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Anthropomorphic dummies were transported on medical gurneys and sometimes inside black insulation bags visually similar to "body bags" used for cadavers[1]
The 1997 Air Force report found no alien bodies reported in 1947.[2] The first mentions of bodies came decades later.[3] None of the primary eyewitnesses mentioned bodies.[4] Jesse Marcel denied their presence when asked,[5] and Roswell authors interviewed only four people with supposed firsthand knowledge of alien bodies.[6] The claims of alien bodies – made decades later by elderly witnesses, sometimes as death-bed confessions – contradict each other in basic details such as the location of the crash, the number of extraterrestrials, and the description of the bodies.[7] The Air Force concluded that the alleged "bodies" reported by later eyewitnesses came from memories of accidents involving military casualties and memories of the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies.[8] Military programs, such as the 1950s Operation High Dive, released test dummies from high-altitude balloons above the New Mexico Desert.[8] Recollection of these test dummies could be mixed with a myriad of hoaxes or misconceptions.[8]
The Air Force concluded that the number of accounts of body retrievals suggested an explanation other than dishonesty, and that the retrieval process for their dummies resembled the body retrieval stories in many aspects.[9] The dummies were transported using stretchers, casket-shaped crates, and sometimes insulation bags that resembled body bags.[10] Descriptions of "weapons carriers" and a "jeeplike truck that had a bunch of radios" matched the Dodge M37 used for 1950s test retrievals.[11] Eyewitnesses described the purported bodies as bald, "dummies", resembling "plastic dolls", and wearing flight suits. These attributes were consistent with Air Force dummies used in the 1950s.[12]
^Pflock 2001, p. 118: "These are Frank Kaufmann, who also claimed to have seen a crash survivor; the late Jim Ragsdale; a Lt. Col. Albert Lovejoy Duran; and one Gerald Anderson, who, like Kaufmanno told not only of seeing bodies but also a survivor, this at a third alleged crash site on the Plains of San Agustin in Catron County, about two hundred miles west-northwest of Roswell."
Clancy, Susan A. (2007). Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (First paperback ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0-674-02401-4.
Klass, Philip (January 1997a). "The Klass Files"(PDF). The Skeptics UFO Newsletter. Vol. 43. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on April 19, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
Klass, Philip (January 1998). "The Klass Files"(PDF). The Skeptics UFO Newsletter. Vol. 49. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on December 24, 2013. Retrieved April 7, 2015.
Nickell, Joe; McGaha, James (May–June 2012). "The Roswellian Syndrome: How Some UFO Myths Develop". Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 36, no. 3. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on January 26, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
Ricketts, Jeremy R. (2011). "Land of (Re) Enchantment: Tourism and Sacred Space at Roswell and Chimayó, New Mexico". Journal of the Southwest. 53 (2): 239–261. doi:10.1353/jsw.2011.0004. JSTOR41710086. S2CID133475439.