Perhaps no other photo has been scrutinized as much as the one above. Books have been written about it, and the University of Texas even has a $10,000 reward for the first person who could provide a ‘definitive read’ of the photo. The object at the center of this scrutiny was the telegram General Roger M. Ramey (right) was holding in his hand. Some saw the phrase “victims of the wreck” on the telegram, while others claimed it read “turn out to be weather balloons”.
In 1947, Ramey was the Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas when he was called upon to oversee a freak incident in New Mexico. While the incident was initially just a local news story, later many conspiracy theorists claimed that an unidentified foreign object (UFO) had been spotted and shot down over Roswell, NM. Ramey and the army brass maintained that it was a weather balloon, and much of their suspicious behavior surrounding the incident could have been explained by the fact that the incident was probably caused by the crash of a nuclear test monitoring balloon.
The photo above was taken by a photographer from the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper during Ramey’s press conference, where he showed the debris from a ‘weather balloon’. No copies of the original document survives. The photographer, a man named James Bond Johnson had forgotten about his photos until he saw them on a TV documentary, and subsequently became a celebrity on the UFO circuit, giving talks about the day he was ushered into Ramey’s office to take pictures of the debris. He maintains that it was of alien origin.
“Perhaps no other photo has been scrutinized as much as the one above.” Alfred Eisenstaedt’s VJ Times Square kiss?, Bettmann image from Dealey Plaza of JFK assassination , just to name 2
During World War II, Brig. Gen. Ramey spent nearly 6 months as the C.O. of the 43rd Bomb Group in the Pacific Theater. He was known as a capable, efficient, good-humored officer who kept a level head during the attack on Pearl Harbor.