Is Moore’s affidavit — “Flight #4 was launched June 4, based on Crary’s diary” — internally consistent?
Examines a specific claim in Prof. Charles B. Moore’s 8 June 1994 sworn statement to the USAF (moore-1994-affidavit, Atch 21 of usaf-roswell-report-fact-vs-fiction-1995), against the contemporaneous source it cites. Filed 2026-06-01. Companion to 2026-05-31-could-roswell-debris-be-project-mogul (§3).
The statement
“I think that Flight #4 was the flight that was launched out of Alamogordo on June 4, 1947. This is based on Dr. Crary’s actual diary of the launch and other events. This is also one of those events where we went to multiple radar targets because we were not having good success with single targets. This flight was with multiple balloons and targets and may have had a sonobuoy (black box?).”
Short answer
No — not cleanly. The claim overreaches its own cited basis, and it conflicts with Moore’s own gloss of that source elsewhere. Moore grounds a numbered “Flight #4” carrying multiple radar targets in “Dr. Crary’s actual diary,” but the diary’s June-4 entry contains neither the number nor the radar targets — and, read strictly, records the opposite of a balloon flight launching that day.
The cited source says something different
“No balloon flight again on account of clouds. Flew regular sonobuoy mike with cluster balloons and had good luck with receiver on ground but poor on plane.”
So the diary records, for June 4:
- the formal balloon flight was cancelled (“No balloon flight again on account of clouds”);
- only an unnumbered service flight (a sonobuoy mike on cluster balloons) was flown;
- no “Flight #4” — the diary assigns no number;
- no radar targets — only the sonobuoy + cluster balloons are named.
Moore’s affidavit attributes to that diary both the “Flight #4” designation and the “multiple radar targets” — neither of which is in it. The number and the targets are Moore’s reconstruction, presented as diary-based.
Moore contradicts Moore
In the same-day interview transcript (Atch 23), glossing the same Crary diary entry, the cracks widen:
- He wavers on the date within the interview. First: “I’ve identified Flight 4. Flight 4 was a flight we made… in Alamagordo something like June 2nd or 3rd of 1947. The reason I have it identified is I have Albert Crary’s diary.” Then, reading the diary aloud, he lands on the June 4th entry and says “I think that’s Flight 4 right there.” So “Flight 4” floats between June 2/3 and June 4 in one sitting — and the June-4 entry he settles on is the one that says “No balloon flight again on account of clouds.”
- He concedes the radar targets are unevidenced. Of the early-June flights: “the tracking… was to be done by radar, tracking corner reflector targets, which I think we brought with us. I don’t have any evidence of this,” and “the radar test flights were not recorded.”
- He treats the flight as unnumbered elsewhere — calling the June service launch one that “we have no record of… here in the NYU summary.” A flight “not in the NYU summary” is by definition not a numbered flight — yet the affidavit assigns it the number 4.
So Moore both numbers it (“Flight 4”/“#4”) and admits it is unnumbered and unrecorded; and he attributes its radar targets to a diary that doesn’t mention them while conceding he has “no evidence” of those targets. (For the specific move of reading “No balloon flight again on account of clouds” aloud and still calling it Flight 4, see 2026-06-01-moore-no-balloon-flight-yet-flight-4.)
The only consistent reading, and its cost
The statement avoids flat self-contradiction only if “Flight #4” is read as merely Moore’s personal label for the June-4 service flight. But then the second sentence overclaims: Crary’s diary supports “a service flight went up June 4,” not “that flight was Flight #4 and carried multiple radar targets.” The date and the existence of a service launch are diary-grounded; the “#4” identity and the radar-target payload are Moore’s interpolation.
In fairness — Moore’s own standing caveat
Moore prefaced his interview testimony with an explicit disclaimer, which both softens this and reinforces it:
“I need to say here, you need to qualify everything I say with the memory of almost 50 years ago. I will say things that are to the best of my memory, but on the other hand, should other evidence indicate my memory is faulty, I readily accept that.” — Moore, 8 June 1994 interview transcript (Atch 23)
So the “Flight #4 / multiple radar targets” reconstruction is not a deceptive claim but an explicitly best-memory one, offered with a request that it be subordinated to documentary evidence. That posture is epistemically to his credit — and it cuts the same way the analysis above does: where the contemporaneous record (Crary’s diary) is silent or contrary, Moore’s own instruction is to weight the record over his recollection. The inconsistency stands as a matter of what the diary supports; Moore himself pre-conceded that his memory, not the diary, is the weaker reed. (This is also why he rates as a careful source rather than a fabulist — he invites his own correction.)
Why it matters
This is the bridge the whole specific-flight Mogul identification rests on. The materials match requires radar targets (the diagnostic foil/balsa/flowered-tape are radar-target parts) — and the only thing placing radar targets on the June-4 candidate is Moore’s reconstruction, which the contemporaneous diary it leans on does not support. So the general claim (“the debris was a balloon-borne radar target”) survives; the specific claim (“it was Flight #4, a logged June-4 flight with multiple targets, per Crary”) does not hold together on its own terms. (See also the parallel conflation in the published report’s narrative — 2026-05-31-could-roswell-debris-be-project-mogul §3 — where the report contradicts itself on Flight 4’s configuration: it both calls Flight 4 the same simple cluster-balloons-and-sonobuoy config as the pre-Moore Flights 2/3 and requires it to carry the corner reflectors Flight 3 lacked.)