped me. And so I think I did get that impression then. I know I did. But when, what else I know about Brazell's internment, I don't know. Would your father have known a weather balloon if that's what it was? Oh, I think so. Yes, we have. All along our ranch, there are little square boxes. The balloon just deflates and you pick them up. There's been a number of them. They have a place that you can send them back there for us. That's probably so. As far as he was concerned for what you know, that this was not a weather balloon? Oh, no, I don't think so.  They have the metal in that office, in the small office over there with the door shut. Nobody went in there. It was locked. And the Air Force picked it up and took it. From your father's office? Yes. And took it and said, don't you say another word about this. They had a little meeting in there when they picked it up and they had all the jeeps. And they said it was probably three people. But, see, I didn't see them. I don't know who they were eating. I would have known. Did you see them in those? No, I didn't. Military jeep, you know, jeep drives up in front. If you have something, there were open jeeps and it was hot weather and they just, there were two that got out and came in the office and that's all. The same. The sign said, I did not go in there unless it wasn't busy. You know, I didn't go. And stand unless I knew anything that was not my business. My husband went in there and visited all the time because he was a man. Yeah. He didn't go in. And mine did, too, I'm sure. But I just, you know, I went only when he was by himself or when I really needed to go somewhere. Did your father ever name any of the military people who were involved with taking this material out of his office? No, not to me either. What happened after the Air Force said this was a weather balloon as far as the calls? Well, then they just went down because the Air Force says it's a weather balloon and it becomes over the blood of you. Everybody just accepted that. That's right. They accepted it. They may have knew, they may have known and I remember distinctly thinking this isn't right. I don't believe this. But you know, you're busy and you're alive and plenty of people. I didn't dream. I never had an idea about investigating anything like these guys. It doesn't sound like your mother was convinced. No, she was not. No, I think she knew that. Yeah, very brilliant. And she didn't have all of the responsibility my father had with all the prisoners, all the deputies and all of the jail and all of the things. And so she began to be real curious. But he told her the story and then she kept it as long as she possibly could. And then she thought, well, she could tell our children because it would be her grandchildren. She has talked to them and, you know, kind of come forth. But you can't, if they say, don't say anything. And you live right there in a military town. And it was very important to Russell to have that base there. Really, it was important. And they were in the public eye. You conform to things. It's not that you're put in prison or you're that. But it's just a part of nature that you do it. Someone asked you not to do something. We do what we can for our country. And you just do that because we thought it seemed important. And a lot of people felt that the Air Force was doing experiments. And that this was some new experiment that they were doing. And that it would be harmful to their new experiments if you told what they were. Some other country might get the plans, you know, or some kind of thing like that. So if they were doing experiments with things, then I think that I thought that that was a possibility. Oh, so patriotic. Everybody was doing their job. And they would not tell anything because the war is a war, you know. And you believe that you should be very prepared. Now, both our husbands were in the service. And we knew what that was. It's not funny to have them be in combat. And you both live around Roswell today. Yes. What would you say is the sense of the community there about now, 43 years later? Entirely different. A lot of people asked me about it. And a couple of my friends bought me the Roswellings. Several people that had stopped me asked me questions about it. And I have a couple of one women's two grown sons that live in California. They're very interested in this. And I see them every once in a while when they come to see their mother. And they told me that, one of them told me that he thought they were building some material that was similar to the material that Facebook's ranch. It almost implicated that and it's going to go on the market. And we talk about things like that. I've talked about it with several people in that area. And they believe it. And the mother worked at the base at the time. And she just says, I believe it. Believe what? That there was a flying saucer. Yes. And that... Because she called it a flying saucer and wrote about it. That's what this lady does. She's a little older woman, but she said, I believe it. She worked at the base at the time. She's long and retired, but she lives in a rest home in Roswell. If we were to take an opinion poll in Roswell, that community, what do you think? And then the question was, do you believe a flying saucer crashed here in 1947? What would be the results of that poll? Do you think? I think it would be at least... I think at least half of them would be the results. And now, see, that's the old timers, too. And we have a lot of new influx of newer people there. When we're talking about Roswell in 1947, we think, listen, I think about 50,000 is probably what it was. And now it's 40, 50. And they came back from the Air Force and retired there. They liked it so well. I had friends that had gone to Germany and moved to Wisconsin, came back to Roswell and retired. These lots of people retired. They're not natives like we are. Now we have to take those into consideration if you're talking about the majority of them that live there right now. But the people who live there then. Okay, let's say that. You take most of them? I think that at 60%. When I got here, I arrived and there was a friend of mine who had a daughter who's just moved up here, so I gave her a call. And I said, Alice, I'm here. She said, oh, what are you doing up here? And I said, well, I came to kind of a convention for UFOs or flying saucers just in that conversation that was something at Roswell. And she said, oh, yes, I remember about that one. And I haven't seen her. She's been in Saudi Arabia. She's been in Sweden. She's been all over. And she was all in oil business. And they had moved up here. And I said, well, I'll give her a call. So the media, I said it to her.  