The Death of Thomas Mantell
Date: January 7, 1948
Location: Franklin, Kentucky, United States
Individuals like Gorman, Chiles, and Whitted, to name a few, have lived to tell their stories of coming face-to-face with the unknown. The following encounter is unlike any other. I firmly believe that this case shows just how serious the phenomenon is. Individuals have lost their lives pursuing unidentified flying objects they encountered during their flights. One such individual is Thomas Mantell, who on January 7, 1948, lost his life when pursuing a UFO.
The Incident
Thomas Mantell was a twenty-five-year-old air force officer and a Second World War veteran. Mantell was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal for his service. With over two thousand hours of flying experience, Mantell was an F-51D Mustang pilot for the Kentucky Air National Guard.
On January 7, 1948, at 13:15, Technical Sergeant Quinton Blackwell, the radio control operator at Godman Air Force Base outside Louisville, Kentucky, received a call from the Kentucky State Highway Patrol informing him that they had spotted an unusual aircraft in the sky. The highway patrol wanted to know if there were any military exercises underway or if there were any military aircraft in the sky. The base confirmed that there were no military aircraft or exercises happening at that current moment. The air force base contacted the flight service at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which confirmed that there were no military aircraft in the area.
Within twenty minutes, the highway patrol started receiving numerous calls from individuals reporting the same sighting. The calls were made predominately from the west side of Louisville. All reports described a strange circular object with a diameter of roughly three hundred feet. The sky was cloudless, making the object very easy to spot. Around 13:45, the tower operators at Godman Air Force Base made a visual sighting themselves. The two operators could certainly surmise that the object was not a weather balloon. They then forwarded the report to flight operations, where Colonel Guy Hix ordered four F-51 fighter jets to intercept. Captain Thomas Mantell was the flight leader of the squadron. Given that they had just returned from a flight mission, one of the fighter jets was running low on fuel and thus had to abandon the mission.
The remaining three aircraft, which were piloted by Mantell, Lieutenant Albert Clements and Lieutenant Buford Hammond, continued on their mission to identify what the circular aircraft was. Mantell was leading the pursuit, and at an altitude of ten thousand feet, he made visual contact with the object, which he described to be tremendous in size and having a metallic shiny surface. The object initiated a vertical climb and Mantell followed, even though his aircraft was not equipped with enough oxygen levels. Shortly into the pursuit, the object outpaced all three fighter jets and the two other wingmen frantically attempted to communicate with Mantell, who, at that point, was still pursuing the UFO.
All three aircraft were running low on fuel and oxygen levels. Continuing the pursuit, Mantell started a vertical climb and had gone out of sight—even at fifteen thousand feet, Clements and Hammond were unable to locate Mantell or the disk-shaped object. Climbing a further seven thousand feet, they were still unable to locate any aircraft. At that point they were putting their lives on the line. Clements and Hammond eventually had to return to base, leaving Mantell behind. The last transmission message that Mantell had made to the radio operators was the following: “It’s above me and I’m gaining on it. I’m going to twenty thousand feet.” 122
Unfortunately, that was the last anyone had heard from Mantell. Once the wingmen landed at Sandiford Field, they refueled the aircraft and one of them returned to the sky in an attempt to locate Mantell. For hours, the airman patrolled the sky, but his efforts were futile. It was around 19:20 when radio towers from all around the Midwest started making reports of a circular unidentified object flying in the sky. Over a dozen reports were made, all similar in nature and all describing the same UFO.
Back at Kentucky, Mantell’s last transmission was made at 15:15 and a search team was immediately sent out to investigate the surrounding areas, attempting to locate any debris that would have indicated that Mantell had crashed. It was shortly after 17:00 when the search team located Mantell’s F-51 outside a farm near Franklin, Kentucky. Scattered over half a mile, the search team located the wreckage, as well as Mantell’s body inside the broken cockpit. His wristwatch had stopped at 15:18, indicating his time of death.
The death of Mantell shocked everyone. At that period of time, nobody was really taking the UFO phenomenon seriously; many had mocked individuals who came forward and spoke about their encounters, but this case was the turning point. Just a few hours after the accident, two individuals named William Mayes and Glenn Mayes signed an affidavit, in which they stated that they had seen Mantell’s aircraft in the sky, circling toward the ground. The two individuals also stated that the aircraft had made a loud noise as it exploded before reaching the ground.
The Investigation
Within a couple of hours after the crash, the air force started receiving queries asking about Mantell’s accident. The officers at Project Sign were pressured to come up with an answer fast, and this is when the Venus explanation was put forward. Even before an investigation was made, officers at Project Sign stated that Mantell had mistaken the UFO for a bright Venus. Naturally, this explanation was not well-received. It took them over a year to release an official report on the case, which stated that the UFO was not a bright Venus, but was a weather balloon. Edward J. Ruppelt stated the following in regard to the UFO that Mantell had pursued: “It was 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.” 123
The idea that an experienced lieutenant had lost his life because he was chasing a bright planet, or a weather balloon was not accepted by many and it did not take long for this explanation to be completely disparaged.
At the time of the UFO sighting (15:00), Venus would have been located southwest of Godman whereas the UFO was reportedly seen southwest of Godman. It is the case that the UFO was roughly at the same location where Venus was, however, Venus would not have been bright enough at 15:00 to be visible in the sky, let alone for an experienced pilot to mistake it for an aircraft and chase it down.
We must also take into consideration that the UFO carried out a steep vertical climb. As far as I know, celestial bodies remain in a stationary position in the sky, and this in itself disproves the theory. The Venus explanation was a flawed one and Dr. J. Allen Hynek himself had known this, which is when the latter explanation was provided.
The second explanation stated that the UFO was a Skyhook weather balloon, which is a meteorological weather balloon with a diameter of approximately 100 feet. These weather balloons would be released in the sky to collect more accurate information regarding the weather. Each time a weather balloon is released in the sky there are always records that indicate the location of where the balloon was released and at what time. Ruppelt was unconvinced by this theory and he himself had gone through the entire air force and navy records, but he was unable to find any reports.
“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 Air Force Base in Ohio on January 7, 1948,” wrote Ruppelt. “I never could find these records. People who were working with the early Skyhook projects ‘remember’ operating out of Clinton Country Air Force Base in 1947 but refuse to be pinned down to a January 7 flight. ‘Maybe,’ they said. The Mantell incident is the same old UFO Jigsaw puzzle.” 124
Conclusion
Although it truly was a tragedy that Thomas Mantell lost his life, this case shows what has been stated numerous times throughout this book: UFOs pose a threat not only to the country’s national security, but also to the pilots who encounter these unidentified objects in the sky.
It is also unclear why the air force stated that the UFO was a weather balloon, given that weather balloons are nonpowered and Mantell was traveling at least 400 miles per hour. In what circumstances would a nonpowered weather balloon overtake a fighter-jet and outmaneuver it?