Aircraft Crashes and UFOs
Since the first flying saucer story in June 1947, persons have attempted to exploit actual military aircraft accidents to support UFO theories and propagate the flying saucer phenomenon.
One of the first exploitation attempts involved a fatal August 1, 1947 Army Air Forces B-25 accident near Kelso, Wash. Descriptions of this accident, which UFO theorists contend was caused because the aircraft carried parts of a flying saucer, were included in a poorly executed hoax. Nonetheless, it received a considerable amount of attention.
Another incidence was photographs of an “alien,” supposedly from a 1948 crash of a flying saucer in Mexico. However, when the photographs were examined by Air Force officials, they noticed a pair of government issue, aviator style, sunglasses lying underneath the “alien” body.
Perhaps the most famous attempt to exploit an actual aircraft accident involved the fatal January 1948 crash of a Kentucky Air National Guard F-51 fighter near Franklin, Ky. Theorists contend the fighter was shot down by a UFO. However, it was determined that this aircraft most probably crashed while observing a newly invented high altitude research balloon thought to be a UFO. The large balloon, which matched eyewitnesses’ descriptions at the time, was released the previous day, and its ground track placed it precisely in the area where the unidentified object was sighted the next day. Regardless, shameless attempts to exploit this event continued as recently as 1995, when the tabloid TV program, Sightings, aired and published (Sightings, Simon & Schuster, 1996, 170–176) a distorted interpretation of this tragedy.
The “Black” “Little Bodies.” Review of the autopsy protocols of the victims of this accident revealed extensive similarities to the descriptions of the bodies allegedly described by the missing nurse. Dennis related in various interviews that the missing nurse described, “... three; very mangled; black; little bodies in body bags.”[132] Records of this mishap confirmed that the victims suffered “injuries, extreme, multiple.”[133] According to persons who assisted in the identification of the remains from this crash, and in compliance with Air Force directives in effect at that time, human remains pouches, commonly called body bags, were used to recover and transport victims’ bodies.[134]
Statements made by Dennis described bodies that were “three-and-a-half to four feet tall,” and “black” in color.[135] The autopsy protocols of two victims described extensive third degree burns and loss of the lower extremities.[136] Dennis also described a head of one of the bodies that was not rigid but “flexible” and tissues of a body in “strings” that looked as if they were “pulled” by predatory animals after the crash.[137] An autopsy protocol of a victim described “multiple fractures of all bones of the skull” and “partially cooked strands of bowel ... over the abdomen and in the chest.”[138] Additional similarities between the autopsy protocols and Dennis’ statements were a detached hand and descriptions of the fingers and arms of the crash victims.[139]
The autopsy protocol of one victim also described remains with a “face completely missing.”[140] This description corresponds with Dennis’ recollections of a body with eyes and nose that were concave. Also, the drawing of the head of one of the “little bodies” Dennis claims is representative of a drawing given to him by the missing nurse is a reasonably accurate representation of a human body with its face completely missing.[141]
Another similarity to Dennis’ account is that of the 11 victims of this accident, only three were autopsied—the same number of bodies that were allegedly autopsied in the missing nurse’s account.[142] Finally, records revealed that due to limited facilities at the Walker AFB hospital, the autopsies were performed at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell.[143] This is the same funeral home where Dennis claimed to be employed in 1947 until 1962.[144]*
* It is unclear when Dennis worked at this funeral home since city and phone directories listed him as co-owning a different funeral home in Roswell, as vice-president of another funeral home in Roswell, and as having been employed as a drug store supervisor and oil field worker during the periods when he claims he worked at the Ballard Funeral Home.