At 1:30 in the afternoon, January 7, 1948, the central tower at Godman Air Force Base outside Louisville, Kentucky, received a strange telephone call. The people of tiny Maysville, KY, about 80 miles east of the base had sighted a large, white object with a red light moving swiftly over the town. Soon other communities in the object's path were adding to the alarm. Calls from Owensboro and Irvington contributed details: the craft was circular, 250-300 feet in diameter, and moving westward at great speed.
At 1:45, Godman sighted the object. The spotter, sure he was not seeing an airplane or weather balloon, contacted Flight Operations. The operations officer, accompanied by the base intelligence officer and the base commander, Colonel Hix, soon joined the tower crew. All of the assembled men observed the strange bogey through 6 X 50 binoculars, and agreed that it was not identifiable as any known aircraft.
At 1:45, Godman sighted the object. The spotter, sure he was not seeing an airplane or weather balloon, contacted Flight Operations. The operations officer, accompanied by the base intelligence officer and the base commander, Colonel Hix, soon joined the tower crew. All of the assembled men observed the strange bogey through 6 X 50 binoculars, and agreed that it was not identifiable as any known aircraft.
THE CHASE
2:30 arrived, and the object remained visible. A flight of F-51s came into view as they passed over Godman en route to nearby Standiford Air Force Base. The tower radioed the flight leader, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr., and requested that he engage and attempt to identify the strange visitor. One of the four planes was low on fuel and received permission to continue on to Standiford. Mantell and his remaining wing men turned and began to climb toward the shimmering disc.
At 10,000 feet, Captain Mantell pulled ahead of his companions. "I see something above and ahead of me and I'm still climbing," he reported. "I've sighted the thing. It looks metallic and it's tremendous size... Now it's starting to climb." Then a few seconds later, "It's above me and I'm gaining on it. I'm going to 20,000 feet." The two wing men leveled of at 15,000 feet and tried frantically to reach their leader by radio. The F-51s, postwar versions of the famed P-51 Mustang, were not equipped with oxygen, so to fly over 15,000 feet was to court near-certain oxygen deprivation and loss of consciousness.
At 10,000 feet, Captain Mantell pulled ahead of his companions. "I see something above and ahead of me and I'm still climbing," he reported. "I've sighted the thing. It looks metallic and it's tremendous size... Now it's starting to climb." Then a few seconds later, "It's above me and I'm gaining on it. I'm going to 20,000 feet." The two wing men leveled of at 15,000 feet and tried frantically to reach their leader by radio. The F-51s, postwar versions of the famed P-51 Mustang, were not equipped with oxygen, so to fly over 15,000 feet was to court near-certain oxygen deprivation and loss of consciousness.
THE CRASH
Mantell's plane leveled off at 30,000 feet, then plunged into a spiral dive. It crashed on the Franklin, KY farm of William J. Phillips. The flier's watch had stopped at 3:18 PM. Project Sign, the official Air Force UFO investigation agency at that time, was quick to publicly explain the incident, concluding that Captain Mantell had misidentified the planet Venus. He flew beyond safe altitude limits, blacked out, and plummeted to his death.
UFOlogists immediately countered that Venus had been too dim to be seen at all in the sunlit afternoon, let alone to be mistaken for a "metallic object" of "tremendous size."
But the apparent official certainty convinced newspaper reporters, and the early media speculation that Mantell had been shot down by invaders from another world, or, more conservatively, from Russia, was soon replaced by the official line.
UFOlogists immediately countered that Venus had been too dim to be seen at all in the sunlit afternoon, let alone to be mistaken for a "metallic object" of "tremendous size."
But the apparent official certainty convinced newspaper reporters, and the early media speculation that Mantell had been shot down by invaders from another world, or, more conservatively, from Russia, was soon replaced by the official line.
A SILENCED WITNESS
But there was plenty of reason to doubt that line, not least of which was the testimony of Richard T. Miller. At the time of the Mantell incident, Miller was standing in the operations room of Scott Air Force Base, in Belleville, Illinois, listening in on the entire exchange between the F-51 crew and Godman tower. According to his report, Mantell's final transmission was, "My God! I see people in this thing!" Miller also claims to have learned from inside sources that the doomed F-51 had remained airborne for an extended period of time after having run completely out of fuel, a fact no ordinary explanation could account for. According to Miller, the original conclusion reached by Air Force investigators was that Mantell had died "Pursuing an intelligently controlled unidentified flying object." But before this finding could be publicly released, Air Technical Intelligence officers from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base arrived to confiscate all evidence, and to make clear that no deviation from the Venus story would be tolerated.
