Legend: [text
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Highlighted
text are just items I thought were interesting. jw
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CHAPTER THREE
THE CLASSICS
1948 was only one
hour and twenty-five minutes old when a gentleman from Abilene, Texas,
made the
first UFO report of the year. What he saw, "a fan shaped glow" in the
sky, was insignificant as far as UFO reports go but it ushered in
a year that
was to bring feverish activity to Project Sign.
With the Soviets
practically eliminated as a UFO source, the idea of interplanetary
space ships
was becoming more popular. During 1948 the people in AT1C were openly
discussing the possibility of interplanetary visitors without others
tapping
their heads and looking smug. During 1948 the novelty of UFO's had worn
off for
the press and every John or
Jane Doe who
saw one didn't make the front page as they had in 1947. Editors were
becoming
hardened, only a few of the best reports got any space. Only "The
Classics"
rated headlines. "The Classics" were three historic reports that were
the highlights of 1948. They are called "The Classics", a name given
them by the Project Blue Book staff, because (1) they are classic
examples of
how the true facts of a UFO report can be twisted and warped by some
writers to
prove their point, (2) they are the most highly publicized reports of
this
early era of the UFO's, and (3) they "proved" to ATIC's intelligence
specialists that UFO's were real.
The apparent lack of interest in UFO reports
by the
press was not a true indication of the situation. I later found out,
from
talking to [newspaper reporters and
magazine]
writers, that all during
-2-
1948
the
interest in UFO's was running high. The Air Force Press Desk in the
Pentagon
was continually being asked what progress was being made in the UFO
investigation. The answer was, "Give us time. This job can't be done in
a
week." The press respected this and was giving them time. But every
writer
worth his salt has contacts, those "usually reliable sources" you
read about, and those contacts were talking. All during 1948 contacts
in the
Pentagon were telling how UFO reports were rolling in at the rate of
several
per day and how ATIC UFO investigation teams were flying out of Dayton
to investigate
them. They were telling how another Air Force investigative
organization had
been called in to lighten ATIC's load and allow ATIC to concentrate on
the
analysis of the reports. The writers knew this was true because they
had
crossed paths with these men whom they had mistakenly identified as FBI
agents.
The FBI was never officially interested in UFO sightings. The writers'
contacts
in the airline industry told about the UFO talk from V.P.'s down to the
ramp
boys. Dozens of good, solid, reliable, old, airline pilots were seeing
UFO's.
All of this led to one conclusion; whatever the Air Force had to say,
when it
was ready to talk, would be "Newsworthy". But the Air Force wasn't
ready to talk.
Project Sign personnel were just getting settled down to work after the New Year's holiday when the "ghost rockets" came back to the Baltic Countries of Europe. Air Attaches in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway fired wires to ATIC telling about the reports. Wires went back asking for more information.
-3-
The "ghost
rockets", so tagged by the newspapers, had first been seen in the
summer
of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in the U.S. There were
many
different descriptions for the reported objects. They were usually seen
in the
hours of darkness and almost always traveling at extremely high speed.
They
were shaped like a ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red,
or
yellow and sometimes had an associated sound. Like their American
cousins, the
flying saucers, they were always so far away that no details could be
seen. For
no good reason, other than speculation and circulation, the newspapers
had soon
begun to refer authoritatively to these "ghost rockets" as guided
missiles, and inferring that they were from Russia. Peenemunde, the
great
German missile development center and birth place of the V-1 and V-2
guided
missile came in for its share of suspicion, since it was held by the
Russians.
By the end of the summer of 1946 the reports were widespread coming
from
Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French Morocco, Portugal and Turkey. In
1947,
they broke out again. But Project Sign personnel were too busy to worry
about
European UFO reports, they were busy at home. A National Guard pilot
had just
been killed chasing a UFO.
Psychologists use a test called Word Association. Chances are that if the test were given to people who were ten years old, or older, in 1948, the majority would associate the word "flying saucer" with "the pilot that was killed". On January 7, all of the late
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papers
in the
U.S. carried headlines similar to those in The Louisville Courier,
“F-51 and
Capt. Mantell Destroyed Chasing Flying Saucer". This was Volume I of
"The Classics", The Mantell Incident.
