First recorded death attributed to a UFO still a mystery.
3/23/2000
The View from Marrs by Jim Marrs challenges bureaucratic secrecy and the status quo. Big Media watch out!
Less than seven months after something crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July, 1947, there occurred an incident involving what some consider to be the first recorded human death attributed to a UFO.
On January 7, 1948, Kentucky Air National Guard Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr., was piloting an F-51 (a post-war version of the famed P-51D Mustang) en route to Standiford Air Force Base, Kentucky, accompanied by three other Guard planes. Shortly after 1:30 p.m. Kentucky State Police reported that citizens were sighting a large circular object over Mansville, Kentucky. Similar reports soon came in from Irvington and Owensboro. It was seen from the control tower of Godman Air Force Base.
The object, described as large, round, and white with a red light near the lower part, was seen slowly moving southward. About 2:40 p.m., Mantell's flight crew was asked to investigate. One pilot received permission to continue his flight, while Mantell and two others began climbing in an effort to intercept the UFO. With Mantell in the lead, the three Mustangs soon reached 15,000 feet, where Mantell radioed, "The object is directly ahead of and above me now, moving at about half my speed. . .It appears to be a metallic object or possibly reflection of Sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size. . . . I'm still climbing. . . . I'm trying to close in for a better look."
Reaching 22,000 feet, Mantell's two companions turned back as the World War II fighters had not been equipped with oxygen. Mantell continued on and apparently passed out due to a lack of oxygen as his plane leveled off at about 30,000 feet. It then plunged into a spiral dive, crashing to earth on the William J. Phillips farm near Franklin, Kentucky. According to the official accident report, Mantell's body was still strapped in the wreckage. His watch stopped at 3:18 p.m.
By 3:50 p.m. the UFO was lost from sight at Godman, but reports continued to come in from areas further south and even into Tennessee.
The cause of Mantell's death prompted immediate debate. Two days after the incident, the New York Times carried a story with the headlines, "Flier Dies Chasing A 'Flying Saucer'" and "Plane Exploded Over Kentucky as That and Near States Report Strange Object". Speculation that the UFO caused Mantell's death was quickly put to rest by the Air Force when it announced that the fighters were, in fact, chasing the planet Venus. The Air Force further added that Mantell crashed due to oxygen deprivation. But as with so many UFO issues, nothing is as simple as it might seem.
While oxygen deprivation is the most probable explanation of Mantell's death, it does not explain the report of a witness cited by the newspaper. Glen Mays, who lived near Franklin, said he saw the aircraft explode in mid-air. "The plane circled three times, like the pilot didn't know where he was going," reported Mays, "and then started down into a dive from about 20,000 feet. About halfway down there was a terrific explosion.. It also does not explain why Godman Base Commander Guy F. Hix, who told reporters he observed the "flying saucer" for almost an hour with binoculars, would confuse the object with the planet Venus.
Another witness, Richard T. Miller, said he was in the Operations Room of Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois, during the time of the Mantell chase and heard the radio talk between the Godman tower operators and the pursuit planes. Miller claimed to have heard Mantell's last radio transmission, which was, "My God, I see people in this thing!" He said in a subsequent briefing he learned that according to the crashed F-51's instruments, Mantell had flown for more than an hour after his fuel ran out.
"No one could account for this," recalled Miller. He also said that farmer Mays did not specifically say he saw an explosion. "He said as the aircraft reached tree-top level, it was enveloped by a brilliant white flash of light. This light was so bright. It was like looking at the sun. The aircraft appeared to fall out of this light and pancake into the ground. Whatever this brilliant light was, it brought the aircraft out of a spin, and slowed its rate of descent . . . Some mysterious force had somehow interfered with the crash of this aircraft. When the plane hit the ground, Captain Mantell's shoulder straps broke, he flew forward over the control stick, and it impaled him through the chest. That is how Captain Mantell died."
Miller said the morning after Mantell's crash, investigators concluded that Mantell died "pursuing an intelligently controlled unidentified flying object" but that evening, Air Technical Intelligence Center officers from Wright-Patterson AFB arrived and ordered all personnel to turn over any materials relating to the crash. "Then after we had turned it over to them, they said they had already completed the investigation," he said. "I was no longer a skeptic. I had been up to that time. Now I wondered why the Government had gone to all of the trouble of covering it up, to keep it away from the press and the public."
Supporting Miller's version of Mantell's crash is the testimony of Captain James F. Duesler, who in 1997 was retired and living in England. In a recent interview, Duesler stated that he was one of several military observers who saw the UFO hovering over Godman Field in 1948. A pilot and crash investigator, Duesler described the UFO as a "strange gray-looking object" which looked like a rotating inverted ice cream cone.
Duesler visited the crash site shortly after Mantell's body had been removed, and was puzzled by the wreckage. "The wings and tail section had broken off on impact with the ground and were a short distance from the plane," he recalled. "There was no damage to the surrounding trees and it was obvious that there had been no forward or sideways motion when the plane had come down. It just appeared to have "belly flopped" into the clearing. There was very little damaged to the fuselage, which was in one piece, and no signs of blood whatsoever in the cockpit. There was no scratching on the body of the fuselage to indicate any forward movement and the propeller blade bore no tell-tale scratch marks to show it had been rotating at the time of impact, and one blade had been embedded into the ground. The damage pattern was not consistent with an aircraft of this type crashing at high speed into the ground. Because of the large engine in the nose of the plane, it would come down nose first and hit the ground at an angle. Even if it had managed to glide in, it would have cut a swath through the trees and a channel into the ground. None of these signs were present. All indications were that it had just belly flopped into the clearing. I must admit, I found this very strange."
The official report of the Mantell incident contained a "certified" statement by crash investigator Duesler. However, Duesler said he never made such a statement and the one presented in the official report was a "fake."
While it now appears likely that Mantell indeed passed out and crashed from lack of oxygen, the question of what he was chasing remains open as does the question of the circumstances of his crash.
For some time the media were satisfied with the Air Force explanation that Mantell, an experienced World War II combat pilot, was climbing past safe limits after Venus. Only his friends and family questioned this verdict. A friend and fellow pilot said, "The only thing I can think was that he was after something that he believed to be more important than his life or his family."
Soon after Mantell's death, UFO researchers were able to demonstrate that at the time of the incident, Venus was only 33 degrees above the horizon. This hardly places it in a position to be "above" Mantell, and it was at only half its maximum brightness, which would have made it nearly invisible in mid-afternoon.
Discomforted by these facts, Air Force officials began to seek a more defensible explanation. They found one in the Office of Naval Research, which on September 25, 1947, had began launching large Skyhook balloons designed to test the atmosphere high above the limits of conventional aircraft. Until well into the 1970s, the Navy launched an average of about 100 Skyhook balloons a year. Thus, air intelligence officers were able to shift the object of Mantell's chase from Venus to a balloon, although they were unable to locate any records showing that such a balloon had been sent aloft during the time in question.
It also should be noted that Mantell's UFO --- or another like it --- was seen in the days following his death. On January 9, 1948, residents of Clinton, North Carolina, reported a red cone-shaped object with a green tail dancing through the sky at an amazing speed. It was so bright they could see its outline even behind clouds. On February 1, a metallic UFO emitting a bright orange light was sighted near the ground at Circleville, Ohio. By the end of February, strange sightings were reported as far north as Boise and Emmett, Idaho.
Even today, more than 50 years after Mantell's death, no one is any closer to determining exactly what happened to this combat veteran.