Most of us have seen the now-famous pictures of the debris from Roswell taken in General Roger Ramey's office at Fort Worth Army Air Field. General Ramey, Colonel Thomas Dubose, Major Jesse Marcel, and Warrant Officer Irving Newton appear in the pictures, posing with the debris. The debris is clearly visible in all seven existing pictures. There is absolutely no question that this is the debris from an ML-307 radar reflector. If this is the same debris that was recovered from the Foster ranch, then the Roswell case is closed, period. It's over, end of subject.
In the January 1991 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal, there is an article by Jaime Shandera titled "New Revelations About the Roswell Wreckage: a General Speaks Up." The article included an extensive two-part interview with General Thomas Dubose, who was a colonel and General Ramey's chief of staff in 1947. Dubose met the plane carrying the material picked up outside of Roswell and personally took it to Ramey's office. During the first of the two interviews, Shandera realized that General Dubose was not familiar with and had not seen the pictures taken of the debris in Ramey's office. Shandera then sent Dubose a set of the pictures, prior to conducting the second interview.
Throughout the two interviews, Shandera questioned Dubose with the doggedness of a district attorney, asking him nine times in nine different ways whether the debris had been switched. Nine times, General Dubose made it emphatically clear that the debris had not been switched. Among Dubose's responses were "We never switched anything...We were West Pointers -- we would never have done that...I have damn good eyesight...I had charge of that material, and it was never switched." When shown the pictures from Ramey's office and asked if he recognized the material, he replied, "Oh yes. That's the material that Marcel brought in to Ft. Worth from Roswell."
In William Moore's book The Roswell Incident, Jesse Marcel, Sr., was interviewed about the debris. His responses were somewhat puzzling in that he indicated that the photos of him were of the actual debris, but that the later photos (without him) contained substituted material. Later photos with substituted debris (even if they existed) wouldn't really matter. If the debris in the photo with Major Marcel was the actual material, it was from an ML- 307 radar reflector. Again, end of story.
Among Marcel's responses were "They took one picture of me on the floor holding up some of the less-interesting metallic debris.... The stuff in that one photo was pieces of the actual stuff we had found. It was not a staged photo."
During one of my interviews with Irving Newton, he mentioned how in Ramey's office, Marcel had pointed out the symbols and indicated that he (Marcel) thought they might be some form of alien writing. When I asked him if he was sure that it was Marcel who did that, Newton was emphatic that it was the man who "had collected the debris from the ranch." This is, of course, one further indication that the debris in Ramey's office was the debris from the Foster ranch. There was no substitution. The debris in the pictures was the same debris collected by Major Marcel at the Foster Ranch. It was the debris from an ML-307 radar reflector.
There is also an interesting quote in Moore's book from Marcel about the so-called indestructibility of the material. It sounds like this now-legendary indestructibility was actually more the kind of indestructibility that you would find in material from something like a tough, paper-backed foil. Marcel stated, "It was possible to flex this stuff back and forth, even wrinkle it, but you could not put a crease in it that would stay, nor could you dent it at all. I would almost have to describe it as metal with plastic properties."
One could also lay tough, paper-backed foil on the ground and pound away with a sledge hammer and quite possibly not dent it. Interestingly, the sledgehammer test was only hearsay, anyway. One of the airmen allegedly performed the test and told Marcel about it afterwards. This is possibly a good example of how rumors and myth begin. Besides, if this material was so indestructible, why did it break up into hundreds or thousands of little pieces? The real answer is, of course, that it was not so indestructible because it was from an ML-307 radar reflector that was apparently dragged across the ground as the balloon array descended..