So see, she would be someone that her mother would have to tell about the flying saucer over Roswell. And they lived about 20 miles from me. But that's neighbors. That's as close as mine gets. Well, I know you ladies have both of them to take. So I'm not going to keep you any longer. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'd like to ask you as a big picture of me, if you would mind reading over and signing this for me. I appreciate it. But then you come in with your questions. That. OK. Well, I'll just get you started. Just ask you what you were doing in 1947. How's that? OK. Tom, where were you talking about? Don't worry about it. OK. Do you have any introduction? No. No introduction at all. We're just rolling the tape. And I'd just like to ask you what you were doing in 1947. In 1947, I was at the air base in Roswell. I was in the military. And I was first lieutenant at the time. My assignments were three, interestingly enough. I was assistant flying safety officer. I was assistant base operations officer. And I was assistant group operations officer. Now, the group was the 509th bottom group. And because of the building I worked in, all three offices that I just told you about were contained in the same building for a time that it seems I was running back and forth. At that time, I was primarily in group operations. The call came in one day to arrange to have B-29 ready to go as soon as possible. And of course, someone asked where to. I said, just get a crew on board and have the airplane stand by. And we're going to go to Fort Worth. And that was Colonel Blanchard's directive. So I was out in the operations office. I have to explain to you, the building is an H-shaped building. And the vertical part of the H is where the two hallways were. One on each side. But the one on the right side ran directly from the parking area out front, straight through the building and out to the ramp to the aircraft. The cross of the H, half of it, was the operations, base operations office, where the base pilots came in, fill out their flight plan, and step to one side and obtain their weather briefing and read notices to airmen. We got all the material ready to go. And the flight clearance then was taken and submitted to the tower to let them know something was going to happen and to air traffic control and so forth. As I explained last night, or just the afternoon, trying to clarify a point, each squadron also had their own operations set up and they could release their aircraft without going through base operations. They would let us know that a group was taking off and just how many airplanes that were, but they had already handled all their arrangements with their traffic control and with the tower and so forth. At any rate, I was in that operations office and Colonel Blanchard drove up and came in and asked, is the aircraft ready? And I am one of the fellow there who is now dead. I said, yes, it's sitting right out front, ready to go. And with this, he turned, stepped out back into the hallway and waved to some people outdoors and still sitting in the hallways. And I suspect trying to recall now there were four, five or six people. And I'll say five. It doesn't really matter. But they came in the front door straight down the hallway and right out onto the ramp to climb into the airplane. These were the people that were carrying parts of the crashed flying saucer at that time, UFO today, that I got to see. And that was the only thing I got to see. And it was very short and very quick. Colonel Blanchard in order to get out of their way had backed into the doorway of the pops office. And I stepped up to him and I said, Colonel, turn sideways. I want to see too. Maybe if I hadn't said that to him, made it obvious that I was there, I would not have been shipped out two weeks later. What was his immediate response to your request? Well, he just turned and if he knew Colonel Blanchard, and when he went on to become three-star general and vice chief of staff, he was a very commanding presence. And he was a good officer, a real leader. And when he said he wanted something, people said yes, sir, and it wasn't just because he was a military. So he just turned and looked at me and he did turn sideways so that I could half step into the doorway and watch him. I would go through and thus I saw them carrying certain pieces of these metals, items. And as I've described to other people, one asked, they had one piece that was, I like to say, 18 to 24 inch or coffee table top size, brushed stainless steel in color. Maybe if you think of the common aluminum foil roll today when you're pulling out one side real reflective, but that's not what it was. Like the opposite side, which is rather dull, doesn't have great reflective. And I've heard it mentioned now for so many times about the I-beam with the markings on it and so forth. And I actually saw that piece of I-beam being carried through and saw the markings. But it was a case of, here it wasn't and there it went. That was all I got to see. They went out, got on board the aircraft, went to Fort Worth and Major Marcel went with them. I mentioned the operational setup. This has become clear in discussion that there was some confusion about what airplane went where. One of the first interviews I did, they asked me about a B-29. I