1948 was only one hour and twenty-five minutes old when a gentleman
from Abilene, Texas, made the first UFO report of the year. What he
saw, "a fan-shaped glow" in the sky, was insignificant as far as UFO
reports go, but it ushered in a year that was to bring feverish
activity to Project Sign.
With the Soviets practically eliminated as a UFO source, the idea of
interplanetary spaceships was becoming more popular. During 1948 the
people in ATIC were openly discussing the possibility of
interplanetary visitors without others tapping their heads and
looking smug. During 1948 the novelty of UFO's had worn off for the
press and every John and Jane Doe who saw one didn't make the front
pages as in 1947. Editors were becoming hardened, only a few of the
best reports got any space. Only "The Classics" rated headlines. "The
Classics" were three historic reports that were the highlights of
1948. They are called "The Classics," a name given them by the
Project Blue Book staff, because: (1) they are classic examples of
how the true facts of a UFO report can be twisted and warped by some
writers to prove their point, (2) they are the most highly publicized
reports of this early era of the UFO's, and (3) they "proved" to
ATIC's intelligence specialists that UFO's were real.
The apparent lack of interest in UFO reports by the press was not a
true indication of the situation. I later found out, from talking to
writers, that all during 1948 the interest in UFO's was running high.
The Air Force Press Desk in the Pentagon was continually being asked
what progress was being made in the UFO investigation. The answer
was, "Give us time. This job can't be done in a week." The press
respected this and was giving them time. But every writer worth his
salt has contacts, those "usually reliable sources" you read about,
and these contacts were talking. All during 1948 contacts in the
Pentagon were telling how UFO reports were rolling in at the rate of
several per day and how ATIC UFO investigation teams were flying out
of Dayton to investigate them. They were telling how another Air
Force investigative organization had been called in to lighten ATIC's
load and allow ATIC to concentrate on the analysis of the reports.
The writers knew this was true because they had crossed paths with
these men whom they had mistakenly identified as FBI agents. The FBI
was never officially interested in UFO sightings. The writers'
contacts in the airline industry told about the UFO talk from V.P.'s
down to the ramp boys. Dozens of good, solid, reliable, experienced
airline pilots were seeing UFO's. All of this led to one conclusion:
whatever the Air Force had to say, when it was ready to talk, would
be newsworthy. But the Air Force wasn't ready to talk.
Project Sign personnel were just getting settled down to work after
the New Year's holiday when the "ghost rockets" came back to the
Scandinavian countries of Europe. Air attaches in Sweden, Denmark,
and Norway fired wires to ATIC telling about the reports. Wires went
back asking for more information.
The "ghost rockets," so tagged by the newspapers, had first been
seen in the summer of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in
the U.S. There were many different descriptions for the reported
objects. They were usually seen in the hours of darkness and almost
always traveling at extremely high speeds. They were shaped like a
ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red, or yellow and
sometimes made sounds. Like their American cousins, they were always
so far away that no details could be seen. For no good reason, other
than speculation and circulation, the newspapers had soon begun to
refer authoritatively to these "ghost rockets" as guided missiles,
and implied that they were from Russia. Peenemunde, the great German
missile development center and birthplace of the V-l and V-2 guided
missiles, came in for its share of suspicion since it was held by the
Russians. By the end of the summer of 1946 the reports were
widespread, coming from Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French
Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey. In 1947, after no definite conclusions
as to identity of the "rockets" had been established, the reports
died out. Now in early January 1948 they broke out again. But Project
Sign personnel were too busy to worry about European UFO reports,
they were busy at home. A National Guard pilot had just been killed
chasing a UFO.
On January 7 all of the late papers in the U.S. carried headlines
similar to those in the Louisville _Courier_: "F-51 and Capt. Mantell
Destroyed Chasing Flying Saucer." This was Volume I of "The
Classics," the Mantell Incident.
At one-fifteen on that afternoon the control tower operators at
Godman AFB, outside Louisville, Kentucky, received a telephone call
from the Kentucky State Highway Patrol. The patrol wanted to know if
Godman Tower knew anything about any unusual aircraft in the
vicinity. Several people from Maysville, Kentucky, a small town 80
miles east of Louisville, had reported seeing a strange aircraft.