At 1:15 on that afternoon the control tower
operators at Godman, just outside Louisville, Kentucky, got a telephone
call
from the Kentucky State Highway Patrol. The patrol wanted to know if
Godman
Tower knew anything about any unusual aircraft in the vicinity. Several
people from Maysville,
Kentucky, a small town 80 miles east of Louisville, had reported seeing
a
strange aircraft. Godman knew that they had nothing in the
vicinity so
they called Flight Service at Wright-Patterson AFB. In a few minutes
Flight
Service called back. Their air traffic control board showed no flights
in the
area. About twenty minutes later the state policy (sp?) called
again. This
time people from the towns of Owensboro and
Irvington, Kentucky, west of Louisville, were reporting a strange craft.
The report from these two towns was a little more complete. The
townspeople had
described the object to the state police as being, "circular, about 250
to
300 feet in diameter", and moving westward at a ''pretty good clip".
Godman Tower checked Flight Service again. Nothing. All this time the
tower
operators had been looking for the reported object. They theorized that
since
the UFO had had
to pass north of Godman to get from Maysville to Owensboro, it might
come back.
At 1:45 they saw it, or something like it. Later, in his official report, the assistant tower operator, said that he had seen the object for several minutes before he called his chief's attention to it. He said that he had been reluctant to "make a
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flying
saucer
report". As soon as the two men in the tower had assured themselves
that
the UFO they saw was not an airplane or a weather balloon, they called
Flight
Operations. They wanted the Operations Officer to see the UFO. Before
long word
of the sighting had gotten around to key personnel on the base and
several
officers, besides the Base Operations Officer and the Base Intelligence
Officer, were in the tower. All of them looked at the UFO through the
tower's 6
x 50 binoculars and decided they couldn’t identify it. About this time
Col.
Hix, the Base Commander, arrived. He looked and he was baffled. At
2:30, they
reported, they were discussing what should be done when four F-51's
came into
view, approaching the base from the south.
The tower called the flight leader, Capt.
Mantell,
and asked him to take a look at the object and try to identify it. One
F-51 in
the flight was running low on fuel so he asked permission to go on to
his base.
Mantell took his two remaining wing men, made a turn, and started after
the
UFO. The people in Godman Tower were directing him as none of the
pilots could
see the object at this time. They gave Mantell an initial heading
toward the
south and the flight was last seen heading in the general direction of
the UFO.
By the time the F-51's had climbed to 10,000 feet, the two wing men later reported, Mantell had pulled out ahead of them and they could just barely see him. At 2:45 Mantell called the tower and said, "I see something above and ahead of me and I’m still climbing". All the people in the tower heard Mantell say this
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and
they heard one of the wing man call back and
ask, "What the hell are we looking for?" The tower immediately called
and asked him for a description of what he saw. Odd as it may seem no
one can
remember exactly what he answered.
Saucer historians have credited him with saying, "I've sighted the
thing.
It looks metallic and it's tremendous in size.. --- Now it's starting
to
climb." Then in a few second he is supposed to have called and said,
"It's above me and I’m gaining on it. I'm going to 20,000 feet" Everyone
in the tower agreed on
this one last bit of the transmission, -- "I'm going to
20,000
feet," but
they
didn't agree on the first part, about the UFO being metallic and
tremendous.
The two wing men were now at 15,000 feet and
trying
frantically to call Mantell. He
had climbed far above them by this time and was out of sight.
Since none of them had any oxygen they were worried about Mantell. Their calls were not
answered. Mantell
never talked to anyone again. The two wing men leveled off at 15,000
feet, made
another fruitless effort to call Mantell and started to come back down. As they
passed
Godman Tower on their way to their base one of them said something to
the
effect that all he had seen was a reflection on his canopy.
When they landed at their base, Staniford
Field,
just north of Godman , one pilot had his F-51 refueled and serviced
with
oxygen, and took off to search the area again. He didn't see anything.
At 3:50 the tower lost sight of the UFO. A few minutes later they got word that Mantell had crashed and was dead.
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Several
hours later, at 7:20 PM,
airfield towers all over the midwest sent in frantic reports of another
UFO. [By this time
they all knew about the
mysterious circumstances of Mantell’s death. Columbus, Ohio, St. Louis,
Kansas
City, Evansville, Indianapolis, and other cities poured reports into
the CAA
communications net.] In all about a dozen airfield towers
reported
the UFO [. All of the towers reported
it] as
being low on the southwestern horizon and disappearing after about
twenty
minutes. [The dozen towers gave a
dozen
descriptions of what the object looked like and what it did.] The writers of saucer lore say this UFO
was what
Mantell was chasing when he died; the Air Force says this UFO
was Venus.