Another witness, Captain James F. Duesler, examined the Mantell wreckage shortly after the pilot's body had been removed. He was dumbfounded to discover that no damage had been done to the surrounding trees, as would be expected had the F-51 glided into the field, nor was there any furrow in the ground such an approach would necessarily have created. Neither had the nose-heavy craft hit the ground nose-down, the most likely result of a downward, uncontrolled spin. The vehicle, instead, appeared to have simply "belly-flopped" directly into the clearing where it was found, without causing even a fraction of the damage to the airplane or the crash site that should have occurred according to calculations factoring the plane's known weight and estimated speed of descent. Duesler saw no blood whatsoever in the cockpit.
Even beyond this eyewitness testimony, common sense argued powerfully against the notion that Mantell, a highly-experienced military pilot, would risk life and limb chasing the tiny pinpoint of light Venus must have been that afternoon, had it been visible at all.
Another witness, Captain James F. Duesler, examined the Mantell wreckage shortly after the pilot's body had been removed. He was dumbfounded to discover that no damage had been done to the surrounding trees, as would be expected had the F-51 glided into the field, nor was there any furrow in the ground such an approach would necessarily have created. Neither had the nose-heavy craft hit the ground nose-down, the most likely result of a downward, uncontrolled spin. The vehicle, instead, appeared to have simply "belly-flopped" directly into the clearing where it was found, without causing even a fraction of the damage to the airplane or the crash site that should have occurred according to calculations factoring the plane's known weight and estimated speed of descent. Duesler saw no blood whatsoever in the cockpit.
Even beyond this eyewitness testimony, common sense argued powerfully against the notion that Mantell, a highly-experienced military pilot, would risk life and limb chasing the tiny pinpoint of light Venus must have been that afternoon, had it been visible at all.
WHO KILLED THOMAS MANTELL?
Speculation concerning the true culprit behind the tragedy began immediately. Civilian UFOlogists were quick to point out that Venus, even if it had been visible that afternoon, was at least 15 degrees lower in the sky than the reported position of the object. Project Sign offered the possibility that Mantell had seen a Project Skyhook balloon, though no specific launch could be traced to that day. Saucer debunker Donald Menzel wrote that the disc Mantell believed he was pursuing had actually been a "sun dog" or "mock sun" caused by the reflection of sunlight off ice crystals in cirrus clouds of the upper atmosphere. Contactee George Adamski's "Space Brothers" (see Chapter Seven) informed him that the crash had been accidental, the result of the magnetic field of their spaceship encountering the poor design of Mantell's plane.
A little over a year later, the Air Force backed away from its stance of certainty, releasing a revised "official report" on the Mantell incident on April 27, 1949. Penned by none other than future civilian UFOlogist Dr. J. Allen Hyneck, the report framed a vague new picture of the previous year's events in what Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who was, himself, about to enter UFOlogical history as head of Project Sign's immediate descendent, Project Grudge, referred to as "weasel wording." According to Hyneck's report, the object Captain Mantell died chasing was probably Venus, though that was doubtful, as Venus was too dim, so it might have been a balloon. Or maybe even two balloons.
This weak revision placed the question of exactly what, or maybe who, overflew Godman Air Force Base on that gray January afternoon squarely back into the realm of uncertainty and speculation, where it remains to this day. Scarcely mentioned in our modern "Age of the Abductee," the tragic death of Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr. remains one of the most compelling cases in UFO history.
____________________
A little over a year later, the Air Force backed away from its stance of certainty, releasing a revised "official report" on the Mantell incident on April 27, 1949. Penned by none other than future civilian UFOlogist Dr. J. Allen Hyneck, the report framed a vague new picture of the previous year's events in what Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who was, himself, about to enter UFOlogical history as head of Project Sign's immediate descendent, Project Grudge, referred to as "weasel wording." According to Hyneck's report, the object Captain Mantell died chasing was probably Venus, though that was doubtful, as Venus was too dim, so it might have been a balloon. Or maybe even two balloons.
This weak revision placed the question of exactly what, or maybe who, overflew Godman Air Force Base on that gray January afternoon squarely back into the realm of uncertainty and speculation, where it remains to this day. Scarcely mentioned in our modern "Age of the Abductee," the tragic death of Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr. remains one of the most compelling cases in UFO history.
____________________
This is an excerpt from the book The Golden Age of Flying Saucers: Classic UFO Sightings, Saucer Crashes and Extraterrestrial Contact Encounters by Frank G. Wilkinson, which can be purchased through Amazon.com, or direct from the publisher at www.NewParadigmPress.com.
To read more excerpts from The Golden Age of Flying Saucers,, click here!
