Sunday Herald Magazine, 02 April 2006

On July 8, 1947, Roswell air base in New Mexico announced that an alien spacecraft had crash landed in the area. The next day this was quickly retracted, but the incident made the town famous. Now, with Ant and Dec starring in a new film about the legendary alien autopsy hoax, Fraser Newham visits the dusty New Mexico town where it all began


EVERYTHING about the scene said small-town America. It was a bright winter day one week before Christmas and at Trinity United Methodist Church, a suitably dressed congregation had assembled to mourn the passing of much-loved local man Walter G Haut.
Haut came to the town of Roswell (population 50,000) with the Army Air Force during the Second World War. The town�fs slow pace and traditional sense of community had suited him so well he had stayed there for the next 60 years, working first as an insurance agent and later running an art gallery and frame shop in the centre of town. In many ways, with his local committee memberships, his successful business ventures and his string of civic awards, Haut was Mr Small Town America ? Richie Cunningham�fs dad made good in the dusty New Mexico sun. Pallbearers at the funeral included even Bill B Owen, the town mayor.

But this seeming normality belied an eventful past. For Haut came to Roswell with the 509th Bomb Group, the elite US bombing crew who dropped the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Haut himself was a bombardier, participating in 20 bombing raids over Japan and entrusted with dropping the measuring instruments during Operation Crossroads, the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946.

More intriguingly, Haut was public information officer at Roswell Army Airforce base who, apparently on the go-ahead of his commanding officer, in 1947 issued local media with the famous press release reporting the recovery of a crashed flying saucer on a ranch 75 miles outside of town ? the story was broadcast by local radio stations, went out on the wire and was picked up by just about every evening newspaper west of Chicago. �gRAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch�h declared the front page of the Roswell Daily Record.........

Alien Autopsy is released on April 7

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Copyright (C) 2005 FRASER NEWHAM All Rights Reserved.