Project Mogul

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Project Mogul (sometimes referred to as Operation Mogul) was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving high altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests and ballistic missiles. The project was carried out from 1947 until late 1948.

Project Mogul was conceived by Dr. Maurice Ewing who had earlier researched the deep sound channel in the oceans and theorized that a similar sound channel existed in the upper atmosphere: a certain height where the air pressure and temperature result in minimal speed of sound, so that sound waves would propagate and stay in that channel due to refraction. The project involved arrays of balloons carrying microphones and radio transmitters to relay the signals to the ground. It was supervised by Dr. James Peoples, who was assisted by Dr. Albert P. Crary.

One of the requirements of the balloons was that they maintain a relatively constant altitude over a prolonged period of time. The early Mogul balloons consisted of large clusters of rubber meteorological balloons. However, these were quickly replaced by enormous balloons made of polyethylene plastic. These were more durable, leaked less helium, and also were better at maintaining a constant altitude than the early rubber balloons. Constant altitude control and polyethylene balloons were the two major innovations of Project Mogul.

Project Mogul was the forerunner of the Skyhook balloon program, which started in the late 1940s, as well as another espionage program involving overflights and photo-surveillance of the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, called Project Moby Dick^{[citation needed]}. The latter raised storms of protest from the Soviets. The balloons were also used for cosmic ray experiments.

[edit] Project Mogul and the Roswell UFO incident

Main article: Air Force Reports on Roswell UFO Incident

In 1994/5, the Air Force published a report claiming Mogul Flight #4, launched from Alamogordo, New Mexico on June 4, 1947, was what crashed near Roswell, New Mexico and sparked the Roswell UFO incident. The report claimed a combination of personnel unfamiliar with this sort of equipment who thought it might be one of numerous "flying saucers" being reported at the time and the desire on the part of the military to maintain secrecy on Mogul eventually led to the belief from many that the military was covering up a recovered alien spacecraft.