Roger Ramey
| Roger Ramey |
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Roger Maxwell Ramey (1903–1963) was a United States Air Force brigadier general who served as commanding general of the Eighth Air Force at Fort Worth Army Air Field, Texas. He is principally known in UFO disclosure research as the officer who allegedly orchestrated the weather balloon cover story on July 8, 1947, replacing the 509th Bomb Group's announcement that it had recovered a "flying disc" with the claim that the debris was a misidentified weather balloon.
Military career
Ramey was a career U.S. Army Air Forces officer who rose to command the Eighth Air Force, a senior assignment in American military aviation. By 1947, his command encompassed Fort Worth Army Air Field (later Carswell Air Force Base), the regional headquarters for the Southwest United States. His position in the chain of command placed him above Colonel William Blanchard, commanding officer of Roswell Army Air Field and the 509th Bomb Group.
Role in the Roswell incident
Main articles:
Roswell cover-up
and
Roswell crash
On July 8, 1947, Walter Haut issued a press release from Roswell Army Air Field announcing the recovery of a "flying disc." Within hours, Ramey summoned reporters to his Fort Worth office, presented debris he identified as a weather balloon, and issued a retraction. Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had accompanied the original recovery, was photographed kneeling beside the substituted balloon debris. Ramey's chief of staff, Colonel Thomas DuBose, later signed a sworn affidavit confirming that the balloon display was a deliberate cover story ordered from Washington.
According to Tom Carey, recovered wreckage and bodies allegedly made a deliberate intermediate stop at Fort Worth so that Ramey could personally inspect them before they continued to Wright Field.
The Ramey memo
Main article:
Ramey memo
One of the photographs taken during the July 8 press conference shows Ramey holding a folded document whose text is partially visible. Beginning in the 1990s, researchers including Kevin Randle and David Rudiak undertook forensic digital enhancement of the image. Partial decipherments — contested by different analysts — have suggested the document refers to "victims of the wreck" and to a "disc," language inconsistent with the weather balloon explanation.
Later career and death
Ramey continued his Air Force career after 1947 and retired with general rank. He died in 1963 without having made any known public statements about the true nature of the Roswell recovery.