Godman knew that they had nothing in the vicinity so they called
Flight Service at Wright-Patterson AFB. In a few minutes Flight
Service called back. Their air Traffic control board showed no
flights in the area. About twenty minutes later the state police
called again. This time people from the towns of Owensboro and
Irvington, Kentucky, west of Louisville, were reporting a strange
craft. The report from these two towns was a little more complete.
The townspeople had described the object to the state police as being
"circular, about 250 to 300 feet in diameter," and moving westward at
a "pretty good clip." Godman Tower checked Flight Service again.
Nothing. All this time the tower operators had been looking for the
reported object. They theorized that since the UFO had had to pass
north of Godman to get from Maysville to Owensboro it might come back.
At one forty-five they saw it, or something like it. Later, in his
official report, the assistant tower operator said that he had seen
the object for several minutes before he called his chiefs attention
to it. He said that he had been reluctant to "make a flying saucer
report." As soon as the two men in the tower had assured themselves
that the UFO they saw was not an airplane or a weather balloon, they
called Flight Operations. They wanted the operations officer to see
the UFO. Before long word of the sighting had gotten around to key
personnel on the base, and several officers, besides the base
operations officer and the base intelligence officer, were in the
tower. All of them looked at the UFO through the tower's 6 x 50
binoculars and decided they couldn't identify it. About this time
Colonel Hix, the base commander, arrived. He looked and he was
baffled. At two-thirty, they reported, they were discussing what
should be done when four F-51's came into view, approaching the base
from the south.
The tower called the flight leader, Captain Mantell, and asked him
to take a look at the object and try to identify it. One F-51 in the
flight was running low on fuel, so he asked permission to go on to
his base. Mantell took his two remaining wing men, made a turn, and
started after the UFO. The people in Godman Tower were directing him
as none of the pilots could see the object at this time. They gave
Mantell an initial heading toward the south and the flight was last
seen heading in the general direction of the UFO.
By the time the F-51's had climbed to 10,000 feet, the two wing men
later reported, Mantell had pulled out ahead of them and they could
just barely see him. At two forty-five Mantell called the tower and
said, "I see something above and ahead of me and I'm still climbing."
All the people in the tower heard Mantell say this and they heard one
of the wing men call back and ask, "What the hell are we looking
for?" The tower immediately called Mantell and asked him for a
description of what he saw. Odd as it may seem, no one can remember
exactly what he answered. Saucer historians have credited him with
saying, "I've sighted the thing. It looks metallic and it's
tremendous in size. . . . Now it's starting to climb." Then in a few
seconds he is supposed to have called and said, "It's above me and
I'm gaining on it. I'm going to 20,000 feet." Everyone in the tower
agreed on this one last bit of the transmission, "I'm going to 20,000
feet," but didn't agree on the first part, about the UFO's being
metallic and tremendous.
The two wing men were now at 15,000 feet and trying frantically to
call Mantell. He had climbed far above them by this time and was out
of sight. Since none of them had any oxygen they were worried about
Mantell. Their calls were not answered. Mantell never talked to
anyone again. The two wing men leveled off at 15,000 feet, made
another fruitless effort to call Mantell, and started to come back
down. As they passed Godman Tower on their way to their base, one of
them said something to the effect that all he had seen was a
reflection on his canopy.
When they landed at their base, Standiford Field, just north of
Godman, one pilot had his F-51 refueled and serviced with oxygen, and
took off to search the area again. He didn't see anything.
At three-fifty the tower lost sight of the UFO. A few minutes later
they got word that Mantell had crashed and was dead.
Several hours later, at 7:20P.M., airfield towers all over the
Midwest sent in frantic reports of another UFO. In all about a dozen
airfield towers reported the UFO as being low on the southwestern
horizon and disappearing after about twenty minutes. The writers of
saucer lore say this UFO was what Mantell was chasing when he died;
the Air Force says _this_ UFO was Venus.
The people on Project Sign worked fast on the Mantell Incident.
