July 8, 1947-
David Sanderson felt alive speeding through the New Mexican desert on the back of a deuce and a half. The wind combed through his hair, the full moon gave the surrounding desert a slight glow.
'But what the hell are we doing here?.' he thought to himself while surveying the dark silhouette of the nearby hills. 'The bigwig officers at Roswell Army Air Field told us of a crashed aircraft nearby, but didn't bother to give us orders as to what to do with the object.'
David was a member of the 509th Operations Group, which was one of ten bombardment groups of the Strategic Air Command. He was a highly trained bomber pilot who spent hours upon hours of his time patrolling the southwestern states in a B-29 Super Fortress. This nighttime ride through the silent desert was a relief to him, for he was not cramped up in the cockpit of his B-29. As to why he was ordered to ride along with other pilots and soldiers puzzled David. 'I am no engineer. I cannot salvage through shredded aircraft components while trying to solve the mystery of why the plane crashed.'
The tail lights of the flatbed truck up ahead flashed, illuminating the sand in a dim red glow.
"We believe that the object crashed in this general vicinity." Spoke a senior officer named Henry Bulovski. "I want you men to split up and search for it."
David jumped off the bed of the deuce and a half, landing with a crunch as his boots impacted with the sand.
"One more thing," the officer added. "SAC has given us clear orders that we must find this object. All nearby citizens must be kept away from the recovery process. If they refuse," Lt. Bulovski emphasized his last statement, "They are to be shot."
As the last of the twelve men jumped out of the deuce and a half, David began to walk southwest, off to find an aircraft that only God himself knew of its location. He didn't know what to look for. There were no flames that would easily point to the aircraft's resting place, no injured pilot bouncing up and down, screaming for rescue. What intrigued David the most, however, was the secrecy involved in the whole operation. 'Why must a simple plane wreck be shrouded in so much obscurity? Was the aircraft involved Soviet? Was it some kind of nuclear super weapon that SAC is developing?'
The thought of an accidental nuclear explosion made David's spine quiver. 'If I were going to die,' he decided, 'it would not be as the main entrée of a nuclear barbecue.' He flipped a flashlight off of his belt, and used it to rake the desert landscape for wreckage. Wave after wave of prickly shrubs and scurrying field mice were illuminated, aggravating David greatly. 'This is terrible. Like finding a needle in a haystack, except the haystack it's a whole Goddamn desert.'
The sight of a metallic reflection quickly caught David's eye. He curiously paced to the reflection, where he discovered a small piece of flattened steel the size of a loaf of bread. The steel felt warm to his touch, too warm to have been heated by a sun that set hours ago. David shone his flashlight forward. The intense beam of light poked through the shrubs, and continued forward for about twenty feet until it was blocked. Blocked by a bulk still waiting to be discovered. David walked up to the object, where his puzzled brain raced with confusion as it tried to identify the white, aircraft-like vehicle that rested at right beside him. There were two glass canopies on the object's nose, which David assumed to be cockpits. A large sliding door appeared to be open on the object's sides. Two wings, too short provide any useful lift, drooped down from the top of the craft, with domed turrets located on the wingtips. The craft had no obvious form of locomotion; no propellers or jet engines to push it through the sky, no tail assembly to stabilize it in flight, and to David, the most disturbing part; no crew… anywhere. The craft didn't appear to crash at all. It landed on the desert floor unscathed, without causing any noticeable skid marks on the sand trailing behind it.
'This is no plane.' David thought to himself in complete awe.