By George Wingfield
Flying Saucer Review
June 29, 1995

On May 5th 1995 London businessman Ray Santilli organised the showing in London, of some of the film footage he acquired last year which supposedly shows remains of a crashed flying saucer near Roswell in June 1947 and autopsies of its alien occupants. Amoung about a hundred people present were press, TV and radio journalists and some ufologists. The screening was subsequently reported in radio bulletins but was almost entirely ignored by the British press which has been largely sceptical of the UFO subject for years.

Santilli and a German colleague Volker Spielberg purchased the film footage last November from an unamed 82-year-old American, who worked as a cine cameraman for the USAF in the 1940's. He was ordered to fly to New Mexico from Washington D.C. in June 1947 to film the retrieval of a crashed flying saucer. The cameraman's name is rumoured to br "Jack Barnett". Apparently he was willing to sell this footage a year or two ago in order to raise funds "to pay for his grand- daughter's (possibly niece's) wedding and to buy her a house". Santilli reportedly paid him $100,000 for about 90 minutes of footage; of this 30 minutes is of adequate quality and 60 minutes is poor to to unusable.

It should be pointed out that the cameraman's version of the so-called Roswell crash, differs radically from what has been suggested until now. He says the crash occurred just outside an Indian reservation at least three weeks before July 2nd, 1947, which was the date previously accepted. This can only be the Mescalero Apache reservation 60 miles WSW of Roswell. This is at least 50 miles from the debris field which ranch manager William Brazel discovered on July 3rd. We are told the military had already cleared up wreckage in June and recovered four alien bodies (one of which may have survived the crash) when the other debris at Brazel's ranch came to light.

The film segment shown on May 5th lasted about 22 minutes and was a videotaped copy of a number of the original spools. It was in black and white, with no soundtrack, and it showed the autopsy of what is claimed to be a dead alien. It apparently took place in a military hospital in Dallas between July 1st and July 3rd, 1947. Although the cameraman says that President Trueman and several top officials were present at the time, there is no sign of him in the sequence which was screened.

Initially one sees the naked body of a dead alien lying face up on an operating table. This is an operating theatre where the only other visible fixtures are a clock and a telephone. At one side is a tray of surgical instruments. A surgeon and his assistant stand beside the corpse clad in what appear to be white anti-contamination suits with attached hoods all in one piece. The hoods have rectangular visors.

The corpse is about 5ft tall. The head is proportionately large but not unduly so; perhaps 25% larger than one would expect a human head to be. The eyes are large, but are not that large, or all black as has been described as a distinctive feature of "greys". They are round, slightly oval, and have pupils. The neck appears normal and not unduly long or thin. Ears are minimal but seem to be positioned lower on the head. The mouth is a small inverted cresent giving the corpse, unsurprisingly, a rather sad look. The nose is small.

The head and body are completely hairless. No external genittalia are visible and one assumes the corpse is female or neuter. The chest is flat. The whiteness of the skin is the same shade as Caucasian human skin filmed in monochrome.

The body is bilbous and the abdomen appears swollen. The arms and legs are not spindly as one might expect of an alien grey. The thighs in particular are quite thick, tapering towards the knees which are not much in evidence. The musculature of the limbs is certainly human-like and not what one might expect to find in an alien species. However, the feet quite distinctly have six toes but with toenails like human ones. Some of the audience confirmed there were six digits on the alien's hands too (useful, maybe, for duodecimal arithmetic!).

Although the camera pans in on various parts of the body as the autopsy proceeds, close-up detail is often obscured due to poor focus and the camerawork is amateurish to say the least.

The only visible injury is a long gash on the inside of the right leg extending from the mid-thigh to almost mid-calf. Where the wound was gouged out the flesh appears black though this might be dark red were it to be shown on colour film. Likewise all incisions opened up by the surgeon merely reveal a blackness which renders it impossible to identify internal organs.

The surgeon performs the autopsy, decisively cutting into the body with a scalpel along carefully chosen lines and opening up the body cavities. The initial cuts along the cenreline of the body result in slight trickles of blood, or at any rate a dark fluid. The stomach and chest areas are opened up and organs in a dark interior are not easily discerned, nor the dark shapeless matter whis is taken out. There is no apparent sign of any ribcage. The surgeon removes various internal organs placing them in glass dishes held by his assistant It is impossible to say what these organs are.

At some stage the surgeon uses tweezers to pull dark membranes from each eye which he places in a dish. This apparantly leaves behind just the white eyeballs. All this done swiftly as if it were standard procedure.

From time to time the surgeon's assistant writes on an autopsy report document. Santilli says that by freeze-framing the film and close viewing of the appropriate frames, the name "DR. BRONK" can be seen written at the top of this document. Also visible is the name "DR. WILLIAMS". Undoubtedly the former refers to Dr. Detlev Bronk, the only medical expert member of "MJ-12" and an internationally known physiologist and biophysicist. If we are to believe the controversial MJ-12 papers, it was DR. Bronk who was assigned to do just such an analysis of the Roswell craft's four dead occupants.

Therefore, if this claim by Mr. Santilli is correct, it EITHER validates the film footage as the Roswell crash --- OR -- it points to a very elaborate and insidious hoax by people with a detailed Knowledge of the Roswell case and the content of the MJ-12 Papers (which in fact came to light in late 1984 although they are dated 1952).

The final stage of the autopsy is the cutting away of the top part of the skull to give access to the Brain. The surgeon works away with a bone-saw for several minutes. We do not see the skull opened but we are shown the removal of matter from within the skull. This is placed in a dish. The matter appears dark and jelly-like and unlike light grey human brain matter.

Although the creature in the operating theatre is supposedly an alien, it is not really that dissimilar to a deformed human. One cannot definetaly say that this is a completely different species. If we suppose that an alien species had evolved under entirely separate conditions to human beings, one might expect that their phisiology would be completely dissimilar. There is therefore a possibility that this body is that of a freak or genetically deformed human female. This needs to be thoroughly checked by medical experts in order to rule out the possibility of such a fraud, and indeed the British Home Office Pathologist, Dr. Christopher Milroy, was present at the screening and will submit a report.

Other descriptions of alien bodies at Roswell in 1947 certainly do not tally with the corpse shown in this film sequence. Nevertheless it does appear that this is a real autopsy carried out on a corpse of some kind, and NOT a cleverly made dummy. Nor does this seem to be an early sci-fi "B" movie, as has been suggested. So, if this footage is not what it purports to be, what is it really, and what was the intention in makingit?

These are questions that critics must answer and the key to whether it is the genuine article or not must surely lie in finding "Jack Barnett", the cameraman if such a person exists. At the time of writing Ray Santilli has just assured me that Kodak has carried out a thorough inspection of some of the film and he has been given written confirmation that it is 1947 film stock and was exposed during roughly that period. If that is true (I have yet to see the report) it makes the idea that the film may be a hoax extremely implausible.

On June 28th a number of congressman in Washington D.C., including Steven Schiff of New Mexico, were shown the film footage at their request. Presumably this will result in questions being put to the U.S. government. Can we expect more of the tired old balloon baloney yet again?

George Wingfield, June 29th 1995.