Contemplating a flood of queries from the press as soon as they heard
about the crash, they realized that they had to get a quick answer.
Venus had been the target of a chase by an Air Force F-51 several
weeks before and there were similarities between this sighting and
the Mantell Incident. So almost before the rescue crews had reached
the crash, the word "Venus" went out. This satisfied the editors, and
so it stood for about a year; Mantell had unfortunately been killed
trying to reach the planet Venus.
To the press, the nonchalant, offhand manner with which the sighting
was written off by the Air Force public relations officer showed
great confidence in the conclusion, Venus, but behind the barbed-wire
fence that encircled ATIC the nonchalant attitude didn't exist among
the intelligence analysts. One man had already left for Louisville
and the rest were doing some tall speculating. The story about the
tower-to-air talk. "It looks metallic and it's tremendous in size,"
spread fast. 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. Rumor also had it that this conversation had been
recorded. Unfortunately neither of these rumors was true.
Over a period of several weeks the file on the Mantell Incident grew
in size until it was the most thoroughly investigated sighting of
that time, at least the file was the thickest.
About a year later the Air Force released its official report on the
incident. To use a trite term, it was a masterpiece in the art of
"weasel wording." It 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. This jolted writers who had been following the UFO
story. Only a few weeks before, _The_ _Saturday_ _Evening_ _Post_ had
published a two-part story entitled "What You Can Believe about
Flying Saucers." The story had official sanction and had quoted the
Venus theory as a positive solution. To clear up the situation,
several writers were allowed to interview a major in the Pentagon,
who was the Air Force's Pentagon "expert" on UFO's. The major was
asked directly about the conclusion of the Mantell Incident, and he
flatly stated that it was Venus. The writers pointed out the official
Air Force analysis. The major's answer was, "They checked again and
it was Venus." He didn't know who "they" were, where they had
checked, or what they had checked, but it was Venus. The writers then
asked, "If there was a later report they had made why wasn't it used
as a conclusion?" "Was it available?" The answer to the last question
was "No," and the lid snapped back down. This interview gave the
definite impression that the Air Force was unsuccessfully trying to
cover up some very important information, using Venus as a front.
Nothing excites a newspaper or magazine writer more than to think he
has stumbled onto a big story and that someone is trying to cover it
up. Many writers thought this after the interview with the major, and
many still think it. You can't really blame them, either.
In early 1952 I got a telephone call on ATIC's direct line to the
Pentagon. It was a colonel in the Director of Intelligence's office.
The Office of Public Information had been getting a number of queries
about all of the confusion over the Mantell Incident. What was the
answer?
I dug out the file. In 1949 all of the original material on the
incident had been microfilmed, but something had been spilled on the
film. Many sections were so badly faded they were illegible. As I had
to do with many of the older sightings that were now history, I
collected what I could from the file, filling in the blanks by
talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era. Many
of these people were still around, "Red" Honnacker, George Towles, Al
Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others. Most of them were civilians,
the military had been transferred out by this time.
Some of the press clippings in the file mentioned the Pentagon major
and his concrete proof of Venus. I couldn't find this concrete proof
in the file so I asked around about the major. The major, I found,
was an officer in the Pentagon who had at one time written a short
intelligence summary about UFO's. He had never been stationed at
ATIC, nor was he especially well versed on the UFO problem. When the
word of the press conference regarding the Mantell Incident came
down, a UFO expert was needed. The major, because of his short
intelligence summary on UFO's, became the "expert." He had evidently
conjured up "they" and "their later report" to support his Venus
answer because the writers at the press conference had him in a
corner. I looked farther.
Fortunately the man who had done the most extensive work on the
incident, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, head of the Ohio State University
Astronomy Department, could be contacted. I called Dr. Hynek and
arranged to meet him the next day.
Dr. Hynek was one of the most impressive scientists I met while
working on the UFO project, and I met a good many. He didn't do two
things that some of them did: give you the answer before he knew the
question; or immediately begin to expound on his accomplishments in
the field of science. I arrived at Ohio State just before lunch, and
Dr. Hynek invited me to eat with him at the faculty club. He wanted
to refer to some notes he had on the Mantell Incident and they were
in his office, so we discussed UFO's in general during lunch.