[The Air Force can prove their claim.
It wasn’t
"a return of the craft that shot down Mantell".]
The people on Project Sign worked fast on the
Mantell Incident, [in fact they heard
about it
through Flight Service while it was all in progress.] Contemplating
a flood of queries from the press, as soon as they heard about the
crash, they
realized that they had to get a quick answer. Venus had been the target
of a
chase by an Air Force F-51 several weeks before and there were
similarities
between this sighting and the Mantell incident. So
almost before the rescue crews had reached the crash,
the word Venus went out. This satisfied the editors and so it
stood for
about a year; Mantell had unfortunately been killed trying to reach the
planet
Venus.
To the press, the nonchalant, off-hand manner with which the sighting was written off by the Air Force Public Relations Officer, showed great confidence in the conclusion, Venus, but behind the barb wire fence that encircled ATIC the nonchalant attitude didn't
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exist
among the intelligence analysts.
One man had already left
for Louisville and the rest were doing some tall speculating. The story
about
the tower-to-air talk, "It looks metallic and it's tremendous in
size", spread fast. Rumor
had it that the tower had carried on a running conversation with the
pilots and
that there was more information than was so far known. Rumor
also had it
that this conversation had been recorded. Unfortunately neither of
these rumors
were true.
Over a period of several weeks the file on
the Mantell
Incident grew in
size until it was the most thoroughly
investigated sighting of that time, at least the file was the thickest.
About a year later the Air Force released its official report on the incident. To use a trite term, it was a masterpiece in the art of "weasel wording". It said that the UFO might have been Venus or it could have been a balloon. Maybe two balloons. It probably was Venus except that this is doubtful because Venus was too dim to be seen in the afternoon. This jolted writers who had been following the UFO story. Only a few weeks before, the Saturday Evening Post had published a two part story entitled What You Can Believe About Flying Saucers. [It appeared to have] The story had official sanction and had quoted the Venus Theory as a positive solution. [This descrepancy was carefully pointed out in several widely publicised magazine and newspaper articles.] To clear up the situation, several of the writers were allowed to interview a Major Boggs who was the Air Force’s Pentagon expert on UFO’s. Boggs was asked directly about the conclusion of the Mantell Incident[,] and he flatly stated that it was Venus. The writers
-9-
pointed
out
the official Air Force analysis. Boggs
answer, "They checked again and it was Venus." He
didn’t know who "they" were, where "they" had checked, or
what "they" had checked, but it was Venus. The writers then asked,
"If there was a later report "they" had made why wasn't it used
as a conclusion?" "Was it available?" The answer to the last question
was, "no", and the lid snapped back down. This interview added
confusion to an already confused situation. It gave the definite
impression
that the Air Force was unsuccessfully trying to "cover up" some very
important information, using Venus as a front. Nothing excites a
newspaper or
magazine writer any more than to think he has stumbled onto a big story
and
that some one is trying to cover it up. Many writers thought this after
the
interview with Major Boggs, and many still think it. You can't
really blame
them, either.
In early 1952 I got a telephone call on
ATIC's
direct line to the Pentagon. It was a colonel in the Director of
Intelligence’s
office. The office of Public Information had been getting a lot of
queries
about all of the confusion over the Mantel Incident. What was the
answer?
I dug out the file. In 1949 all of the original material on the incident had been micro-filmed but something had been spilled on the film. Many sections were so badly faded they were illegible. As I had to do with many of the older sightings that were now history, I collected what I could from the file, filling in the blanks by talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era.
-10-
There were a lot of those people still around, "Red" Honacker, George Towles, Al Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others. Most of them were civilians, the military had been transferred out by this time.
Some
of the
press clippings in the file mentioned Major Boggs and his concrete
proof of Venus.
I couldn't find this concrete proof in the file so I asked around about Major Boggs. Major
Boggs, I found, was an officer in the Pentagon who had at one time
written a
short intelligence summary about UFO's. He had never been
stationed at ATIC,
nor was he especially well versed on the UFO problem. When the word of
the
press conference regarding the Mantell Incident came down, a UFO expert
was
needed. Boggs, because of his short intelligence summary on UFO's,
became the
expert. He
had evidently
conjured up "they" and "their later report" to support his
Venus answer because the writers at the press conference had him in a
corner.
I looked farther.