said, oh, there was a B-25 also. Well, a couple days later we had occasion to set up a B-25, do something and take something to Fort Worth. Then there was a third flight. And this was the B-29 that Papi Henderson was the pilot and he flew to Wright Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio. It's directly from Roswell. No stop-off. I say that, not really knowing that answer, but going back to the time I was involved, I sensed the other day that everyone got the impression that Major Marcel went out to the crash site, picked up this material, brought it on base, showed it to the Colonel and it was flown out. At the same time, Walter Hunt had made this newspaper release, public relations release, and within 12 hours it was all squashed and killed. I picked up that everyone was thinking that everything went out on that flight. They went to Fort Worth and then they went on to Wright Patterson. I'll have to jump now 40 years. Because something that happened in our house was a couple. We had in for dinner and I knew he was a mortician and retired. On the 40th anniversary, the local paper in Roswell reprinted the story of the flying saucer and the pictures or the sketches. And they had a couple sketches of what the aliens were supposed to look like. These alien bodies that were claimed to have been found. As we were walking to the front door down our hallway, this fellow turned to me and said, did you see yesterday's paper? And the article on the Roswell incident, I said, yes, I did. And shock number one comes when he said, that's what they looked like. Thus we start and talk a little bit and I come to find out and he has since been interviewed by Stamp and Friedman. He was a mortician on duty that received a phone call from the air base asking for child-sized caskets and body bags. That night, say the night after the first airplane flew out. It develops that this individual was driving an ambulance for the mortuary, which was a service they provided the Air Force, and he had gone to pick up a sick airman in town and took him to the base hospital. Now this is the next night. It's 24 hours later. And he said, I'll go over and see my girlfriend. And it happens that the nurse who handled the bodies was his, was his girlfriend. They'd even been thinking about getting married. I don't recall her last, first name was Naomi. He walked into her lab area and was immediately stopped by Air Police and escorted out. Before he was actually taken out, she looked up and said, I will call you later. Because they said, where are you going? I'm going to see my girlfriend, Lieutenant Colton. They took him out. Later they did meet, as he told me, and she sketched on a prescription pad what these aliens looked like. And he had that sketch and took it back to the mortuary and put it in a file in the drawer of his desk. We had a series of files on the work that he handled. Those were all the records they were keeping. He delivered so many caskets, or he picked up so many airmen and took them to the hospital. Stanton Friedman interviewed this individual and they arranged to go to the file building that the mortuary still maintains. And they found all of the files, manila folders and so forth, that he had had in his desk during the years he worked there, except that one file with the sketches in it and any remarks. That had been picked up sometime and taken. By whom? They don't know. Here again, the secrecy veil had come down. So you were shipped out shortly after this happened? Yes. Now, as I explained yesterday to the people to clarify this point of the different flights, I had learned, of course, that the sergeant of the guard with a series of airmen went out and they surrounded the site and then they swept the area and picked up everything they could and the bodies were brought in and everything was laid out in Hangar 84. And what happened to them? Well, as I was relating to the fellows, the Air Force had established a system of, there was a base operations office for all normal activity and they controlled the weather station, they controlled the crash equipment, the tower operation that oversaw, they controlled the immediate area. Each squadron had its own contact and own operations and they could set up their own training flights, establish their own contact with air traffic control, tell the tower that they were going to take off tomorrow at 10 a.m., the whole 12 airplanes or however many. And all they provided to the base was the fact that 12 airplanes leaving tomorrow may have gone on let's say a 15-hour mission. And that's all we needed to know, speaking in terms of representing the group ops and the base ops. And one of the squadrons, this is about three days later now, four days, announced a training flight and their aircraft all took off, let's say this morning, in the order that was prescribed and so forth. One of those aircraft was flown by Pathie Henderson, which had been loaded with all material out of Hangar 84 and went to Wright-Patterson. Including bodies? Yes. The caskets that his friend of mine had supplied from the mortuary. Did you see the caskets or the bodies? No, I didn't. How do you know that they were on that flight? Because that's when they got there. How do I know? I was told that that's what Pathie Henderson said he carried. He was in the Hangar and saw this material and saw that his aircraft was loaded. It was years before he mentioned anything to anybody. At any rate. In other words, what I'm trying to convey is everything did not go out with that first airplane. And when the next flights went, we can't find out today. There's no way of tying it down. They have an idea of when he arrived there. But that's not important. The point is that once the secrecy veil dropped, Colonel Blanchard was informed and he informed his staff the day later. The official story is this was a weather balloon and that's it. Nothing further need to be said. I ran into, I don't call it misunderstanding, a lack of understanding on the parts of a couple investigative reporters who asked me a leading question and I turned and looked at them like I'm looking at you and I said, how old are you? They were rather startled, you know. He said, when were you born? Well, he was born around the time of the Korean War, 52, 51, 53, you know, different dates for different people. I said, all right. I said, your knowledge of war has been limited to the Vietnam situation and the confusion that was going on and the lack of support by people for that war and really the confused way it was run by Washington authorities. I said, never before in the history of military operations has a national capital set back and told the people how many bombs they can drop tomorrow or how many shells they can fire and they're doing it.  