Back in his office he started to review the Mantell Incident. He had
been responsible for the weasel-worded report that the Air Force
released in late 1949, and he apologized for it. Had he known that it
was going to cause so much confusion, he said, he would have been
more specific. He thought the incident was a dead issue. The reason
that Venus had been such a strong suspect was that it was in almost
the same spot in the sky as the UFO. Dr. Hynek referred to his notes
and told me that at 3:00P.M., Venus had been south southwest of
Godman and 33 degrees above the southern horizon. At 3:00P.M. the
people in the tower estimated the UFO to be southwest of Godman and
at an elevation of about 45 degrees. Allowing for human error in
estimating directions and angles, this was close. I agreed. There was
one big flaw in the theory, however. Venus wasn't bright enough to be
seen. He had computed the brilliance of the planet, and on the day in
question it was only six times as bright as the surrounding sky. Then
he explained what this meant. Six times may sound like a lot, but it
isn't. When you start looking for a pinpoint of light only six times
as bright as the surrounding sky, it's almost impossible to find it,
even on a clear day.
Dr. Hynek said that he didn't think that the UFO was Venus.
I later found out that although it was a relatively clear day there
was considerable haze.
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 comment only on the astrophysical aspects of the sightings.
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
statements brought that out. They couldn't agree on a description,
they called the UFO "a parachute," "an ice cream cone tipped with
red," "round and white," "huge and silver or metallic," "a small
white object," "one fourth the size of the full moon," but all the
descriptions plainly indicated a large object. None of the
descriptions could even vaguely be called a pinpoint of light.
This aspect of a definite shape seemed to eliminate the sundog
theory too. Sundogs, 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 climb, the sundog disappeared. This was because the angle of
reflection changed as the airplane climbed several thousand feet.
These sundog-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 magnetized.
One very important and pertinent question remained. Why did Mantell,
an experienced pilot, try to go to 20,000 feet when he didn't even
have an oxygen mask? If he had run out of oxygen, it would have been
different Every pilot and crewman has it pounded into him, "Do not,
under any circumstances, go 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 chamber. To demonstrate anoxia
we would leave our oxygen masks off until we became dizzy. A few of
the more hardy souls could get to 15,000 feet, but nobody ever got
over 17,000. Possibly Mantell thought he could climb up to 20,000 in
a hurry and get back down before he got anoxia and blacked out, but
this would be a foolish chance. This point was covered in the
sighting report. A long-time friend of Mantell's went on record as
saying that he'd flown with him several years and knew him
personally. He couldn't conceive of Mantell's even thinking about
disregarding his lack of oxygen. Mantell was one of the most cautious
pilots he knew. "The only thing I can think," he commented, "was that
he was after something 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 men had seen
or thought but this was a blind alley. All of this evidence was in
the ruined portion of the microfilm, even their names were missing.
The only reference I could find to them was a vague passage
indicating they hadn't seen anything.
I concentrated on the canopy-reflection theory. It is widely
believed that many flying saucers appear to pilots who are actually
chasing a 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 into my own flying experience 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 time that he was chasing a
reflection.
About the only theory left to check was that the object might have
been one of the big, 100-foot-diameter, "skyhook" balloons. I
rechecked the descriptions of the UFO made by the people in the
tower. The first man to sight 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 previously missed. Not long after the object had
disappeared from view at Godman AFB, a man from Madisonville,
Kentucky, called Flight 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 astronomer living 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. Now I
wasn'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 spaceship and that this was the only course
they had pursued. When the sighting grew older and no spaceship proof
could be found, everybody jumped on the Venus band wagon, as this
theory had "already been established." It was an easy way out. The
second reason was that a quick check had been made on weather
balloons and none were in the area. The big skyhook balloon project
was highly classified at that time, and since they were all convinced
that the object was of interplanetary origin (a minority wanted to
give 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
them. They had no records on flights in 1948 but they did think that
the big balloons were being launched from Clinton County AFB in
southern Ohio at that time. They offered to get 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 me.
