# Talk:Jesse Marcel

Find govt maps/photos by Marcel
RS on Marcel HBO interview, "UFO's Are Real"
Was Marcel involved in Mogul? Done
Middle name is Antoine per  in genealogy, decedents, and fringe, but need RS on it. Done
Feoffer (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

We could cover those statements under the Military Career heading or  later in the article. Rjjiii (talk · contribs) has argued for former while Alalch E. (talk · contribs)  prefers the latter.  I'm easy.  Feoffer (talk) 21:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

From my experience as a reader and editor, chronological order helps reading comprehension, as natural questions get answered on the go (for example: when did Marcel get promoted from major to lt. colonel), but I'll defer to Rjjiii. This is just about a minor point of content organization and is non-substantive. —Alalch E. 22:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
This would not be the first thing I have been wrong about, and there's no special status for doing a GA review. I can see the benefits of making the organization more chronological. I would be okay with either location. My concern is that a reader who skims the Marcel article for Roswell (what he's most known for) should be able to get the whole picture without reading every section. If it's placed later in the article, it'll be more clear with a heading that includes "Roswell" somehow in the wording. Additionally, I think the "Roswell balloon crash investigation" would be better shortened to just  "Roswell investigation", as most readers may not think of it as a balloon. The article's body text can, of course, make clear that the majority viewpoint is that it was a balloon. Rjjiii (talk) 02:36, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
With humor, I will confess that I "like the way I did it", lol.   I realize that's not a very unique situation, a person liking their own proposal :).  But I think the win-win here is to have a Roswell incident investigation section as part of Military Career and then Renewed interest as a subsection of that.   This gives us the advantages of a section break for the time jump, will still making the entire story part of the Roswell section.  Feoffer (talk) 06:11, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
It could be a win-win. About one detail: I don't like it when h2 content is divided between the h2 top content and one (as opposed to multiple) h3, it looks like a layout error (as if the section levels are uneven). So I've addressed it in the following way: diff. I guess "Investigation" could also be "Crash investigation" or "Baloon crash investigation", to be a little more descriptive.—Alalch E. 07:44, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
That works for me!    It's funny, I realize I have a unconscious prejudice against having two headers in a row, as if that's somehow a bad thing to do, which it isn't!   I can live with whatever gets of to GA, so if it's fine with Rjjiii it's fine by me :)  Feoffer (talk) 22:33, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
That is fine with me. Also, I notice that you've moved a few sentences out into "Personal Life" which makes sense. Everything currently in that section is pre-WW2, so it may make more chronological sense between "Early life" and "Military career". Rjjiii (talk) 01:40, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Makes sense to me! done. Feoffer (talk) 03:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

This needs to be clear in the article. The Mogul claim shouldn't be left hanging, and seeming like Wikipedia endorses that view. 
He and his father both experienced the memory foil. And both could not find any electronic components in the Roswell debris. Nothing like the memory foil existed in 1947. So it wasn't from a Mogul balloon. There are many witnesses to the memory foil: 

