On a July afternoon in nineteen forty-seven, the Army air field at Roswell announced possession of a flying disc. Within hours, officers at Fort Worth presented wreckage they identified as a balloon and radar target. The reversal became one of the most durable mysteries of the twentieth century.
This episode reconstructs the first day's surviving record before following the people, interviews, books, and disputed papers that made Roswell a story about alien bodies and a secret government. It examines what the photographs and contemporary reports can establish, and where the evidence still leaves room for argument.