Unfortunately the times of the first sightings, 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, climbing as it moved with the strong east
winds that were blowing 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 from Owensboro and Irvington,
Kentucky, the two towns west of Godman. The second reports to the
state police had come from these two towns. Still climbing, the
balloon would have reached a level where a strong wind was blowing in
a southerly direction. The jet-stream winds were not being 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 have moved rapidly south, still climbing. At a point somewhere
south or southwest of Godman it would have climbed through the
southerly-moving 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
estimated the time he looked at the object through the binoculars and
timewise the descriptions ran "huge," "small," "one fourth the size
of a full moon," "one tenth the size of a full moon." Whatever the
UFO was, it was slowly moving away. 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 show whether or not a balloon was launched from
Clinton County AFB, Ohio, on January 7, 1948. I never could find
these records. People who were working with the early skyhook
projects "remember" operating 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 same old UFO jigsaw puzzle. By assuming
the shape of one piece, a balloon launched from southwestern Ohio,
the whole picture neatly falls together. It shows a huge balloon that
Captain Thomas Mantell died trying 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 come from air attaches in foreign countries near the
Baltic Sea. People in North Jutland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and
Germany reported "balls of fire traveling slowly across the sky." The
reports were very sketchy and incomplete, most of them accounts from
newspapers. In a few days the UFO's were being seen all over Europe
and South America. Foreign reports hit a peak in the latter part of
February and U.S. 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 phenomena. Since this was UFO history, I made
several attempts to get some detailed and official information on
this report and the sightings, but I was never successful.
The ghost rockets left in March, as mysteriously as they had arrived.
All during the spring of 1948 good reports continued to come in.
Some were just run-of-the-mill but a large percentage of them were
good, coming from people whose reliability couldn't be questioned.
For example, three scientists reported that for thirty seconds they
had watched a round object streak across the sky in a highly erratic
flight path near the Army's secret White Sands Proving Ground. And on
May 28 the crew of an Air Force C-47 had three UFO's barrel in from
"twelve o'clock high" to buzz their transport.
On July 21 a curious report was received from the Netherlands. The
day before several persons reported seeing a UFO through high broken
clouds over The Hague. The object was rocket-shaped, with two rows of
windows along the side. It was a poor report, very sketchy and
incomplete, and it probably would have been forgotten except that
four nights later a similar UFO almost collided with an Eastern
Airlines DC-3. This near collision is Volume II of "The Classics."
On the evening of July 24, 1948, an Eastern Airlines DC-3 took off
from Houston, Texas. It was on a scheduled trip to Atlanta, with
intermediate stops in between. The pilots were Clarence S. Chiles and
John B. Whitted. At about 2:45 A.M., when the flight was 20 miles
southwest of Montgomery, the captain, Chiles, saw a light dead ahead
and closing fast. His first reaction, he later reported to an ATIC
investigation team, was that it was a jet, but in an instant he
realized that even a jet couldn't close as fast as this light was
closing. Chiles said he reached over, gave Whitted, the other pilot,
a quick tap on the arm, and pointed. The UFO was now almost on top of
them. Chiles racked the DC-3 into a tight left turn. Just as the UFO
flashed by about 700 feet to the right, the DC-3 hit turbulent air.
Whitted looked back just as the UFO pulled up in a steep climb.
Both the pilots had gotten a good look at the UFO and were able to
give a good description to the Air Force intelligence people. It was
a B-29 fuselage. The underside had a "deep blue glow." There were
"two rows of windows from which bright lights glowed," and a "50-foot
trail of orange-red flame" shot out the back.
Only one passenger was looking out of the window at the time. The
ATIC investigators talked to him. He said he saw a "strange, eerie
streak of light, very intense," but that was all, no details. He said
that it all happened before he could adjust his eyes to the darkness.
Minutes later a crew chief at Robins Air Force Base in Macon,
Georgia, reported seeing an extremely bright light pass overhead,
traveling at a high speed. A few days later another report from the
night of July 24 came in. A pilot, flying near the Virginia-North
Carolina state line, reported that he had seen a "bright shooting
star" in the direction of Montgomery, Alabama, at about the exact
time the Eastern Airlines DC-3 was "buzzed."
