The
evidence supporting the Roswell event has long been largely flushed out through
detailed eye witness reports from hands on participants, particularly in recent
years as death bed reports are coming out through the weight of time. Men do not go to their graves keeping secrets
important to humanity.
More interesting, this
clearly informs us that Washington had a protocol in place to deal with ‘alien’
crash sites which is reasonable because of a prior incident during the
thirties. Resources at hand simply did
not have the clearance and worse, they naturally talked to each other. Thus instant transfer and scrambling op teams
is the correct way to proceed. Yet this
has to be worked out in advance and it is pretty clear that ordinary events
never got this treatment.
Had the Base Commander
not brought in the press, we would never have heard about it. So what else have we not heard about?
THE ROSWELL BASE
PHOTOGRAPHERS: THEIR CRASH SECRETS REVEALED
by
Anthony Bragalia
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Roswell
Army Air Field base photographers who were stationed there at the time of the
UFO crash over six decades ago have recently been located and contacted. In
their 20s at the time, today they are in their mid and late 80s. And today they
offer intriguing details about what they maintain was indeed a very strange day
in early July of 1947. They vividly remember it- and the stories that they tell
are internally consistent and they are corroborated by others.
It
has now been learned that:
Oddly,
the base Photo Unit was completely “cut out” of photographing or filming the
fallen “balloon“ that was “mistaken” as a flying disc. They state that
that though they had photographed all types of balloons and experimental craft
(including their retrievals) many times before, they never received orders to
photograph or process images of the Roswell crash debris at any point.
It
now appears evident that Base Commander Butch Blanchard and his superiors
agreed that it was best to have outsiders who were located off-base take on the
task of photographing and filming the wreckage and corpses. This vital task
needed to be compartmentalized. It was a security risk to have too many
involved, examining the material and corpses close-up, all stationed together
at the same base at the same time. It was deemed wiser to use those from
other bases or nearby retired military with Top Secret clearance.
Incredibly,
the Commander of the Photo Unit was relieved of his duties by Special Order and
transferred out of Roswell to a base in California almost immediately after
the military had discovered the crash. This was at the very same time that
the Roswell Base Chaplain was also relieved of his duties and shipped to a far
west location, as
reported in a previous article.
“Men
from DC” were flown into the base following the discovery of the crash. It
is believed that they were brought in to photograph the dead corpses and
debris. One of these DC photographers has confessed his involvement in
photographing the crash aftermath. And he too was transferred out from where he
was stationed after his crash site involvement.
The
base photographers interviewed never believed that the crash was resultant from
any kind of balloon crash but rather that there was a hush-up.
A
civilian is identified who held Top Secret military clearance and photographed
the bodies nearly immediately after they were discovered. Within three
hours the DC photo crew had arrived to take over the task.
THE
3RD PHOTO UNIT SPEAKS
The
3RD Photo Unit at Roswell had personnel that held Top Secret clearances.
This is because, they explain, they often had to photograph and process images
of experimental craft and weapons (and their crashes) and many other types of
highly classified projects and technologies. If the crash was in fact the
downing of a Mogul balloon (as the Air Force now maintains) photo unit
personnel possessing Top Secret clearance would have been deployed.
Two
of the base photographers and the wife of a third (still living and lucid but
unable to speak due to a recent stroke) have recently offered up insight on the
crash incident for the very time:
James
Remiyac
PFC
3rd Photo Unit
Jim
Remiyac was a 20 year old PFC in the 3rd Photo Unit at Roswell in July of
1947. Now 85, he has recently suffered a stroke but I had the opportunity to
talk with his wife about his time there.
She
and her husband discussed the crash incident over the decades, including well
before all of the books, magazine and shows on Roswell.
She
explained that her husband said that he and his unit were “shut out from
everything” and that “even though they should have been there as they were many
times before for similar things, they were not called out. And they wondered
about this after the newspaper accounts too. Why? What was so special?”
Remiyac
noticed increased flight activity in and out of the base and he had heard
rumors that people from Washington, DC were there for a serious matter. He
called them “brass.”
He
never believed it was a balloon- and he does believe that there was a cover-up.
He also does not discount that the crash could have been extraterrestrial in
nature- but he had no first-hand knowledge of that. He explained that everyone
got quiet about it until they got out. “Beginning in the early 1950s we would
again mention it to one another.”
Gene
Niederschmidt
PFC
3rd Photo Unit
Gene
Niedershmidt, pictured above, was also a Unit member and who possessed Top
Secret clearance. Gene echoes Remiyac’s recollections. Remiyac and Niederschmidt
had discussed the incident for decades and kept in touch. Mrs. Remiyac provided
me with Gene’s contact information.
Though
they were brought in to photograph and document “any and all kinds or crashes”
Gene remembers that no one was called from his unit to do so when it came to
that specific crash that particular time in July. Gene remains uncomfortable to
this day about why this is so:
If
it were a highly classified project of any type that had fallen, quick response
and visual documentation would be required by base operations policy.
If
it were a weather balloon, they photographed many of those as well. Any
airborne device that comes to grief near or over the base was to be filmed.
Asked
if this was a rather mundane thing to do, Gene explained that they even took
pictures of servicemen after they had been in Friday fights, or of the crashed
jeep of a drunken soldier, and similar “events.”
Gene
and I agreed that someone from somewhere photographed and filmed the fallen
debris no matter what its origin. The DC folks that were discussed may well
have played that part.
