Response to Kevin Randle
By Nick Redfern
FATE :: September 2005

Kevin Randle's review of my book, Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, makes a number of comments and observations.

Randle's statements regarding the work of the Horten brothers are noted, but are not entirely crucial to the story, primarily because all of the interviewees told me that the aircraft that crashed at Roswell was based upon Japanese designs that were Horten-inspired, or Horten-like. But they were not built by the Hortens.

As Randle notes, in the 1940s the Germans were working with flying-wing-type aircraft (as per the Hortens), and so was the United States (with Northrop). But I specifically point out that even though there was some likely collusion between the work of the Nazis and that of the Japanese, the device that came down at Ros­well - according to the people I interviewed for the book - was Japanese and not German.

Randle says that the book provides a "nice theory" for the allegations that there was more than one crash site for the Roswell vehicle. It does. And we could argue that the reason why the theory is so "nice" is because it is the literal truth.

Randle disputes the possibility that the Japanese would have worked on postwar Fugo balloons that might have resulted in the creation of a hybrid-style device that was a blend of huge balloon array and flying wing. However, there is evidence to firmly demonstrate that the Japanese were working on far more ambitious balloon-based projects than the wartime Fugos.

For example, U.S. newspapers of 1945 talk about the Japanese planning to build far larger balloons that would have had a fully-pressurized gondola affixed to them piloted by "death-defying Japanese" for a manned assault on the U.S. mainland by balloon, after a four-day, high-altitude flight to the U.S.

Though Randle disputes the data contained within the book, he admits to speaking with a former White Sands employee who informed him of a theory that may have explained the unusual debris, and that may have incorporated a flying-wing-style vehicle in the accident. Randle states that the complete lack of official documentation in favor of this theory renders it unlikely at best.

However, Randle supports the extraterrestrial theory, for which there is also a complete lack of official documentation ...

Read the rest of this article in the September 2005 issue of FATE

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