Greetings Lists,
Five years ago our team got involved, almost by accident, in
a major event that has been written off for decades. We had all written
this case off. Then, in 2006 some discoveries were made. It's a long
story, part of the report, but we took another look. What we found was
surprising and many of our readers watched as it unfolded. Months later
our work continued among ourselves and we planned a formal report. We
even considered a formal report by the Fund and asked several
investigators to do their independent analyses on the case. Too many
things got in the way and preliminary work was done and then it got
lost in the shuffle. Last fall I decided to release the report in
December and did the final draft.
But before any of this took place I had serious reservations
about the case as explained but decided that too many of my peers also
had their ideas and I respected that. And in Dec. of 2005 the report
lay in the files as "explained". But this much I had considered, having
my own opinion formed through the years:
1) In I960, I was a NICAP Subcommittee Chairman in SW
Indiana. A scientific consultant to our team at Vincennes, Indiana, who
had worked for Project SIGN, told me that the Mantell case was NOT
explained and that the incident had shaken a lot of people up.
2) The Air Force-inspired, 1952 LIFE Magazine article by
Robert Ginna, five years after the incident took place, stated that the
case was unsolved.
3) In 1956 a former head of Project Blue Book (Capt. Ed
Ruppelt) stated in his book, "The Report on Unidentified Flying
Objects" (page 41): "According to the old timers at ATIC, this report
(Chiles-Whitted case) shook them worse than the Mantell Incident. This
(C-W) was the first time two reliable sources had been really close
enough to anything resembling a UFO to get a good look and live to tell
about it."
4) I had known about this but Dan Wilson, our NICAP team's
archive researcher found documents confirming that in the 1948 Mantell
case the State Police had gotten reports of an object described as
"circular, about 250' to 300' in diameter," and moving westward at a
"pretty good clip." In my opinion no one would describe a balloon of
any kind in this way. In another document we found the object was
described as "1/10th the size of the full moon". Yet another,
"Tremendous" size was used to describe the object at Godman Field at
1:45 PM.
5) Besides the State Police reports there had been evidence
of at least two other UFO sightings, one at Lockbourne AFB, another at
Clinton County AFB, both in Ohio. UFO sightings in the region! We found
those documents, too.
6) Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe: "Many ranking officers who had
laughed at the saucer scare stopped scoffing. One of these was General
Sory Smith, now Deputy Director of Air Force Public Relations. Later in
my investigation, General Smith told me: 'It was the Mantell case that
got me. I knew Tommy Mantell very well - also Colonel Hix, the C.O. at
Godman. I knew they were both intelligent men -not the kind to be
imagining things."
7) The planes flown by Mantell and his wing men were F-51
Mustangs. In 1948, the designation P-51 (P for pursuit) was changed to
F-51 (F for fighter) and the existing F designator for photographic
reconnaissance aircraft was dropped because of a new designation scheme
throughout the USAF. This 400-mph fighter could overtake a non-powered
balloon...... in no time.
In March of 2006 even I was surprised by new findings.
This summation and preliminary analysis deals with what our
team found during the re-investigation of the Mantell Incident that I
began on March 8th of 2006 as a result of Channel 14 (Evansville,
Indiana) Drew Speier's request to do a story I originally objected to,
which aired on May 23rd, 2006. Up until this time I was willing to
accept the conclusion of my colleagues, that Mantell had died in an
accident chasing a balloon of some type.
When the re-investigation began on March 8th, the first
thing we did was to re-examine the old Mantell case file. There were
three documents in that file that we had not paid too much attention
to. One that mentioned a "Plan 62" which had no real significance to us
at that time. Another, a hard-to-read inverted image in black with
white letters at the bottom that read, "Oxygen system was not serviced.
System was in working order." Yet another document that said Mantell's
body was removed before the Air Force accident team got there.
PLAN 62
Somewhere in an old email from Dan Wilson is a report he
filed on Plan 62. The report was not tied to any particular sighting,
so the file got sidestepped and was lost. But Wendy Connors document #
6 had mentioned "Plan 62". Three months into our
re-investigation Plan 62 became the topic of discussion in the Mantell
case. Brad Sparks had a pretty good idea of what he thought it was, and
later found more details. In the fall of 2008 Dan Wilson was able to
get an official document from the Air Force Historical Studies Office.
My research into Mantell led me to examine Captain Ed
Ruppelt's unedited manuscript for his book, "The Report on Unidentified
Flying Objects". It mentioned the Plan, but not by number. This then,
was an important early discovery. Ruppelt's slip-up in his manuscript
had mentioned that "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.]..." Our investigation was to
show that Air Force personnel mentioned hearing about sightings that
infamous day at the other bases as the event was actually unfolding.