According to the old timers at ATIC, this report shook them worse
than the Mantell Incident. This 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. A quick check on a map
showed that the UFO that nearly collided with the airliner would have
passed almost over Macon, Georgia, after passing the DC-3. It had
been turning toward Macon when last seen. The story of the crew chief
at Robins AFB, 200 miles away, seemed to confirm the sighting, not to
mention the report from near the Virginia-North Carolina state line.
In intelligence, if you have something to say about some vital
problem you write a report that is known as an "Estimate of the
Situation." A few days after the DC-3 was buzzed, the people at ATIC
decided that the time had arrived to make an Estimate of the
Situation. The situation was the UFO's; the estimate was that they
were interplanetary!
It was a rather thick document with a black cover and it was printed
on legal-sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words TOP
SECRET.
It contained the Air Force's analysis of many of the incidents I
have told you about plus many similar ones. All of them had come from
scientists, pilots, and other equally credible observers, and each
one was an unknown.
The document pointed out that the reports hadn't actually started
with the Arnold Incident. Belated reports from a weather observer in
Richmond, Virginia, who observed a "silver disk" through his
theodolite telescope; an F-47 pilot and three pilots in his formation
who saw a "silver flying wing," and the English "ghost airplanes"
that had been picked up on radar early in 1947 proved this point.
Although reports on them were not received until after the Arnold
sighting, these incidents all had taken place earlier.
When the estimate was completed, typed, and approved, it started up
through channels to higher-command echelons. It drew considerable
comment but no one stopped it on its way up.
A matter of days after the Estimate of the Situation was signed,
sealed, and sent on its way, the third big sighting of 1948, Volume
III of "The Classics," took place. The date was October 1, and the
place was Fargo, North Dakota; it was the famous Gorman Incident, in
which a pilot fought a "duel of death" with a UFO.
The pilot was George F. Gorman, a twenty-five-year-old second
lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard.
It was eight-thirty in the evening and Gorman was coming into Fargo
from a cross-country flight. He flew around Fargo for a while and
about nine o'clock decided to land. He called the control tower for
landing instructions and was told that a Piper Cub was in the area.
He saw the Cub below him. All of a sudden what appeared to be the
taillight of another airplane passed him on his right. He called the
tower and complained but they assured him that no other aircraft
except the Cub were in the area. Gorman could still see the light so
he decided to find out what it was. He pushed the F-51 over into a
turn and cut in toward the light. He could plainly see the Cub
outlined against the city lights below, but he could see no outline
of a body near the mysterious light. He gave the '51 more power and
closed to within a 1,000 yards, close enough to estimate that the
light was 6 to 8 inches in diameter, was sharply outlined, and was
blinking on and off. Suddenly the light became steady as it
apparently put on power; it pulled into a sharp left bank and made a
pass at the tower. The light zoomed up with the F-51 in hot pursuit.
At 7,000 feet it made a turn. Gorman followed and tried to cut inside
the light's turn to get closer to it but he couldn't do it. The light
made another turn, and this time the '51 closed on a collision
course. The UFO appeared to try to ram the '51, and Gorman had to
dive to get out of the way. The UFO passed over the '51's canopy with
only a few feet to spare. Again both the F-51 and the object turned
and closed on each other head on, and again the pilot had to dive out
to prevent a collision. All of a sudden the light began to climb and
disappeared.
"I had the distinct impression that its maneuvers were controlled by
thought or reason," Gorman later told ATIC investigators.
Four other observers at Fargo partially corroborated his story, an
oculist, Dr. A. D. Cannon, the Cub's pilot, and his passenger, Einar
Neilson. They saw a light "moving fast," but did not witness all the
maneuvers that Gorman reported. Two CAA employees on the ground saw a
light move over the field once.
Project Sign investigators rushed to Fargo. They had wired ahead to
ground the plane. They wanted to check it over before it flew again.
When they arrived, only a matter of hours after the incident, they
went over the airplane, from the prop spinner to the rudder trim tab,
with a Geiger counter. A chart in the official report shows where
every Geiger counter reading was taken. For comparison they took
readings on a similar airplane that hadn't been flown for several
days. Gorman's airplane was more radioactive. They rushed around, got
sworn statements from the tower operators and oculist, and flew back
to Dayton.
