Roswell Flying Saucer Reporter Dies

ROSWELL- A U.S. Army lieutenant who issued a now-famous news release that sparked decades of speculation about whether aliens really crash-landed here in 1947 has died.

Walter Haut, a former spokesman for the now-defunct Roswell Army Air Field, died of natural causes Thursday in Roswell, his daughter Julie Shuster said Sunday. He was 83.

Haut listened closely on July 8, 1947, as base commander Col. William Blanchard dictated information about a recovered flying saucer and ordered Haut to issue it. The Roswell Daily Record ran a bold headline July 9, 1947: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region."

The same day, an Army statement was released saying the recovered wreckage was only a weather balloon. "I guess they changed their mind," Haut told The Associated Press in 1997.


...In 1991, Haut and two other men founded The International UFO Museum, of which he was president until 1996. More than 2 million people have visited the museum since it opened in 1992, Shuster said.


Whether it was a saucer or a spy balloon, we owe a great debt to Mr. Haut for spurring some fantastic and some enjoyable but not-so-fantastic science fiction stories and movies that are now a part of American culture. Thank you, Mr. Haut.