Tag Archives: Fort Worth

Jesse Marcel Jr – Icon in Ufology… RIP

From Wikipedia and Telegraph

Major Jesse Marcel

During the first week of July 1947, William Brazel, a foreman for a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, was examining livestock when he noticed a wreckage of an unknown shiny, metallic material. Brazel collected a sample of the debris and showed it to George Wilcox of the Chaves County, New Mexico’s Sheriff Office where the two talked “confidential-like”. Wilcox brought down Major Jesse Marcel from the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) to examine the debris. After the discussion, Marcel, Brazel, and Counterintelligence Corps officer Sheridan Cavitt traveled to the debris field, which covered an area approximately 0.75 miles (1.21 km) long and was several hundred feet wide. Marcel informed the United States Air Force (USAF) of the flyer saucer, and it was handled by the Eighth Air Force (8 AF).

On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record reported the RAAF found a flying saucer in the Roswell, New Mexico region. A press release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was released the same day claiming a weather balloon was found instead of a flyer saucer. The debris was flown from Roswell to the 8 AF’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas that day on a Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Marcel flew, too, and he met with General Roger Ramey, where parts of the debris was set up for the press to photograph. A telex was sent on July 8 from the FBI’s office in Dallas, Texas to the Cincinnati, Ohio office. The writer said a flying disc—hexagonal in shape and 20 feet (6.1 m) wide—had been found, and the debris was going to be transferred to Wright Field in Riverside, Ohio for a special investigation. The press reported the weather balloon story from Fort Worth, and nothing else was reported.

The incident was more or less forgotten until 1978, when a UFO researcher called Stanton Friedman went to interview Jesse Marcel Sr, who insisted that he really had found a flying saucer, but that his superiors had covered it up and ordered everyone who came into contact with the UFO never to talk about it. Subsequently (Major Marcel died in 1986) other witnesses came forward to corroborate his story, with some even claiming that alien bodies had been found in the wreckage — small, humanoid figures with large heads and huge, slanted almond-shaped eyes.

Jesse Marcel Jr

Jesse Marcel Jr, died at age 76, was an American ear, nose and throat specialist who insisted, until the end of his life, that as a child he had handled debris from a flying saucer. The association proved lucrative, too, for Marcel Jr, who appeared on numerous television and radio shows, went on lecture tours and in 2007 published The Roswell Legacy, in which he continued to insist that the wreckage had an extraterrestrial origin – he even provided artists’ impressions of the mysterious hieroglyphs.

Jesse Marcel Jr was born on August 30 1936 in Houston, Texas, and served as a medical officer in the US Navy from 1962, becoming a specialist in ear, nose and throat surgery. After retiring from the Navy in 1971 he opened a medical practice in Helena, Montana. In 1975 he became a medical officer in the Montana National Guard and earned his flight surgeon wings (flight surgeons at the time were allowed to fly solo in helicopters) at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He was appointed State Surgeon of of Montana and retired from the military in 1996.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom he was called up again for active service and, from September 2004, spent 13 months as a flight surgeon with the 189th Helicopter Battalion in Iraq, reaching the rank of colonel.

He is survived by his wife, Linda, and by eight children. You can find his son Jesse on Facebook.