In the file on the Gorman Incident I found an old memo reporting the
meeting that was held upon the ATIC team's return from Fargo. The
memo concluded that some weird things were taking place.
The historians of the UFO agree. Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine
Corps major and a professional writer, author of _The_ _Flying_
_Saucers_ _Are_ _Real_ and _Flying_ _Saucers_ _from_ _Outer_ _Space_,
needles the Air Force about the Gorman Incident, pointing out how,
after feebly hinting that the light could have been a lighted weather
balloon, they dropped it like a hot UFO. Some person by the name of
Wilkins, in an equally authoritative book, says that the Gorman
Incident "stumped" the Air Force. Other assorted historians point out
that normally the UFO's are peaceful, Gorman and Mantell just got too
inquisitive, "they" just weren't ready to be observed closely. If the
Air Force hadn't slapped down the security lid, these writers might
not have reached this conclusion. There have been other and more
lurid "duels of death."
On June 21, 1952, at 10:58P.M., a Ground Observer Corps spotter
reported that a slow-moving craft was nearing the AEC's Oak Ridge
Laboratory, an area so secret that it is prohibited to aircraft. The
spotter called the light into his filter center and the filter center
relayed the message to the ground control intercept radar. They had a
target. But before they could do more than confirm the GOC spotter's
report, the target faded from the radarscope.
An F-47 aircraft on combat air patrol in the area was vectored in
visually, spotted a light, and closed on it. They "fought" from
10,000 to 27,000 feet, and several times the object made what seemed
to be ramming attacks. The light was described as white, 6 to 8
inches in diameter, and blinking until it put on power. The pilot
could see no silhouette around the light. The similarity to the Fargo
case was striking.
On the night of December 10, 1952, near another atomic installation,
the Hanford plant in Washington, the pilot and radar observer of a
patrolling F-94 spotted a light while flying at 26,000 feet. The crew
called their ground control station and were told that no planes were
known to be in the area. They closed on the object and saw a large,
round, white "thing" with a dim reddish light coming from two
"windows." They lost visual contact, but got a radar lock-on. They
reported that when they attempted to close on it again it would
reverse direction and dive away. Several times the plane altered
course itself because collision seemed imminent.
In each of these instances, as well as in the case narrated next,
the sources of the stories were trained airmen with excellent
reputations. They were sincerely baffled by what they had seen. They
had no conceivable motive for falsifying or "dressing up" their
reports.
The other dogfight occurred September 24, 1952, between a Navy pilot
of a TBM and a light over Cuba.
The pilot had just finished making some practice passes for night
fighters when he spotted an orange light to the east of his plane. He
checked on aircraft in the area, learned that the object was
unidentified, and started after it. Here is his report, written
immediately after he landed:
As it [the light] approached the city from the east it started a
left turn. I started to intercept. During the first part of the chase
the closest I got to the light was 8 to 10 miles. At this time it
appeared to be as large as an SNJ and had a greenish tail that looked
to be five to six times as long as the light's diameter. This tail
was seen several times in the next 10 minutes in periods of from 5 to
30 seconds each. As I reached 10,000 feet it appeared to be at 15,000
feet and in a left turn. It took 40 degrees of bank to keep the nose
of my plane on the light. At this time I estimated the light to be in
a 10-to-15-mile orbit.
At 12,000 feet I stopped climbing, but the light was still climbing
faster than I was. I then reversed my turn from left to right and the
light also reversed. As I was not gaining distance, I held a steady
course south trying to estimate a perpendicular between the light and
myself. The light was moving north, so I turned north. As I turned,
the light appeared to move west, then south over the base. I again
tried to intercept but the light appeared to climb rapidly at a 60-
degree angle. It climbed to 35,000 feet, then started a rapid descent.
Prior to this, while the light was still at approximately 15,000
feet, I deliberately placed it between the moon and myself three
times to try to identify a solid body. I and my two crewmen all had a
good view of the light as it passed the moon. We could see no solid
body. We considered the fact that it might be an aerologist's
balloon, but we did not see a silhouette. Also, we would have rapidly
caught up with and passed a balloon.