Fortunately the man who had done the most
extensive
work on the incident, a Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Head of the Ohio State
University
Astronomy Department, could be contacted. I called Dr. Hynek, and
arranged to
meet him the next day.
Looking back on it now Dr. Hynek was one of
the most
impressive scientists I met while working on the UFO project, and I met
a good
many. He didn't do two things that some of them did; give you the
answer before
he knew the question, or immediately begin to expound on his
accomplishments in
the field of science. I arrived at Ohio State just before lunch so Dr.
Hynek
invited me to eat with him at
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OSU
Faculty
Club. He wanted to refer to some notes he had on the Mantell Incident
and they
were in his office so we discussod UFO’s in general during lunch.
[His
first
comment was that he was very glad to hear that the Air Force had
decided to
further pursue the UFO investigation. He said that although he most
certainly
was not a "flying saucer" addict, he thought that the UFO’s had been
written off, too hastily. I was quite amazed at his remembering the
details of
many of the sightings that had occurred during the 1947-49 period. He
asked
about any new information we might have on "nocturnal meandering
lights", which I found out were his pet type of UFO. As he explained
it,
they were lights that meandered around the sky like a lighted weather
balloon
when no weather balloon was in the area. All I could tell that they
were still
with us.]
[I
learned
as much about the 1947-1949 period of the history during the brief hour
we
spent at lunch as he did about the 1949-1952 period. I hinted that I
would
certainly like to see him working for ATIC again, but he didn’t take
the hint
so I dropped it.]
Back in his office he started to review the
Mantell
Incident. He
had been
responsible for the "weasel-worded" report that the Air Force
released in late 1949, and he apologized for it. Had he known
that it
was going to cause so much confusion, he said, he would have been more
specific. He thought the incident was a dead issue. The reason that
Venus had
been such a strong suspect was that it was in almost the same spot in
the sky
as the UFO. [The
people in the Godman Tower had been able to give a fairly good estimate
of the
direction and height above the horizon.]
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[Dr.
Hynek said that
he had computed the position of Venus and the two came out close. He] Dr.
Hynek referred to his notes[,] and
told me
that at 3:00
PM
Venus had been south southwest of Godman and 33 degrees above the
southern
horizon. At 3:00 PM the people in the tower estimated the UFO to be
southwest of
Godman and at an elevation of about 45 degrees. Allowing for
human error
in estimating directions and and angles, this was close, I agreed. There
was one big flaw in the
theory, however. Venus wasn't bright enough to be seen. He
had computed
the brilliance of the planet and on the day in question it was only six
times
as bright as the surrounding sky. Then he explained what this meant.
Six times
may sound like a lot, but it isn't. When you start looking for a
pinpoint of
light only six times as bright as the surrounding sky, it's almost
impossible
to find it, even on a clear day.
[Dr. Hynek said that he
didn’t think
that the UFO was Venus.]
I later found out that although it was a
relatively
clear day there was considerable haze. [Mantell’s
wing men had lost him in this haze shortly after they began to climb.]
[Dr. Hynek said that he was
almost
positive that the object, whatever it was, was not Venus, although by
sheer
coincidence Venus had been in the same location.]
I asked him about some of the other possibilities. He repeated the balloon, canopy reflection, and sundog theories but he refused to comment on them since, as he said, he was an astrophysicist and would only care to comment on the astrophysical aspects of the sightings.
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I
drove back to Dayton convinced that
the UFO wasn't Venus. Dr. Hynek had said Venus would have been a
pinpoint of
light. The people
in the
tower had been positive of their descriptions; their statements brought
that
out. They couldn't agree on a description, they called the UFO, "a
Parachute", "an ice cream cone tipped with red", "round and
white", "huge and silver or metallic", "small white
object", "one fourth the size of the full moon", but
all the descriptions plainly
indicated a large object. None of the descriptions could even vaguely
be called
a pinpoint of light.
This aspect of a definite shape seemed to
eliminate
the sundog theory, too. Sundogs, or Parhelion as they are technically
known,
are caused by ice particles reflecting a diffused light. This would not
give a
sharp outline. I also recalled two instances where Air Force pilots had
chased
sundogs. [One of these occurred at
____a AFB in
Lubbock, Texas, while I was there investigating the now famous “Lubbock
Lights”.] In both instances when the aircraft began
the
sundog disappeared. This was because the angle of reflection changed as
the
airplane climbed several thousand feet. These sundog-caused UFO's also
had
fuzzy edges.