But back in, oh, the question had evolved because of Walter Hawton, myself, who knew each other at the air base, knew of, who a year and a half later or two years later shared an office for a year in town as civilians. He was running his little thing and I was running my little operation and we cut expenses by sharing an office and he had raised the question with Walter and then with me, a few fellows never talked to each other and Walter had made the remark, well, I guess I know what I know and he knows what he knows and that was it. Well, how come you didn't talk to each other? That's what I'm leading to and why I asked him how old he was. World War II, if you didn't experience it, it's very difficult to understand but someone came up and slapped with a collective nose of the country and we fought back and it was in the newspapers, it was in magazines, it was on the radio, statements similar to loose lips, sink ships. Don't talk about anything. Don't let on, you know anything because someone is going to take the information and use it to your detriment. I said college campuses got into it by using signs that said minefield, don't walk here rather than keep off the grass. Newly seeded areas and they'd have it roped off and said minefield, don't step here. Consequently, the entire country became, in a sense, brainwashed. Everyone was concerned with World War II. When I asked the question, did you ever know that everyone on the coastline had blackout curtains on their windows and on their doors? When someone rang the doorbell, they turned out the lights before they opened the door and they said no. I said well this is true, all the way down the eastern coast around Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The theory being we shouldn't allow the enemy to know where our cities were. Of course now they could sit out there during the day and watch and people in New Jersey could look out in the ocean and see tankers being blown up by torpedoes. This was taking place right out there. And this is the way we operated. You were told not to talk about anything. And then if you were in the military it was even more emphasized. Consequently, Walter knew his thing and I knew my thing and we never talked about it. We had never talked to one another about the Rossell incident until after we were invited to come here. And suddenly we both... What do you think? I guess we both felt we had to explain to each other what we did know. What do you think happened? What crashed in the next boat? I think some type of craft that we were not at all familiar had a problem and did come apart and crashed in the desert area in New Mexico. I really do. As the properties of the material that was found were unknown to all our scientists the bodies had never been and no one had ever been seen like that before if these sketches were true and I feel they were. You knew this mortician pretty well didn't you? Yes, it developed. He and my wife went to school together and his wife and I knew each other through some friends from the moment I first went to Roswell in 1945 to learn to fly the E29s and we were very close friends close to marrying one another you know and she as much as told that to my wife but you got there first to my wife Joanne and we've been close friends ever since all this time ever since the event took place we knew each other and we never talked about it. What happened to her? The nurse I heard conflicting stories I'll jump back to the time of just after the incident occurred the airplanes have taken the parts in the body of the student I was shipped out to the Philippines How soon after? Two weeks? Within two weeks. Was that unexpected? Well it developed it was unexpected these things occurred to people but there was a telegram TWX called the military came in from 8th Air Force that said urgent need for one each flying safety officer MOS number second such report to Clark Field the Philippines and they turn around and look well I'm not even sure but I had my name on it because I was the only waits and balance officer on that date so I was shipped out going to Clark Field in Philippines because of being waits and balance I understand the nurse was shipped out the same week the sergeant of the guard and the guards all of them who surrounded the site swept the area and picked the pieces up they were all shipped out and every one of us went to a different base some place around the world so that no two of us were together Is that by design? Oh yes I believe it was by design because it takes it's been looking back through the years and even at that time I suspected something because I got Clark Field they didn't need a waits and balance officer they had never asked for I said well that's what this telegram says and they said we don't care what that says we don't need one we've got one and we don't need another one and I said what else do you do? and I said well operations office they said alright I'll sign you the squadron so and so as the operations officer that's where I went we were involved in photo high altitude photo recon that's what I spent time doing taking pictures from high altitude where was the nurse shipped out to? I understand she was shipped to Germany and I understand it was told that there was an airplane