Jesse Marcel

Jesse Antoine Marcel Sr. (May 27, 1907 – June 23, 1986) was a major in the United States Air Force (later a lieutenant colonel in the Reserves) who helped administer Operation Crossroads, the 1946 atom bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll.

Marcel was the first military officer tasked with investigating the 1947 Roswell incident, where supposed "flying disc" debris was later identified as pieces of a weather balloon. The incident was largely forgotten until 1978, when Marcel, then retired from the military, told ufologist Stanton Friedman that he believed the Roswell debris was extraterrestrial. In July 1936, he enlisted in the Texas National Guard; he was honorably discharged in June 1939 with the rank of private.

In October 1943, 1st Lieutenant Marcel was assigned to the 5th Bomber Command in the Southwest Pacific, serving as squadron intelligence officer and, later, group intelligence officer. There were only seven nuclear bombs in existence in July 1946.

The tests, called Able and Baker, both used Fat Man plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons of the kind dropped on Nagasaki. The Able bomb was stenciled with the name "Gilda" and decorated with an Esquire magazine photograph of Rita Hayworth, star of the 1946 movie, Gilda. The Baker bomb was nicknamed "Helen of Bikini". On July 26, 1946, Brigadier General Roger M. Ramey authored a letter of commendation complimenting Marcel's performance during Operation Crossroads. The following month, Marcel received an additional letter of commendation from Major General W. E. Kepner for his performance in the operation.

Role in the Roswell incident Investigation Marcel was the first military officer tasked with investigating a balloon crash near Roswell, New Mexico—an event that occurred amid the flying saucer craze of 1947, and which would subsequently become known as the Roswell incident. On June 26, media nationwide had reported civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold's story of seeing what became known as "flying saucers". Historians would later chronicle over 800 "copycat" sightings reported after the Arnold story.

On Monday, July 7, Roswell Army Air Field was contacted by Sheriff George Wilcox, who reported that a local rancher had recovered a crashed "flying disc". The debris was loaded onto a plane, and Marcel accompanied it from Roswell to Fort Worth.

Renewed interest The event at Roswell was largely forgotten until 1978. That year, the sensationalist tabloid National Enquirer reprinted the original, uncorrected article from July 8, 1947. In February 1978, Marcel, then retired from the military, was interviewed by ufologist Stanton Friedman. In that interview, Marcel said he believed the Roswell debris was extraterrestrial.

On December 19, 1979, Marcel was interviewed by Bob Pratt of the National Enquirer, and on February 28, 1980, the tabloid brought large-scale attention to the Marcel story. On September 20, 1980, the TV series In Search of... aired an interview where Marcel described his participation in the 1947 press conference:

Marcel's son, Jesse A. Marcel Jr., spent 35 years stating that in 1947, when he was 10 years old, his father had shown him alien debris recovered from the Roswell crash site, including "a small beam with purple-hued hieroglyphics on it". In 1991, retired US Air Force Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who had posed with debris for press photographs in 1947, acknowledged the "weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press."

According to a 1994 Air Force report, produced in response to a Congressional inquiry into the Roswell Incident, the material recovered by Marcel was likely debris from Project Mogul—a "then-sensitive, classified project, whose purpose was to determine the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research" using high-altitude balloons. He died on June 23, 1986, in Houma, Louisiana, at the age of 79.