Here is what Brad Sparks added in June: "The Air Defense
Command (ADC) used the Plan 62 intercom system, through the Air
Transport Command's Flight Service Centers, and the air traffic
controllers of the Airways and Air Communications Service (AACS) in
those centers and outlying bases, to coordinate the use of air traffic
control towers and radars to track the UFO. This was because at that
time the ADC had only two operating radars in the nation, both too far
away, across the continent on the West Coast (at Half Moon Bay, Calif.,
and Arlington, Wash.)."
Ruppelt had said in his published book (page 33) that "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."
Ruppelt stated the rumors were not true. The evidence proves him wrong
or a liar. We now know that a lot of people heard Mantell and his men.
Project SIGN was even in on it, live!!!!
OXYGEN
Our report on file on the Mantell Incident file by the end
of 2005 had documents that strongly suggested that something strange
had been going on in the region, and one of those documents was
USAF-SIGN1-310. A better version of this document was uncovered by Dan
Wilson on June 1, 2006 but we actually had it in December of 2005. The
bottom of document USAF-SIGN1-310 clearly reads, "Oxygen system was not
serviced. System was in working order." Regarding Mantell having
oxygen, my take was that the system, like an automobile with a gas
tank, carburetor and fuel pump, was in working condition, except it had
not been fueled or topped off with oxygen. Brad believes Mantell not
only had to have had oxygen, but has found supporting evidence in the
Accident Report that we obtained and transcribed for our use and
supplied to him.
BODY REMOVED
USAF-SIGN1-372 documents that State Police officer Joe
Walker arrived at the crash scene and stated that the pilot's body had
already been removed. We later learned that the ambulance crew had done
this and it was reported in a newspaper. The source was the
Franklin (Kentucky) Newspaper of January 8, 1948. "Mrs. Joe Phillips
said she called the telephone operator and asked for an ambulance and
for help to be sent to the crash site." And the very next line read:
"The body of the deceased pilot has been removed from the scene by
ambulance men and were transported to the Booker Funeral Home, waiting
for the family's instructions, which was to be informed of the tragedy
by the authorities at Fort Knox."
NOT A BALLOON
Later on in the same document mentioned above, it states
that a Dr. Seyfert from Vanderbuilt University had spotted an object
SSE of Nashville, Tennessee. This turned out to be the infamous Skyhook
that the Air Force tried to blame for the object that fooled everybody
and subsequently lured Mantell to his death.
So, on March 8, 2006, the re-investigation began. My first
interview was on May 23rd, with Drew Speier on Channel 14 on the
Mantell Incident.
On May 27, 2006 we found another version of USAF-SIGN1-372.
It was NARA-PBB2-854 and it mentioned again the famous Skyhook SSE of
Nashville.
Who in the Air Force investigated the Mantell incident?
Early on in our re-investigation it was clear that the Air Force took
the case seriously. And by 1952 it had still shaken the Air Force up.
Michael D. Swords wrote: "The core personnel for the project were
probably the most talented group to work on UFOs until the Air Force
ended its investigation in 1969. Aiding chief officer, Capt. Robert R
Sneider, were two outstanding aeronautical engineers, Alfred Loedding
and Alfred B. Deyarmond. Completing the group was nuclear and missile
expert Lawrence Truettner. The quality of these people indicates the
seriousness (and the comparative difference in later years) with which
the Air Force considered the flying disk problem."
On May 28, 2006, Dan Wilson found document MAXW-PBB3-714,
that mentions Alfred Loedding from Project SIGN. Wilson: "The cover-up
of the Mantell case begins with the timely discovery of a document
(MAXW-PBB3-714) signed by base commanding officer, Colonel Guy F. Hix.
In the document below it clearly states that the civilian investigator
(Alfred Loedding) from Wright Field, arrived at Godman Field on January
9, 1948 and made a thorough investigation. After obtaining statements
and full information on the matter, he (Loedding) issued instructions
that no report on the subject would be made until further instructions
were given."
We also discovered on MAXWELL-PBB3-713 that two other
aircraft had taken off from Standiford Field and might have been
directed to go after the object. But nothing else was found to verify
this.
By May 29 Brad Sparks was checking on balloon launches and
found impossibilities and extreme coincidences all over the place. The
big skyhook balloon could not have been launched from Camp Ripley. More
lies and evidence of a cover-up.
