The Mantell Case
On January 7th 1948 at 1.20pm the Godman Air Field tower crew sighted a bright, disc
shaped object. The sighting was quickly brought to the attention of the base
operations officer, the intelligence officer and finally , the base commander,
Colonel Guy F. Hix.
For 90 minutes, dozens of people, including Hix watched the UFO as it hung almost
motionless in the sky. People as far as 100 miles could see the UFO.
At 2.45pm a flight of F-51s flew over Godman. The object was still visible and the
flight commander, Thomas Mantell, was asked if he could investigate. The F-51s then
preceded to climb to 15,000ft. Soon after this 2 of the planes had to turn back as their
craft were not equipped with oxygen. The other pilots tried to contact Mantell but
were unsuccessful.
In the tower, they heard Mantell make a call at 15,000ft. He said "above and
ahead of me and appears to be moving at half my speed". This was followed by
another call in which he said "it's metallic and tremendous in size".
For thirty minutes the rest of the planes slow turned back as one by one they
ran out of oxygen. At 3.10 and at 23,000ft Mantell was the last plane still flying towards the
UFO. He made no further calls and visual and radio contact was lost. At 3.15pm
a search was launched.
Just after 5.00pm, on a farm near Franklin, Kentucky, the remains of the F-51 were found
scattered over half a mile. Mantell's body was inside the cockpit still and his
watch had stopped at 3.18pm. It was beleived that the crash had killed Mantell and
stopped his watch.
The Air Force began an investigation. First they stated that Mantell had been chasing a
huge ballon, later they changed this to Venus, and then lastly to Venus and 2 Ballons!
The microfilm copy of the investigation was mysteriously damaged and no skyhook
balloon launches could be found to coincide with the incident.
We will probably never know what Mantell was chasing, but he was too experianced
a pilot to die chasing a ballon or the planet Venus.
Please EMAIL me with any additional Info/Suggestions
