Part 5 (2/2)

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 care to cos

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 stateree on a description, they called the UFO ”a parachute,” ”an ice creae and silver or metallic,” ”a small white object,” ”one fourth the size of the full e object None of the descriptions could even vaguely be called a pinpoint of light

This aspect of a definite shape sees, or parhelia, 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 In both instances when the aircraft began to clile of reflection changed as the airplane cli-caused UFO's also had fuzzy edges

I had always heard a lot of wild speculation about the condition of Mantell's crashed F-51, so I wired for a copy of the accident report

It arrived several days after my visit with Dr Hynek The report said that the F-51 had lost a wing due to excessive speed in a dive after Mantell had ”blacked out” due to the lack of oxygen Mantell's body had not burned, not disintegrated, and was not full of holes; the wreck was not radioactive, nor was it netized

One very important and pertinent question reo to 20,000 feet when he didn't even have an oxygen en, it would have been different Every pilot and crewman has it pounded into hio above 15,000 feet without oxygen” In high-altitude indoctrination during World War II, I made several trips up to 30,000 feet in a pressure chaen masks off until we becaet to 15,000 feet, but nobody ever got over 17,000 Possibly Mantell thought he could cliot anoxia and blacked out, but this would be a foolish chance This point was covered in the sighting report A long-ti that he'd floith him several years and knew hi about disregarding his lack of oxygen Mantell was one of theI can think,” he co that he believed to be more important than his life or his family”

My next step was to try to find out what Mantell's wing ht but this was a blind alley All of this evidence was in the ruined portion of the

The only reference I could find to the

I concentrated on the canopy-reflection theory It is widely believed thata 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 intoexperience 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 fifteen to twenty minutes, and it is inconceivable that he wouldn't realize in that length of ti a reflection

About the only theory left to check was that the object , 100-foot-diameter, ”skyhook” balloons I rechecked the descriptions of the UFO ht the object called it a parachute; 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 previouslyafter the object had disappeared from view at Godht Service in Dayton He had seen an object traveling southeast He had looked at it through a telescope and it was a balloon At four forty-five an astrono 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 Noasn't sure

I talked with one of the people who had been in on the Mantell investigation The possibility of a balloon's 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 spaceshi+p and that this was the only course they had pursued When the sighting grew older and no spaceshi+p proof could be found, everybody juon, as this theory had ”already been established” It was an easy way out The second reason was that a quick check had beenskyhook balloon project was highly classified at that time, and since they were all convinced that the object was of interplanetary origin (a ive the Russians credit), they didn't want to bother to buck the red tape of security to get data on skyhook flights

The group who supervise the contracts for all the skyhook research flights for the Air Force are located at Wright Field, so I called thehts in 1948 but they did think that the big balloons were being launched from Clinton County AFB in southern Ohio at that tiet 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 s, 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 which 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 a while, cli 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 froton, Kentucky, the test of Godman The second reports to the state police had co, the balloon would have reached a level where a strong as blowing in a southerly direction The jet-strea 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 would haveAt a point somewhere south or southwest of God 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 air base 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 estih the binoculars and tie,” ”small,” ”one fourth the size of a full moon,” ”one tenth the size of a fullaway As the balloon continued to drift in a southerly direction it would have picked up stronger winds, and could have easily been seen by the 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 shohether or not a balloon was launched from Clinton County AFB, Ohio, on January 7, 1948 I never could find these records People orking with the early skyhook projects ”re out of Clinton County AFB in 1947 but refuse to be pinned down to a January 7 flight Maybe, they said

The Mantell Incident is the sa the shape of one piece, a balloon launched froether It shows a huge balloon that Captain Tho 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

During January and February of 1948 the reports of ”ghost rockets”

continued to con countries near the Baltic Sea People in North Jutland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Ger slowly across the sky” The reports were very sketchy and incomplete, most of the seen all over Europe and South An reports hit a peak in the latter part of February and US 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 phenoet some detailed and official infors, but I was never successful

The ghost rockets left in March, as mysteriously as they had arrived