crash and she and the group of her nurses were all killed the sergeant of the guards that surrounded the territory and picked up the material he lives in New Mexico and I understand just recently spoke to one of the reporters for the first time but his information has not been released in any of the stories I say that because the investigative reporter said Bob you just saw him and he had spoken to us for the first time since the event now that was where are we well that was nearly 43 years almost exactly 33 years yeah and he said we're since we're the first ones he's talked with he said we're not going to use any of his material at this point because we have to dovetail and collaborate and make sure we're buddies that I am finding that what you said speaking to me is what you have told us this evening just emphasizes and proves the point what everyone else has said this particular reporter by the way would come out of New York City and he said when he got the assignment he was totally aghast that they would think of sending him out to research some unidentified flying object which he didn't believe but he said I had become convinced of being here and so roughly speaking that's my story I saw a couple things I was involved with scheduling an aircraft I was shipped out with several other people all at about the same time and 40 years went by before a best friend of mine spoke up for the first time and said I'm not that since that time Stanton Friedman interviewed the individual I took them took Stanton up in the mountains to meet the man because Stanton didn't know whether he should go this was rather interesting as an aside perhaps I had nothing to do with the interview but I was talking with Stanton in his hotel room in Roswell and Stanton was invited me up there for dinner tomorrow do you suppose I ought to go it was kind of I can drive up there if you think it would be worthwhile and I said stand knowing this individual he's one of the good old boys he speaks his piece if he invited you to come up and have dinner with him that means he wants you to come up and have dinner with him it wasn't a polite thing he was doing I said it's an exceptional thing he's doing I went home cleared the decks with my wife and called stand back and said I'll take you up there to help you and I'll introduce you we did they had a great interview and then we all went in to have dinner together we continued the interview clarifying some points for Stanton since you and the Morticia both had an interest in the relationship with Naomi the nurse I have to ask what you think about what you were told about her having been killed in a plane accident do you accept that my only thought was I had two thoughts about it one is gosh what a waste because when I was working in there with group operations the colonel who sat in front of me I should say the colonel operations officer behind whom I sat with my desk and to my left was Major Woody Swanker who flew the Bikini drop and the colonel got an assignment to go overseas and his airplane who was reported to have blown up over the ocean he had nothing to do with the Rosal incident because he was going overseas before the Rosal incident took place and it was one of those things the fellows were here today and gosh Fred what was that right your airplane goes down you're lost well another friend gone that's what you thought about the second thing I thought of in regards to Naomi and the nurses was of course now I'm overseas I learned this while I was there right after I got back that her airplane had been lost two possibilities one was the normal natural thing of some kind of airplane being lost because it does occur or boy is the government taking that extreme to control what she knows because she was the one who actually worked on the bodies and another thing was that they had called this mortician asking him for information on taking care of the bodies because he had just newly returned from the school with the latest methods known at that time on how to preserve the bodies and so he had related to her what he knew and she was trying to do that she had more first hand information about the alien bodies of anyone else what about yourself do you have any concern for a military man are you throwing a pension no so there's not any direct hold the government has over the years did you sign any kind of secrecy on this no I was not told to keep quiet some people were who may have more information than they knew I did and it's just as I learned everyone was shipped out so that probably pretty much took care of it that was the first initial time this mortician for example because of his involvement he was visited his mother and father were visited by military people whether they were in uniform civilian dress and they were warned not to say anything to anybody about anything very direct and once again I believe this man without fail so some people were directly told others were just shipped out I came back from overseas when Walter Hart had resigned his commission Walter of course you probably know never did see any he personally never saw any of the parts or pieces or whatever he just happens to be the guy that wrote the release and stirred everything up yeah and again it was I don't know thank you Mr. Shirt I appreciate it that's all I know fascinating absolutely the best thing I still get tongue tied and forget things questions that I've answered 15-20 times same question but put just a little bit differently you have to shake your head and back off and regroup well but I gotta be to give you my standard lecture about I want you to be relaxed just you and me talking just sort of ignore Tom and his camera just pretend they're not here I just want you to be as comfortable as possible have it and you may think I'm looking over the camera I'll do that occasionally when I'm trying to think I may lose eye contact with you and that was just trickly I want to break I mean just that's a good excuse I can stop for 10th or 2nd Tom are we rolling? Yes