Gene
recommended that I contact Calvin Cox, his PFC companion who he said could
confirm all of this and that he had another story to tell about that day.
Calvin
Cox
PFC
3rd Photo Unit
For
Calvin Cox, that early July in 1947 was especially eventful. Readers will
remember a prior piece in which it was related that it was Calvin Cox who was
enlisted by Major Edwin Easley to help guard the Hangar at Roswell
containing the debris and who had orders to “shoot to kill” anyone who
was unauthorized.
Calvin
confirms Gene and Jim’s accounts that there was a “blackout” of information and
a “shut out” of participation.
And
like Gene and Jim, he also recalls unfamiliar faces around the base and his
activity areas in the time immediately following the crash. He noted that some
of these base visitors were thought to be from the FBI in DC.
Earlier
corroboration of these three accounts comes from a brief interview that was
conducted with the Unit’s Operations Manager, Vernon Zorn. In 1991’s UFO
Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Don Schmidt, Zorn confirmed that “no
photos of the crash site were taken by his men.”
COMMANDER
OF PHOTO UNIT ORDERED OUT OF ROSWELL
1st Lt.
Lewis Cain Bohanon commanded the 3rd Photo Unit at Roswell which took
picture in the field and processed highly classified photos in the
Lab.
Very
interestingly, by an issued Special Order (#139) Bohanon was relieved of his
duties at Roswell on July 18th, 1947, less than two weeks after the military
discovered the crash. The decision by his superiors to relieve him was likely
made several days earlier. Bohanon was transferred out to Hamilton Field in
California, and was replaced by an outsider, Lt. Harold W. Arner.
It
is worthy to note that Reverend Elijah H. Hankerson, the Roswell Base Chaplain
(whose strange story is reported in my article online and in Witness to
Roswell 2ndEdition) was also relieved of his duties days after the crash.
Like Bohanon, he too was suddenly replaced by an outsider.
Bohanon was reached by author William Moore when researching his 1980 book The Roswell Incident. Though he did not speak of his sudden base transfer, on page 196 of the book, Moore briefly states: “Lt. Lewis Bohanon insisted that no photographic record remained documenting the incident.”
Perhaps Bohanon became aware of the use of the ‘outsiders’ to image the crash incident. Roswell Base Commander Blanchard may have had to have told Bohanon not to go out to the site, just as Roswell’s Fire Department was told by the military not to do so. Or perhaps Bohanon had actively coordinated and collaborated with these outsiders.
Whatever the reason for his post-crash transfer, Bohanon knew too much and it was deemed necessary to ship him out.
He was obviously compliant, and was afterwards rewarded with a promotion to the rank of Major.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: THE PHOTOGRAPHERS NAMED
With decay of the creatures a concern, photographing and filming creatures had to be of immediate importance. There would have been field photographs taken. But stirring up the base’s photo unit was not wanted; the task had to be done on the down-low. A nearby photo studio owner was tapped to this task.
A civilian who ran a successful Roswell photo studio also functioned as an occasional contract photographer to the base. As a veteran who still retained his Top Secret clearance, he photographed many sensitive military things. This man’s name was Jack Rodden Sr.
Jack Rodden
According
to Tom Carey and Don Schmidt (as reported in their book Witness to
Roswell) Mary Rodden, (Jack Rodden Sr.’s daughter-in-law, a Nursing Manager at
New Mexico Rehabilitation Center in Roswell) said that he had told her that he
had taken pictures of the crash debris and the bodies and that he had been
sworn to secrecy.
He
also cryptically and sparingly indicated to his namesake son, Jack Rodden Jr.,
that “they killed it” when speaking of one of the photographed creatures.
Though they have yet to be found, Rodden Sr. told his son that had “hidden
records about it.”
Jack
Rodden Sr. also told family a ‘side story’ on the incident: A rancher had said
that his three children had come home at the time of the crash frightened by
the military because they got too close to the site.
Confirming
the testimony of the three photo unit vets that told me that “men from DC” were
flown in to Roswell after the crash is the testimony of one of the DC
photographers himself:
FREDERICK
BENTHAL
Frederick
Benthal was a Sergeant and Army Air Force Photographer in Washington, DC in the
summer of 1947. Benthal was interviewed for inclusion in Stanton
Friedman’s 1994 Crash at Corona. Referred to only as “FB” in
Friedman’s book, Carey and Schmidt some time later had examined the case and
determined that “FB” was “Fred Benthal.”
Benthal
explained that he and Col. Al Kirkpatrick were under sudden orders to fly to
the Roswell base, a three hour flight. There they were taken north of Roswell
where they had observed covered trucks carrying some type of wreckage. Further
on they were taken to a desert site with a tent. This is where he and others
took photographs of small humanoid bodies temporarily stored in the tent on
tarps. They had large heads, darkish complexion and very thinly constructed
bodies. He also detected a strange odor within the tent.
Benthal
said that his picture-taking was sharply supervised by an officer who did not
want Benthal to make sustained observation of the creatures. He stated that all
of his photographs and equipment were then confiscated and he and his Colonel
companion were debriefed that they were to say nothing of this as a matter of
national security and then were flown back to DC.
And
just like Col. Lewis Bohanon (who commanded the 3rd Photo Unit at Roswell)
was transferred out of the base after the crash, Frederick Benthal reported
that after the crash incident, he too was “transferred out.”
Someone
really didn’t want Fred talking. He was reassigned to Antarctica “to study the
effects of cold on pieces of equipment.”
AJB
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