By May 31, Rod Dyke advised that the Archives for UFO
Research (AUFOR) had a copy of the Official Accident Report (Inquiry #
10-480107-1) It was essential that we order the FULL official accident
report, and this was done immediately. Up until then we had pages from
it, but not the entire document. It was supposed to be 450 pages; then
was supposed to be 250 pages, and when we finally got it, it was 127
pages. What happened to the other pages, and what's on those missing
documents? We don't know.
By June 3 we had the great maps from Mary Castner & Joel
Carpenter.
On June 3, Dan Wilson found docs that showed that even nine
months AFTER the Mantell incident, it was listed as unexplained. Pages
from a restricted Routing and Record Sheet document, signed by A.
B. Deyarmond, Asst. Deputy for Technical Analysis, AMC, part of which
is presented here from frame 28:
"1. Re Sighting of 7 Jan 1948 : Reference is made to your
conversation with Capt. Sneider on 19 October 1948 concerning your
desire for a check on the position and visibility of Venus on 7 Jan
1948 between the hours 1330 and 1350 as compared to the position of an
unidentified aerial object. "4. The evidence obtained from MCREXE44
conclusively proves that this object was not the planet Venus."
On June 5. Dan found the interview of Pickering by Bill
Jones. One report of a UFO that "dipped down touching a grass strip
that was a cleared extension of the runway."
Brad checked Pickering's 1948 account that we posted which
specifically places the object maneuvering over Commercial Point 3-5
miles to the WSW of Lockbourne and disappearing into the high overcast
at 120 degrees (ESE) at the end of 20 minutes of maneuvers which had
included a landing or near-landing. "This makes a circling of the
base consistent with appearing on both sides of Lockbourne, east and
west. Can't make it out to be in one direction only so as to make
it Venus -- which was not in the ESE at 120 degs azimuth. Thanks for
locating the BB Archive doc refs as it led me to the unsanitized name
of the Lockbourne amateur astronomer Control Tower operator I
previously discussed who turns out to be Frank M. Eisele. This is now
bringing to memory that maybe McDonald investigated this case and maybe
interviewed Eisele and others (it's a vague memory, not sure)." Albert
Pickering's testimony nailed down the object's position relative to
Mantell. It was no longer guesswork.
Kevin Randle stated that Mantell's death was a tragic
accident complicated by his violations of AF regulations. But Mantell
was asked to investigate this object and in the military if you are
asked, that's the same as an order. This strongly implies he had oxygen
because he knew the limitations of flying above 14,000'.
By June 9, Brad made it clear, Mantell could not have seen
any kind of balloon 160 miles away. On the tenth he mentioned that he
didn't know if the sighting was of an IFO or a UFO, but if it was a
Skyhook or a UFO, it wasn't very well documented either way. By now
even Tom DeMary is convinced, by new calculations, that Godman Tower
couldn't have seen a balloon at 160 miles. Nor could the object,
described by state police as 250-300 feet wide moving a pretty good
clip.
On June 13 Jean received the Accident Report. Jean was able
to reproduce the entire report in four pdf files so that Brad and
others could do their own analyses. On the same day Brad pointed out
that USAF-SIGN7-26 clearly states that Deyarmond was convinced the UFO
was not Venus. This was the first time such an anti-IFO statement had
ever been made by the Air Force, and at a time when they were
scrambling to explain a case that had badly shaken them.
On July 26 (Airedale) my second interview with Drew Speier
on Channel 14 took place. Our findings to-date were discussed.
FINDINGS
The picture presented of Mantell chasing a Skyhook balloon
to his death with the region filled with IFO reports is false. There
were UFO reports in the region. The story of how Mantell said some
things but nobody was sure exactly what, is a lie. Everybody heard what
went on through Plan 62, even Project SIGN people heard it. Mantell
didn't just go above 14,000' and violate regulations. He was under
orders and he knew what he was doing. If he had oxygen problems that
resulted in anoxia and passing out, it was due to a problem, not him
going hell-bent-for-leather after a pinpoint of light in the afternoon
sky. And he reported more than that. The biggest balloon available that
day was too far away to be a factor. The case was covered up and
declared as unsolved, and was still unsolved and shook up the Air Force
five years later.
During the next few months we went over the data we had
compiled, including the accident report records. Although our
team had made many important new discoveries, the importance of the
Mantell case came into sharp focus with Brad Sparks analytical skills
on the Accident Report. After several delays due to other pressing
matters Sparks wrote the first draft of his analysis. Our report
presented here includes our preliminary analyses and Brad's findings.
Others wanting to provide their own separate analyses are welcome to do
so and their reports will be made part of the case record as provided.
Francis Ridge
Investigator & Researcher
NICAP Site Coordinator &
Archivist
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