we are alright Mr. Hart can you tell me about the day that Colonel Blanchard gave you a call and told you to put out a news release what was happening that day as you recall in that phone conversation? basically up until the time I got the phone call from I sure can't tell you what was happening it was probably a very routine day I was doing either some public relations work housing or something else really I can't remember what it was just the normal work day got the telephone call from Colonel Blanchard and in essence he told me that he had in his possession a flying saucer parts there of gave me a little bit of idea where it came from from the range north west of Roswell men stated that major Marcel Jesse Marcel who is our base intelligence officer was going to fly it to Fort Worth turn it over to General Roger Ramey who was commander commanding general of the 8th Air Force at that time and what did Colonel Blanchard want you to do? he told me to prepare a release with basically the information that he gave me over the phone when it was done to take it into community and hand deliver it to the four news media we had in Roswell at that time which is what I did as best you recall with that had happened the initial phone conversation during the morning or in the afternoon to the best of my remembrance it would have been in the morning and I would have to guess somewhere I would guess around nine o'clock the only reason I had come up with that figure is that had to be done and gotten into town so that it would have gone to the record in time for them to set it and to have gone ahead and run it in that day's evening paper and would you know what day this happened? I would say the 8th of July, 1947 and that was the date of the Roswell Daily Record article once you wrote up the news release then what happened after that? as I said I had to take it into town he told me to take it in so that if there was any validity to the fact that this was a flying saucer and information got out to other news media other than our own he felt that he wanted our people there in Roswell to have had first crack at it didn't want them to feel that he had given the information out to someone who got it to the press services outside of Roswell so I took it into town and delivered it to the news media in town to radio stations and to newspapers who you went to first for example? I'm almost certain I went to radio station KGFL first secondly to KSWS they were a half a block north and then I took it to the Daily Record a block further north and then on my way back out to the base I dropped it off at the Morning Dispatch which was about three blocks from the Daily Record what's your recollection about the reception initially when you handed out this news release in various local outlets did anybody read this material and respond immediately? I don't believe they did I believe again you're going back many, many years I believe the first place I went was to KGFL and I believe I just simply left it on the desk of the receptionist I recall she was not there and I Frank Joyce to best of my memory was in the studio and he could see the reception area and also see out on the street and I think I probably pointed at it indicate that it was something for them I don't remember what had happened at KSWS the record I gave it to the editor because he sat close to the front door probably said hi Don how are you dad might like to have this very nothing fantastic just the normal routine what I did when I brought the news release then I went down to the dispatch again I believe there I took it into either the editor's office or the publisher's office both of them real well occasionally I'd stick my head in the breeze with the publisher the actual delivering of it to who I gave it it's I may have seen half a dozen people in the different news media offices and who I finally said here it is it's kind of hard to differentiate from one to the other nothing remarkable nobody said oh wow I just looked at it most journals treat news releases that's right this was not something that was unusual because you walk into someone's office and say here's a news release which I had done many many times nothing was that hot that they had to grab it and run back and stop presses and that type of thing so it was just a matter of just they took it and probably glanced at it and had a few words and I went by Mary way and what happened next after you had completed your appointed rounds I returned to the base and when I got into my office the phone was ringing I picked it up and the first call was from London, England I answered I answered the phone that's how I found I was from London, England and over there and his question was how did Major Marcel know how to fly this object I had in the release had stated that Major Marcel had flown the object to Fort Worth meaning that he had put it on an airplane and got in and flew the airplane it was a poor choice of words the way I put it there were a tremendous number of calls of the same effect if this was an unidentified flying object how would we have someone within our air force that knew how to just get in there and flip switches and run controls some of them some of them were rather terse is this another one of those fly-by-night stories can you verify it the commanding officer was one that stated this is what we had that was verification but for you for me that was more than enough verification when he said something that was the law that went on continually we had continual phone calls people that were working or being in the office left somewhere around 5 o'clock maybe one state till 6 o'clock or something I would get 7.30 day to clock by that time it tapered off completely and I was half hour or so just looking over what had happened during the course of the day beyond the Rosemont the base didn't stop operating because we found that so-called flying saucer what happened the next step as you recall the only thing that happened as far as I was concerned believe I read