UFO Crash at Roswell
UFO Crash at Roswell is a 1991 non-fiction book by Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt investigating the 1947 Roswell UFO crash. Published by Avon Books, the work represented the first major book-length investigation of the 1947 Roswell incident, drawing on interviews with over 200 witnesses and presenting a two-site crash scenario that would define subsequent Roswell research for decades.
Content
The book is dedicated "To Mac Brazel, who found it. To Major Jesse Marcel, who told the world about it." The narrative is structured chronologically, opening with a historical overview of the 1947 flying disc wave before reconstructing the Roswell events day by day from July 3 through July 14, 1947.
Randle and Schmitt established the foundational two-site model of the crash. The first site was the Foster Ranch debris field where Brazel discovered wreckage scattered across an area "much too large for a weather balloon." Marcel and Counter Intelligence Corps officer Captain Sheridan Cavitt accompanied Brazel to the ranch, where Marcel described material "like nothing he had ever seen," metal "as thin as newsprint and as light as a feather" that could not be dented with a sledgehammer or burned.
The second site, located two to three miles from the debris field, was where the craft or "some kind of an ejection pod" came to rest. This represented a significant departure from earlier accounts by Stanton Friedman and William Moore, who had placed the body-recovery site near the Plains of San Agustin, approximately 120 miles from the Brazel ranch. Randle and Schmitt concluded the bodies were found not on July 3 as previously theorized, but late on July 8.
Key witnesses presented in the book include Jesse Marcel, who confirmed in 1978 interviews that the weather balloon explanation was "only the cover story"; Colonel William Blanchard, the 509th Bomb Group commander who ordered the initial press release; Cavitt; Provost Marshal Major Edwin Easley, who helped cordon the crash site; Brigadier General Arthur Exon; Jim Ragsdale; and Frank Kaufmann. Ragsdale and Kaufmann were later discredited by subsequent researchers, including Schmitt himself in later works.
The book describes Brigadier General Roger Ramey's press conference at Fort Worth Army Air Field, where the debris was publicly identified as a Rawin target weather device, and Marcel received orders to pose with substitute balloon wreckage.
Significance
UFO Crash at Roswell was the first systematic investigation to consolidate witness testimony into a coherent narrative of the crash and cover-up. Its two-site model, placing both the debris field and the body/craft recovery site on or near the Foster Ranch rather than at the distant Plains of San Agustin, became the standard framework adopted by most subsequent researchers. The book directly inspired the 1994 Showtime television film Roswell, which dramatized the events as reconstructed by Randle and Schmitt.
The investigation was conducted under the auspices of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), where Schmitt served as Director of Special Investigations and Randle held the rank of Captain in the United States Air Force Reserve. Randle and Schmitt followed this book with The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell in 1994, which refined and expanded their findings.