I had always heard a lot of wild speculation about the condition of the Mantell's crashed F-51, so I wired for a copy of accident report. It arrived several days after my visit with Dr. Hynek. [From the reports of the eye witnesses at the crash scene it was obvious that] the report said that the F-51 had lost a wing due to excessive speed in a dive. After Mantell [had tried to climb to 20,000 feet but] had "blacked out" due to the lack of oxygen. [The aircraft was ___ced]
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[to
climb so it went on up until the high altitude caused the power
to drop, allowing the F-51 to gradually level off. The propeller
torque pulled
it into a left turn and as it turned it started a shallow dive. The
dive
steepened until the speed became excessive and first the wing, then the
tail,
pulled off. To me, as an aeronautical engineer, this sounded ____
logical.]
Mantell’s
body was not burned, not disintegrated,
and not full of holes; the wreck was not radioactive, nor was it
magnetized.
One very important and pertinent question remained. Why did Mantell, an experienced pilot, try to go to 20,000 feet when he didn't even have an oxygen mask? If he had run out of oxygen it would have been different. Every pilot and crewman has it pounded into him, "Do not, under any circumstances, go above 15,000 feet without oxygen." During high altitude indoctrination, during World War II, I made several trips up to 30,000 feet in a pressure chamber. To demonstrate anoxia we would leave our oxygen masks off until we got dizzy. A few of the more hardy souls could get to 15,000 feet, but nobody ever got over 17,000. Possibly Mantell thought he could climb up to 20,000 in a hurry and get back down before he got anoxia and blacked out, but this would be a foolish chance. This point was covered in the report. A long time friend of Mantell’s went on record to say that he’d flown with him several years and know him personally. He couldn't conceive of Mantell even thinking about disregarding his lack of oxygen. Mantell was one of the most cautious pilots he knew. The only thing I can think, he commented, was that he was after something that he believed to be more important than his life or his family.
-15-
[This may be the
excuse.]
My next
step was to try to find
out what Mantell’s wing men had seen or thought, but this was a blind alley. All
of this evidence was in the
ruined portion of the Microfilm, even their names were missing.
The only
reference I could find to them was a vague passage indicating that they
hadn't
seen anything.
I concentrated on the canopy reflection
theory. It is
widely believed that many flying saucers are caused by pilots chasing a
reflection on their canopy. I checked over all the reports we had on
file. I
couldn't find one that had been written off for this reason. I dug back
into my
own flying experience and talked to a dozen pilots. All of us had
momentarily
been startled by a reflection on the aircraft's canopy or wing, but in
a second
or two it had been obvious that it was a reflection. Mantell chased the
object
for at least 15 to 20 minutes and it is inconceivable that he wouldn't
realize
in that length of time that he was chasing a reflection.
[It was now apparent that
no one
would ever know for sure what Mantell was looking at when he made that
last
radio call, so I switched my line of investigation to what the people
in the
tower saw. I thought that it was safe to assume that Mantell was
chasing the
same UFO since he was headed directly toward it when he was last seen.]
About the only theory left to check was that the object might have been one of the big, 100 foot diameter, "skyhook" balloons. I rechecked the descriptions of the UFO made by the people in the tower. The first man to sight the object called it a parachute;
-16-
others
said ice cream cone, round, etc. All of these descriptions fit a
balloon.
Buried deep in the file were two more references to balloons that I had
previously missed. Not long after the object had disappeared from view
at
Godman AFB, a man from Madisonville, Kentucky, called Flight Service in
Dayton.
He had seen an object traveling southeast. He had looked at it through
a
telescope and it was a balloon. At 4:45 an astronomer living north of
Nashville, Tennessee, called in. He had also seen a UFO, looked at it
through a
telescope, and it was a balloon.
In the thousands of words of testimony and
evidence
taken on the Mantell Incident this was the only reference to balloons.
I had
purposely not paid too much attention to this possibility because
I was sure
that it had been thoroughly checked back in 1948. Now I wasn't sure.
I
talked with
one of the people who had been in on the Mantell investigation. The
possibility
of a balloon causing the sighting had been mentioned but hadn't been
followed
up for two reasons. Number one was that everybody at ATIC was convinced
that
the object Mantell was after was a space ship and that this was the
only course
they had pursued.