it in the morning newspaper heard it on the news that General Ramey said that we didn't have a flying saucer that that was a weather balloon with which I just read this tremendous sigh of relief I think I turned to one of the people in the office and said they sure made fools of us then again we fit in the category of hundreds of others that had to say so flying objects it was not uncommon for people to think they had a flying object and then loaned it whole it shot down beyond that that was the end of it did you see any of this wreckage or any of the material? none whatsoever do you believe that Colonel Blanchard had seen it? yes I do and why do you feel that way? I don't think he would have been so I don't want to say gung-ho but I don't think he would have been so confident in his comment we have a flying saucer in our organization or parts of a flying saucer I don't remember this for many years I don't remember the exact word but he wasn't overly excited he wasn't flipping about it there was this normal routine type of conversation that we'd have when he'd call me and say he wants this done but he sounded pretty positive about it he sounded positive yes but what he had would you have any reason to believe that Colonel Blanchard was mistaken this material for being any form of weather balloon or observation device? I don't think there's one chance in a billion that he would not have recognized a weather balloon he was a West Point graduate class of 37 was the best I recall had gone up through from 2nd to 10th up to Colonel not too many years very intelligent individual not the type to just jump off on tangents I think he knew a weather balloon if he had seen it and that would have been the end of that he wouldn't have gone anywhere with it he would have told Major Marcel this is a weather balloon then again Major Marcel would have known that it wasn't a weather balloon that was my next question is it possible that Major Marcel would have been this way? no is it possible that Colonel Blanchard might have been misinformed by somebody who told him about what this wreckage was without having seen it for himself? I would doubt that very much I don't think he would have taken the actions he did by going down to operations with it if he was there in the operations building he certainly saw it I'm sure that Major Marcel had talked to him and had given him some pretty sage advice as far as he was concerned I don't think that alerted you just Marcel knew about it he again was a very intelligent individual and not the type that would just jump at anything and try to carry it to an end and between the two of them I'm certain that one or the other would have called the other one's hand if it was a weather balloon so what did you think when General Ramey said it was a weather balloon did you believe that? we're in 1947 when the general said it was a weather balloon it was a load off of our mind as far as I was concerned when I said our mind my office, the population's office because you no longer be the focus of our attention out of it completely you're just as happy that that was the case very much so I was concerned that was the end of the story surprisingly I used to see General at that time he had to call General ranchard when he'd come in the town he'd call me and I'd go out and have breakfast with him or lunch never a word was mentioned at any time during any of our conversations was that deliberate on your part? no I had very frankly completely forgotten about it I doubted very much but he just never brought it up did anything happen did the colonel say anything about this incident? shortly after General Ramey's statement perhaps in a staff meeting in the next staff meeting which was about a week later I think we held him at that time every Monday he made some comments about our agenda and I believe he said to the effect we sure messed up on that one last week a matter of fact he said that outfit that was letting sending those weather balloons up were here on our station they were from white sands and they were checking the upper atmosphere winds from east to west he sort of helped puncture us the weather balloons with that comment we all we knew it we were all real smart all of a sudden we knew that it wasn't a flying saucer did you ever have a chance to talk with Jesse Marcell? not until about 1980 the next time I talked to Jesse I talked as well with Johnny Mann from a TV station in New Orleans he was taking a man out to the site to show him where it had happened and he interviewed myself and had brought Jesse with him and I spent after two hours with Jesse at that time said that was no weather balloon what I brought into the general's office is not what was there when I came back in that kind of convinced me he was a neighbor of mine he was a block down the street he has regard to the man he was a very fine individual we were impressed with his son Dr. Marcell he was quite a sharp little eleven year old I believe he was eleven or two sharp he was a cracker and I think he still is what about another officer there on the base who worked with Major Marcell Sheridan Cabot does that name ring a bell with you? the name yes I had heard it he was OSI or CIA or something I had no association whatsoever at any time had you ask this question in 1947 and he walked by I could have said that's him over there had been about the extent of it had nothing to do with him in any way, manner, shape or form there been some talk about the circumstances under which you left the Air Force the suggestion was that somehow you were pressured into leaving because of your involvement in this story you went a long story or a very short story? let's try the short version I could ask a question at the time of the incident we had a two month old daughter we had built a house a couple months before I was gone a lot of the time I had about four different jobs we were starting to wonder I think my daughter at her age of two and a half or three months we wondered what this was that came in