ABSTRACT
During the summer of 1947, the dusty New Mexico town of Roswell was very much in the news. It was home to the Roswell Army Air Field, where sections of the Eighth Air Force helped continue tests of the new atomic bomb; it was also a growing oil town, where oil riggers were replacing cowboys in the local honky-tonks and clubs. In early July it became something else; local ranchers found parts of a “flying saucer” that had crashed nearby, along with the bodies of several small “aliens.” A nationwide UFO scare was triggered, and suddenly hundreds of reporters were flocking to the town, asking the Air Force what was going on and accusing the intelligence officers at Roswell of a massive coverup. For weeks the local newspapers were full of the scare, and few people noticed a tiny article on the back pages of the Roswell Daily Record; a local radio singer from KGFL, “Lefty” Frizzell, had been arrested and sentenced to a six-month jail term.
