Oliver "Pappy" Henderson Photo, courtesy of Wendy Connors	C-54

In July of 1947 Robert E. Smith was a member of the 1st Air Transport Unit, Roswell, NM. 
 

Stanton Friedman:
Capt. Oliver Wendell "Pappy" Henderson may have been the most highly regarded pilot at Roswell AAF. A veteran of thirty missions in B-24 Liberator bombers in Europe, he participated in the postwar A-bomb tests in the Pacific and earned major commendations for his flying. Henderson kept quiet about the unsettling events of July 1947 for three decades. Finally he mentioned them to a fellow retired officer; dentist John Kromschroeder, with whom he was then involved in a joint business venture. The dentist said nothing about this until July 1990, more than four years after Henderson's death from cancer. 

In 1977, Pappy had told Kromsehroeder about the incident. He said he transported wreckage and alien bodies, describing the latter as "spacecraft garbage," and adding "the passengers suffered their death." Henderson, in the recollection of Kromschroeder, described the bodies simply as being "small." About a year later; around 1978, Henderson produced a piece of metal he had taken from the collection of wreckage. "I gave it a good, thorough looking-at," Kromschroeder said in 1990, "and decided it was an alloy we are not familiar with (he and Henderson shared an interest in metallurgy). Gray lustrous metal resembling aluminum, lighter in weight and much stiffer. [We couldn't] bend it... edges sharp and jagged." 

The priceless scrap of material may be tucked away in Pappy's records and papers, just waiting to be freed. But there is currently no way to search the two thousand-plus cubic feet of materials that jam two small storage buildings and a garage to the ceilings. His widow Sappho, has rejected suggestions that investigators be allowed to search through a lifetime of her late husband's memorabilia. The prospect is daunting, for a slim piece of metal could be hidden between any two pieces of paper in any of many scores of bulging cardboard boxes. Even if she were willing to have strangers paw through such personal matters, it could take hundreds of hours, and there is no assurance that the scrap of crashed UFO is there. It could have been lost, thrown out, or even confiscated. 

In 1982, Henderson met with several members of his old bomber crew during an Air Division reunion in Nashville. According to one of the men in the group, "It was in his hotel room that he told us the story of the UFO and about his part. All we were told by Pappy is that he flew the plane to Wright Field. He definitely mentioned the bodies, but I don't recall any details except that they were small and different. I was skeptical at first, but soon saw that Pappy was quite serious." 

Pappy died before I got a chance to interview him. But his widow Sappho, agreed to be interviewed, as did his daughter; Mary Sappho described what her husband had told her. 
 
 

Mrs. Mary Kathryn Groode, Pappy's daughter, added her remembrances to those of her mother. 
 

I also spoke with Pappy's son and cousin, both of whom told of having heard Pappy quietly tell his story after the newspaper article appeared. 

On the basis of all that is known of Pappy's brief mentions of his involvement with the events at Roswell, it appears that while he probably saw bodies at the airbase, he may have transported only materials to Wright Field. 

Stanton Friedman
Crash At Corona, 125-128