the house every once in a while my wife and I talked about it quite a decision for us to made and try to decide stay in the service or get out we kicked this thing back and forth and back and forth and finally in February 1948 we decided that stay in Roswell I felt I knew enough people in business that I could do nothing else I could get a job in Roswell I submitted my letter of resignation I was a regular Air Force officer put down Colonel Blanchard's desk April 1st of 1948 on August 18th of 1948 I got a twix at the base I went out with first lieutenant Walter G. Hawks here number 041123 and goes on and on and on and on and it states that relieved of all duties and assignments and all that and it ends up Mr. Walter G. Hawks permanent address is 1405 with 73 Roswell, New Mexico I thought it was rather humorous I started out as lieutenant Hawth up here and it twits that long at the bottom I was no longer I was Mr. Hawth it had nothing to do whatsoever with the incident or anything else that had happened on the base it was just a personal matter that my wife and I both felt we'd like to raise our daughter in Roswell a small enough community good school system everything else maybe we shouldn't have been thinking that far ahead at that point in our life it was one of the things that we were taking into account I was also probably going to be transferred to Fort Worth within a matter of four to six months we didn't want to go to Fort Worth we wanted to stay in a smaller community my teacher had told me that if I did go to Fort Worth that I would become public relations officer eight there of course he transferred over there subsequently and became operations officer eight there of course and from then on he started going up to a collateral he was rather well connected wasn't he yes I have to stop on that I always want to say curse easy lame curse easy lame so as far as you're concerned you could have stayed with the military and joined a rather bright future no talk about your being shipped out after the things just went on the way they had been going on not the day I arrived on the station but after we came back from the Keeney become public relations officer for the five whole night there attack and when I came back to Roswell my teacher made me the group public relations officer and also base public relations officer do you have any regrets having been involved in this incident none whatsoever I found fascinating I mean so many different people 99% are real nice but once in a while that 1% always pops up kind of squares you waiting go on your merry way it's been fun in your heart of hearts what do you think it was that was on that ranch some type of craft from outer space from where I do not know I've talked to enough people involved in it such as Jesse Marcel senior and junior other people that had little touch of it Bob Scherke who still lives in Roswell everything I've heard from the investigators all the time they come up with something new I was kind of wow that really is a surprise and that puts another crown or star in the crown or whatever you want to say about my feeling is that there's been so much that has been brought forward by legitimate people that there had to be something to it and apparently that is what it was it was something that crash landed out there on the desert I'm a firm believer Can I get you to express your desire about what our government should do about this at this point in history Well I think the government ought to take all files that they have on this subject and turn them over to a committee of legitimate ufologists if you permit the use of that word whether they be the ones that I'm familiar with or a panel of scientists who are not negative but will look at all the information with an open mind and come up with a conclusion I think that this is censorship pure and simple I don't like it we want the right for people to walk the streets with placards and protest I want to know what would happen if a bunch of people started walking around Pentagon I don't want the files I don't think we'd get very far Is there anything that I've missed in all of this that you feel is important to add to this record that we're trying to put together the experiences that you've had the many thoughts and concerns Well all my experiences with this have been extremely pleasant for people I've only had one experience it was a telephone call from a fellow called him when I came I was out at the time when I came home my wife said the shadow called you the shadow squeaking door the fellow had called me he was a friend from my past old boys and very slowly telling me that I was going to be in trouble I should forget this whole thing told me all about how the materials were found and they were put on freight cars and shipped from one place to the next my recollection of that is real vivid primarily because I was trying to talk to this fellow with a straight face my wife kept walking near me I thought that was funny he told her when she first talked to him that morning he said something to the effect what do you think about the UFOs oh I think it's a lot of fun the guy was really kind of a crank phone call do you know who this was I tried everything I could to trick him in to give me some clue that I know him at the base that I know him from where he just didn't stop by and kept on not threatening me, warning me the dire consequences if I kept on talking about these we still laugh about it the rest of the people everybody's been extremely gracious they're very knowledgeable people once in a while you get someone who asks a question that kind of throws you off in the corner I've tried to answer everything as honestly as I can and I've had no trouble with anybody I try to keep my story straight I try to keep my story simple so that it'll be straight and I don't have to cover anything up that's about it enough of that thank you very much I appreciate it you're welcome we'll let you get back to the meeting I'll walk you down there before I let you go