Roswell Testimony Part 8

File: UFO112

5 THE MILITARY

5.1 Jesse Marcel

[Major Jesse Marcel was one of the first two military people to visit the Corona crash site. The other was Sheridan Cavitt, who to this day has refused to even acknowledge that he was there on the ranch with Marcel.

Jesse Marcel died in 1982. He was interviewed in 1979.] When we arrived at the crash site, it was amazing to see the vast amount of area it covered. It was nothing that hit the ground or exploded [on] the ground. It's something that must have exploded above ground, traveling perhaps at a high rate of speed, we don't know. But it scattered over an area of about three quarters of a mile long, I would say, and fairly wide, several hundred feet wide. So we proceeded to pick up all the fragments we could find and load up our Jeep Carry-All. It was quite obvious to me, familiar with air activities, that it was not a weather balloon, nor was it an airplane or a missile. What it was, we didn't know. We just picked up the fragments. It was something I had never seen before, and I was pretty familiar with all air activities. We loaded up the Carry-All but I wasn't satisfied. I told Cavitt, "You drive this vehicle back to the base and I'll go back out there and pick up as much as I can put in the car,", which I did. But we picked up only a very small portion of the material that was there.

One thing that impressed me about the debris that we were referring to is the fact that a lot of it looked like parchment. A lot of it had a lot of little members [I-beams] with symbols that we had to call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them, they could not be read, they were just symbols, something that meant something and they were not all the same. The members that this was painted on -- by the way, those symbols were pink and purple, lavender was actually what it was. And so these little members could not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn that. It would not burn. The same with the parchment we had.

But something that is more astounding is that the piece of metal that we brought back was so thin, just like the tinfoil in a pack of cigarette paper. I didn't pay too much attention to that at first, until one of the GIs came to me and said, "You know the metal that was in there? I tried to bend that stuff and it won't bend. I even tried it with a sledge hammer. You can't make a dent on it."

I didn't go back to look at it myself again, because we were busy in the office and I had quite a bit of work to do. I am quite sure that this young fellow would not have lied to me about that, because he was a very truthful, very honest guy, so I accepted his word for that. So, beyond that, I didn't actually see him hit the matter with a sledge hammer, but he said, "It's definite that it cannot be bent and it's so light that it doesn't weigh anything." And that was true of all the material that was brought up. It was so light that it weighed practically nothing.

This particular piece of metal was, I would say, about two feet long and perhaps a foot wide. See, that stuff weighs nothing, it's so thin, it isn't any thicker than the tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes. So I tried to bend the stuff, it wouldn't bend. We even tried making a dent in it with a 16-pound sledge hammer, and there was still no dent in it. I didn't have the time to go out there and find out more about it, because I had so much other work to do that I just let it go. It's still a mystery to me as to what the whole thing was. Like I said before, I knew quite a bit about the material used in the air, but it was nothing I had seen before. And as of now, I still don't know what it was. So that's how it stands.

[Here is what Jesse Marcel said on the American television program "Unsolved Mysteries".]

There were just fragments strewn all over the area, an area about three quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide. So we proceeded to pick up the parts.

I tried to bend the stuff, it would not bend. I even tried to burn it, it would not burn. That stuff weighs nothing. It's not any thicker than tin foil in a pack of cigarettes. We even tried making a dent in it with a 16-pound sledge hammer, still no dent in it.

One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all our activities, that it was not a weather balloon, nor an aircraft, nor a missile. It was something else, which we didn't know what it was.

End of part 8