https://www.sunrisepage.com/roswell/pdf/Summary_of_Witnesses_Claims_for_a_Shape_Memory_Roswell_Foil.pdf
https://weedwiki.fandom.com/wiki/User:Timeshifter/Sandbox40
See: Page 54 of Jesse Marcel, Jr. book. Where he describes what he and his father experienced with the memory foil. "when he bent or folded a piece of the foil, it would return to its original shape when released ... took a sledge hammer ... could not make a dent in it or deform it in any way". Page 55: "Had it been a weather or a Mogul balloon, however, there would have been electronic components". See page 53 where the father and son looked through debris and could find no electronic components. 
The book is currently referenced 10 times in this Wikipedia article. 
See also page 65. Jesse Marcel and his commanding officer, Colonel Blanchard, both knew it wasn't a balloon. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:08, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I was looking over this article and I have noticed some issues. I know it passed a GA review sometime back....but there are some things that jump out at me. First off, the first few sentences make some dubious claims. It says: "[Marcel was] was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force who helped administer Operation Crossroads, the 1946 atom bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll." As the sources go, it lists one that has PRIMARY issues IMO. (I.e. Marcel's son wrote it.....who was involved in this incident as he handled the "wreckage".) And the second being Kal Korff's book. According to Korff's book (and I have the hardcopy, 1997 version), on p.65, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves. His active duty rank never rose above Major. The article claims (later) this was his active duty rank.....as it doesn't have him going into the Reserves until 1950. Korff's book (by the way) also makes no mention of Operation Crossroads. (The book by Weisgall cited in the article doesn't mention Marcel once as far as I can see. By the way, some other sources are questionable as well. Reference #5, for example appears to link to Jesse Marcel Jr's personal web page. Which most certainly is not RS.) 
Furthermore, I noticed that it cites Korff's book on the 2 Air Medals he won. (See p.64-65 of Korff's book.) But this was discussed in the context of Marcel having told Roswell researchers that he won 5 Air Medals (rather than 2). That is a interesting bit of cherry picking. 
The article discusses the Air Force's 1994 conclusion that it was a "mis-identification" (of what was out at the Foster Ranch).....but omits the fact that others who saw the wreckage thought it was just a "bunch of garbage". And this includes CIC Agent Sheridan Cavitt. The article mentions Cavitt, but not this fact. 
So in summary....at the risk of being overly critical.....this article probably needs some work.Rja13ww33 (talk) 00:50, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks your feedback!  I am familiar with the issues you raise, and here's always room for improvement.    I've added a skeptical piece, Todd's "Major Jesse Marcel:  Folk Hero or Mythomaniac", that delves into them.  On the active duty rank vs reserve rank,  Todd notes that the promotion was so insignificant that Marcel forget he had received it, noting that "Nobody walked around saluting him and calling him 'Colonel'", details added to the text. Updated the lede to make this explicit.
That said, the general thesis that Roswell is best explained as a creation of Marcel's fantasies is a little FRINGE. The Mainstream sources tend to conclude that it was a MOGUL balloon, Marcel really was ordered to lie, and decades later, after becoming a believer in UFOs, honestly concluded that the material may have been extraterrestrial. Marcel was given opportunities to confabulate bodies and consistently denied them.  His descriptions of the debris are a close match for the sticks, radar targets, and floral tape used in MOGUL balloons. He never claimed he was told the debris was extra-terrestrial.
On issues like the number of air medals,  Todd (and others) general methodology is to compare UFO researchers' claims about Marcel's past to his actual service record and then conclude discrepancies are myths created by Marcel, a fabulist.  But this omits many other possibilities -- false memories formed after decades, unscrupulous UFO authors exaggerating Marcel's record, miscommunications, errors, etc.   Many of the discrepancies actually fairly common in histories of WW2 veterans -- if you'd ever held the controls of a plane, you were a 'pilot' in colloquial terms.   If you attended a military school held on the Princeton campus, you'd "went to Princeton", etc.   Modernly, we reserve those terms for people with pilot licenses and formal enrollment, but it's pretty common for aged veterans to use less exact language.  The Air Medal isn't the Congressional Medal of Honor -- it's based on flight time hours, and is absolutely the kind of thing someone could forget over decades.
Marcel's son is not a RS for FRINGE claims, but it's suffices as quick reference for basic non-controversial biographical times and dates when not contradicted by any other source, e.g.  "Promotion to Major occurred in May 1945". That said, of course it would be good to upgrade those to better sourcing.   Feoffer (talk) 23:35, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for replying. I'm not sure if KowPflop Quarterly is RS. I checked the RS list and the RS Noticeboard Archives, and it isn't mentioned anywhere. It would make more sense to me to cite Korff here, since he quotes extensively from that article. (And his book is RS.)
I think it would be OR to have our own theories as to why Marcel claimed (or was quoted as claiming) he had more air medals that he really had or education from universities that have no record of him (and so on). It is probably best to let RS hash that out (i.e. Korff calling him a liar, while Randle finding whatever reason he can to explain it). I will say (however; at the risk of drifting into FORUM here) that a lot of that came out of Marcel's interview with Bob Pratt back in 1979. And most of the researchers who believe Roswell involved a ET craft typically gave Pratt a clean bill of health when it came to integrity/accuracy. (Stanton Friedman for example called him (in his book 'Top Secret/MAJIC', p.114) "outstanding".) But on this point, they seem to think Marcel was (extensively) misquoted.Rja13ww33 (talk) 22:48, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't happen to have my copy of Korff handy, would you like to add a Korff quote and rebuttal from Randle?    @Rjjiii: in case they'd like to take a stab either. Feoffer (talk) 00:27, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
I can. But most of Randle's awakening (for the lack of a better term) on Marcel has come in more recent years (on his blog and various podcasts, which are not RS). So such statements would need attribution. In his earlier books (say up until the mid-90's; which are the books by him I have), he doesn't really address this issue. It is a similar deal with Friedman. I can't think of one of his books where he addressed this. In the Roswell Incident article, it is dealt with this way: Independent researchers found embellishment in Jesse Marcel's accounts, including false statements about his military career and educational background.[114] Where Ref #114 is Korff's book.
All this is not to say Randle and Friedman have not addressed this via RS.....I just am not familiar with it if they have.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
@Feoffer, yeah I'll try to work through the Todd citations and see which I can replace. Rjjiii (talk) 02:42, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
@Rja13ww33 Thanks for bringing the issues up.
Re sources: I tried to switch some citations away from the biography written by his family and Todd's article. There are still 4 citations to Todd, mostly paired with another source. I don't see Korff covering the National Guard, and it's a hard thing to search because his son has the same name and was in the Guard. There was a short bio recently published by a military historian, so I added that. What I remember from looking into this before is many reliable sources cover the Roswell aspect of his life and there is very little outside of that. I will try to see if I can't find any additional sources.
Re NPOV: It should be fine to include something like that quoted line above, or to include an attributed quote in "Renewed interest" section, or to include Cavitt's view that it was clearly balloon stuff from the beginning. I also think that the early life stuff should reflect the facts as best we know and can cite them. I get the concern about cherry-picking, but the article would get pretty difficult to follow if it said something like that he "attended a few graphic design classes at Louisiana State University (although when he was in his 70s he said he earned a degree there which is false)."
Off topic: I think it should be more normalized here to continue to improve GA/FA articles. Rjjiii (talk) 08:33, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
Thanks. I don't think Jesse Marcel was ever a officer in the National Guard. He was (however) a LTC in the Reserves. I think any verbiage about Marcel's claims vs. reality would probably go into the "Renewed Interest" section (maybe a last paragraph). If you did decide to add it.....I think I'll get Kevin Randle's 'Roswell in the 21st Century' for some BALANCE. Searching in it (on Google Books), it appears that Randle does address the issues around the Air Medals thing. (And probably more, what Google Books would show me was most limited.) I've never heard of the publisher, but they appear to be big enough to be RS. Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:21, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
Just an abstract of his obituary, but it says June 24 for the death date: http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/terrebonne/obits/1986/t8606.txt Rjjiii (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2025 (UTC)
It is interesting the confusion on this. (Not just the actual day but the year as well.) The 'Unsolved Mysteries' episode (from 1989) gives his date of death as 1982. I've seen other sources (not sure I'd call them RS) give 1984. But plenty of others give 1986. For example, Stanton Friedman (in his forward to 'Roswell Legacy') gives it as 1986. So does Karl Pflock in his book 'Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe'. Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:04, 4 March 2025 (UTC)