FORT WORTH, Tex., July 9 – (AP) – An examination by the army revealed last night that a mysterious object found on a lonely New Mexican ranch was a harmless high altitude balloon – not a grounded flying disc.

Excitement was high in disc-conscious Texas until Brig. Gen. Roger R. Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air forces with headquarters here, cleared up the mystery. The bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams and rubber remnants of a balloon were sent here yesterday by army air transport in the wake of reports that it was a flying disc.

But the general said the objects were the crushed remains of a ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity winds at high altitudes.

Warrant Officer Irving Newton, forecaster at the army air force weather station here, said “we use them because they go much higher than the eye can see.”

The weather balloon was found several days ago in a desolate section of New Mexico by a rancher, W. W. Brazell. He said he didn't think much about it until he went into Corona, N. M. last Saturday and heard the flying disc reports.

He returned to his ranch, 85 miles northwest of Roswell, and recovered the wreckage of the balloon, which he had placed under some brush.

Brazell hurried back to Roswell, where he reported his find to the sheriff's office. The sheriff called the Roswell air field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcell, 509th bomb group intelligence officer, was assigned to the case.

Colonel William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the bomb group, reported the find to General Ramey and the object was flown immediately to the army air field here.

Ramey went on the air here last night to announce the New Mexico discovery was not a flying disc.

Newton said that when rigged up, the instrument “looks like a six-pointed star, is silvery in appearance and rises in the air like a kite.”

In Roswell, the discovery set off a flurry of excitement.

Sheriff George Wilcox's telephone lines were clogged. Three calls came from England, one of them from the London Daily Mail, he said.

A public relations officer here said the balloon was in his office “and it'll probably stay right there.”

Newton, who made the examination, said some 80 weather stations in the U.S. were using that type of balloon and that it could have come from any of them.

[Photo Caption] THIS IS IT: This six-pointed star found at Circleville, Ohio, last week is a weather bureau wind ray target exactly like the one found near Roswell, N.M., and first reported by the army to be a “captured flying saucer”. It is held by Mrs Sherman Campbell, on whose husband's farm it was found. – (AP Wirephoto.)