How does Moore read “No balloon flight again on account of clouds” aloud — and still call it Flight 4?
In the 8 June 1994 interview (moore-1994-interview), Charles Moore reads Crary’s June-4 diary entry aloud and concludes “I think that’s Flight 4 right there” — even though the entry opens “No balloon flight again on account of clouds.” How does he get there? Filed 2026-06-01. Companion to 2026-06-01-is-moores-flight-4-affidavit-internally-consistent.
The passage
A: …there are three flights that are missing here — two, three, and four. 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:
A: … June 4th, “Out to Tulerosa Range and fired charges … 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.” I think that’s Flight 4 right there.
How he gets there — three interpretive moves
- He reads “No balloon flight” narrowly — as “no formal/numbered flight,” not “no flight at all.” In NYU usage the “balloon flights” were the constant-level research experiments; a clouded-out day scrubbed the planned one.
- He seizes on the service launch in the same sentence — “Flew regular sonobuoy mike with cluster balloons.” Something did go up: a minor sonobuoy/cluster-balloon service launch. Moore treats that as the flight.
- He promotes the unnumbered service launch to “Flight 4” — to fill a gap (he says the numbered summary is “missing” flights 2, 3, 4). The diary assigns no number; the “4” is Moore’s, supplied to plug the hole in the series.
So the chain is: “No balloon flight” → “no numbered flight” → “but a service launch flew” → “call that the missing Flight 4.”
Why it’s strained
- The cited evidence undercuts the claim. Moore names the diary as his proof (“the reason I have it identified is I have Crary’s diary”) — yet the very entry he reads says no balloon flight occurred. He leans on the source while overriding its plain words.
- The label is fitted to the slot, not read from the record. The numbered summary lacks 2–4, and the June-4 line is the only early-June launch in the diary — so it inherits the “Flight 4” label by being the one available candidate, not because the diary numbers it. (Whether that reflects motivated reasoning or just honest best-guessing under a thin record can’t be known from the text — and the candor noted below cuts toward the latter; the overreach is in the result, not provably in his intent.)
- He can’t hold the date steady — “June 2nd or 3rd” one moment, the June-4 entry the next.
- He then loads it with unrecorded specifics — “multiple radar targets” — which the entry (a sonobuoy + cluster balloons) doesn’t mention and which he elsewhere admits he has “no evidence of.”
The charitable reading (and its limit)
Moore’s domain usage is defensible: to a balloon engineer, “No balloon flight … flew sonobuoy mike with cluster balloons” really can mean “the experiment scrubbed, but we ran a service launch.” And “Flight 4” may be his own attempt-count, not a claim that the diary says “4.” On that reading it isn’t a flat contradiction — and his conduct marks it as honest reconstruction, not deception: he reads the unhelpful “No balloon flight” line aloud rather than gliding past it, volunteers “I don’t have any evidence of this” about the radar targets, hedges with “I think” and “June 2nd or 3rd,” and gives a standing memory caveat. That is not how someone force-fits to a wanted answer. But it doesn’t rescue the identification: a service launch the diary neither numbers nor equips with radar targets can’t carry the weight of “Flight 4, the source of the Roswell debris.” The honest residue is that a real, unrecovered early-June service launch existed (fine) — but calling it “Flight 4 with multiple radar targets,” on the strength of an entry that says “no balloon flight,” reads into the record more than it says: a number and a payload it doesn’t contain.
Bottom line
He manages it by reading “No balloon flight” as “no numbered flight,” then re-labeling the day’s minor sonobuoy/cluster-balloon service launch as the “missing” Flight 4 — using Crary’s diary as the authority for a flight number and a radar-target payload the diary doesn’t contain. It’s the clearest single illustration of why the specific-flight Mogul identification rests on reconstruction, not record (see 2026-05-31-could-roswell-debris-be-project-mogul §3 and 2026-06-01-is-moores-flight-4-affidavit-internally-consistent).