The Roswell Incident was about a prototype automated spy balloon that was being developed to spy on the Russians and be disguised as a weather balloon. It belonged to the US Army. When it came down, it came from the sky, so naturally the farmer whose field it was called the Air Force. Due to compartmentalization, the Air Force didn’t know what it was, they just knew it was round and came from “up there”, so they announced they’d captured a flying saucer.
The Army brass in charge of the project read the headline, s$!& a brick, and had a cow. It was then quickly covered up. People were told not to talk about it.
The media started sniffing around, talking to people who were told not to talk about it, and obviously those people couldn’t talk about it, and the media wasn’t interested in such a mundane story. So… they made money by telling stories about flying saucers and aliens.
The government denied it was aliens, which it wasn’t, and the more they denied it, the more conspiracy theorists believed. That lead to a long standing policy of faking aliens to cover up top secret air craft. There’s no need to cover anything up or hide it if conspiracy theorists will do the job for you.
Buzz the population with a weirdly shaped but otherwise mundane aircraft, rile up the conspiracy theorists, and you can fly your top secret aircraft under the cover of aliens.
Any spies snooping around the area asking questions will just get idiots going “it was a cone shaped craft about 15 feet long with an air speed I’d estimate at about about mach 12. They kidnapped and stripped me, examined me briefly, returned my clothes, and dropped me here. They pressed my pants. Did a nice job.”
Area 51 is only maintained these days to draw attention away from where the real action is going on. Aliens have never been there. That’s just what the government wants you to think. Argue with the conspiracy theorists and they’ll just believe in Area 51 aliens that much harder.
The last thing to fly out of Area 51 was the B2 Spirit. These days it’s a pretty mundane aircraft, but back in the day it was cloaked with secrecy, and gave rise to all the “black triangle” conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the B2 isn’t the only black triangle.
They actually have a dedicated aircraft to spook the conspiracy theorists with that is known to the conspiracy theorists as the “TR-3A” and its successor the “TR-3B”. Now, I don’t know if those are what it’s actually called internally, but it’s purpose is to trick gullible people into going “OMG! ALIENS!” My guess is t hat the TR-3A and TR-3B are prototypes for stealth flying wings that eventually culminated in the B2 Spirit, and are kept around to just occasionally used to buzz drunk yokels in rusted pick up trucks.
The TL;DR is this… the UFO conspiracy theories are all just government ploys to hide stuff that’s boring by comparison, like top secret airplanes.
Except on July 8 1947 the USAF was still the USAAF and the base designation was Roswell Army Air Force Base.
That might work for those of you who have never witnessed one...But for the millions of people who have seen them, your theory is laughable...
Let me guess. They leak oil to mark their territory, the "Hood" leaks, and the light switch has three positions. "Dim, Flicker, Off (with smoke)"
There were reports of UFOs before 1947 and they were reported by fighter pilots who gave Chase and could not even get close.