I wonder how much weight we should give this "circumstantial evidence", from the report linked above:
View attachment 48317
That's from the daughter of the rancher who found the debris. It's on page 40 and there are several other eyewitness accounts describing what amounted to a small bundle of "foil, sticks, paper and tape".
To be fair, here are some other testimonies from witnesses of the debris, cited in this USAF report.
Jesse A. Marcel, MD (son of the late Major Jesse Marcel; 11 years old at the time of the incident). Affidavit dated May 6, 1991.". . .There were three categories of debris: a thick, foil like metallic gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plasticlike material, like Bakelite; and there were fragments of what appeared to be Ibeams. On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. This writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved, geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to
Russian, Japaneseor any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics,but it had no animal-like characters. . ."
Loretta Proctor (former neighbor of rancher W.W. Brazel). Affidavit dated May 5,1991. ". .. Brazel came to my ranch and showed my husband and me a piece of material he said came from a large pile of debris on the property he managed. The piece he brought was brown in color, similar to plastic . .. . 'Mac' said the other material on the property looked like aluminum foil. It was very flexible and wouldn't crush or burn. There was also something he described as tape which had printing on it. The color of the printing was a kind of purple ....''
Sally Strickland Tadolini (neighbor of W.W. Brazel; nine years old in 1947). Affidavit dated September 27, 1993. ". . . What Bill showed us was a piece of what I still think as fabric. It was something like aluminum foil, something like satin, something like well-tanned leather in its toughness, yet was not precisely like any one of those materials. ...It was about the thickness of very fine kidskin glove leather and a dull metallic grayish silver, one side slightly darker than the other. I do not remember it having any design or embossing on it .. . ."
Not cited here, their own lieutenant colonel,
Jesse Marcel (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Marcel), who was probably more qualified than the witnesses above to know what the debris were : "It was not anything of this earth. Being an intelligence officer I was familiar with all types of material in aircraft and air travel." How could this guy be promoted at the end of year 1947 ?
What material looks like foil, is thin like it, but cannot be crushed ? This does not look like what is shown on the official picture :
I was expecting to find something in the USAF report on why people would have been puzzled by pieces of foil as mundane as the one we see in the picture above. Or if there was a cover-up to protect Mogul, which components of it would align with the witnesses. Nada, or maybe it's buried deep somewhere, but I missed it.
A good way to stop speculations would have been for the USAF to provide a picture of a Mogul balloon from up close, showing the sticks and "flower tape". Maybe they never took such a picture, or kept any material from the balloons ? Add this to the press release reporting the crash of a flying disk, how to be surprised people believe there was a cover-up ? This is a weird story for sure.
Anyway, that is to say I find the USAF report very weak in explaining what it was.