When the sighting grew older and no space ship proof could be found
everybody
jumped on the Venus band wagon as this theory had "already been
established". It was an easy way out. The second reason was that a
quick check had been made on
weather balloons and none were in the area. The big skyhook
balloon
Project was highly classified at that time and since everybody was
convinced
that the object was of interplanetary origin (a minority wanted to give
the
Russians credit), they didn't want to bother to buck the red tape of
security
to get data on skyhook flights.
-17-
The group that supervises the contracts for
all the
"skyhook" research flights for the Air Force is located at Wright
Field, so I called them. They had no records on flights back in 1948
but they
did think that the big balloons were being launched from Clinton County
AFB in
southern Ohio, at that time. They offered to get the records of the
winds on
January 7, and see what flight path a balloon launched in southwestern
Ohio
would have taken. In a few days they had the data for me.
Unfortunately the times of the first
sightings, from
the towns outside Louisville, were not exact but it was possible to
partially reconstruct
the sequence of events. The winds were such that a skyhook balloon,
launched
from Clinton County AFB, could be seen from the town east of Godman
AFB, the
town from where the first UFO was reported to the Kentucky State
Police. It is
not unusual to be able to see a large balloon for 50 to 60 miles. The
balloon
could have traveled west for awhile, climbing as it moved with the
strong east
winds that were blowing that day, and picking up speed as the winds got
stronger at altitude. In twenty minutes it could have been in a
position where
it could be seen from Owensboro, and Irvington, Kentucky, the two towns
west of
Godman. The second reports to the state police had come from these two
towns.
Still climbing, the balloon would have reached a level where a strong
wind was
blowing in a southerly direction. The jet stream winds were not being
plotted
in 1948 but the weather chart shows strong indications of' a southerly
bend in
the jet stream for this day. Jet stream or not, the balloon
-18-
would
have moved rapidly south, still climbing. At a point somewhere
south or
southwest of Godman it would have climbed through the southerly moving
winds to
a calm belt at about 60,000 feet. At this level it would slowly drift
south or
southeast. A skyhook balloon can be seen at 60,000.
When first seen by the people in Godman tower, the UFO was south of the airbase. It was
relatively close and looked "like a parachute", which a balloon does.
During the two hours that it was in sight the observers reported that
it seemed
to hover, yet each observer estimated the time he looked at the object
through
the binoculars and timewise the descriptions ran "huge",
''small", "one-fourth the size of a full moon" and "one
tenth the size of a full moon". Whatever the UFO was, it was slowly
moving
away. As the balloon continued to drift in a southerly direction it
would have
picked up stronger winds, and could have easily been seen by
astronomers in
Madisonville, Kentucky, and "north of Nashville" an hour after it
disappeared from view at Godman.
Somewhere in the archives of the Air Force or
the
Navy there are records that will show whether or not a balloon was
launched
from Clinton County AFB, Ohio, on January 7, 1948. I could never find
these
records. People who were working with the early skyhook projects
"remember" operating out of Clinton County
AFB in 1947, but refuse to be pinned down to a January 7
flight. Maybe, they said.
-19-
The Mantell incident is the same old UFO
jigsaw puzzle.
By assuming the shape of one piece, a balloon launched from
southwestern Ohio,
the whole picture neatly falls together. It shows a huge balloon that
Capt.
Thomas Mantell died trying to reach. He
didn't know that he was chasing a balloon because he had never heard
of a huge, 100 foot diameter skyhook balloon, let alone seen one.
Leave
out the one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and the picture is a UFO,
"metallic
and tremendous in size".
It could have been a balloon. This is
the
answer I phoned back to the Pentagon.
All during January and February of 1948 the
reports
of "ghost rockets" continued to come from Air Attaches in foreign
countries bordering the Baltic Sea. People in North Jutland, Norway,
Denmark,
Sweden, and Germany reported "balls of fire traveling slowly across the
sky". The reports were very sketchy and incomplete, most of them being
accounts from newspapers. In a few days the UFO’s were being seen all
over
Europe and South America. Foreign reports hit a peak in the latter part
of February
and the U.S. newspapers began to pick up the stories.
The Swedish Defense Staff supposedly
conducted a
comprehensive study of the incidents and concluded that they were all
explainable in terms of astronomical phenomena. Since this was UFO
history I
made several attempts to get some detailed and official information on
this
report and the sightings, but I was never successful.
The ghost rockets left in March, as mysteriously as they had arrived.
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