During its descent, the light appeared to slow down at about 10,000
feet, at which time I made three runs on it. Two were on a 90-degree
collision course, and the light traveled at tremendous speed across
my bow. On the third run I was so close that the light blanked out
the airfield below me. Suddenly it started a dive and I followed,
losing it at 1,500 feet.
In _this_ incident the UFO _was_ a balloon.
The following night a lighted balloon was sent up and the pilot was
ordered up to compare his experiences. He duplicated his dogfight--
illusions and all. The Navy furnished us with a long analysis of the
affair, explaining how the pilot had been fooled.
In the case involving the ground observer and the F-47 near the
atomic installation, we plotted the winds and calculated that a
lighted balloon was right at the spot where the pilot encountered the
light.
In the other instance, the "white object with two windows," we found
that a skyhook balloon had been plotted at the exact site of the
"battle."
Gorman fought a lighted balloon too. An analysis of the sighting by
the Air Weather Service sent to ATIC in a letter dated January 24,
1949, proved it. The radioactive F-51 was decontaminated by a memo
from a Wright Field laboratory explaining that a recently flown
airplane will be more radioactive than one that has been on the
ground for several days. An airplane at 20,000 to 30,000 feet picks
up more cosmic rays than one shielded by the earth's ever present haze.
Why can't experienced pilots recognize a balloon when they see one?
If they are flying at night, odd things can happen to their vision.
There is the problem of vertigo as well as disorientation brought on
by flying without points of reference. Night fighters have told
dozens of stories of being fooled by lights.
One night during World War II we had just dumped a load of bombs on
a target when a "night fighter" started to make a pass at us.
Everyone in the cockpit saw the fighter's red-hot exhaust stack as he
bore down on us. I cut loose with six caliber-.50 machine guns.
Fortunately I missed the "night fighter"--if I'd have shot it I'd
have fouled up the astronomers but good because the "night fighter"
was Venus.
While the people on Project Sign were pondering over Lieutenant
Gorman's dogfight with the UFO--at the time they weren't even
considering the balloon angle--the Top Secret Estimate of the
Situation was working its way up into the higher echelons of the Air
Force. It got to the late General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, then Chief of
Staff, before it was batted back down. The general wouldn't buy
interplanetary vehicles. The report lacked proof. A group from ATIC
went to the Pentagon to bolster their position but had no luck, the
Chief of Staff just couldn't be convinced.
The estimate died a quick death. Some months later it was completely
declassified and relegated to the incinerator. A few copies, one of
which I saw, were kept as mementos of the golden days of the UFO's.
The top Air Force command's refusal to buy the interplanetary theory
didn't have any immediate effect upon the morale of Project Sign
because the reports were getting better.
A belated report that is more of a collectors' item than a good UFO
sighting came into ATIC in the fall of 1948. It was from Moscow.
Someone, I could never find out exactly who, reported a huge "smudge-
like" object in the sky.
Then radar came into the picture. For months the anti-saucer
factions had been pointing their fingers at the lack of radar
reports, saying, "If they exist, why don't they show up on
radarscopes?" When they showed up on radarscopes, the UFO won some
converts.
On October 15 an F-61, a World War II "Black Widow" night fighter,
was on patrol over Japan when it picked up an unidentified target on
its radar. The target was flying between 5,000 and 6,000 feet and
traveling about 200 miles per hour. When the F-61 tried to intercept
it would get to within 12,000 feet of the UFO only to have it
accelerate to an estimated 1,200 miles per hour, leaving the F-61 far
behind before slowing down again. The F-61 crew made six attempts to
close on the UFO. On one pass, the crew said, they did get close
enough to see its silhouette. It was 20 to 30 feet long and looked
"like a rifle bullet."
Toward the end of November a wire came into Project Sign from
Germany. It was the first report where a UFO was seen and
simultaneously picked up on radar. This type of report, the first of
many to come, is one of the better types of UFO reports. The wire said:
At 2200 hours, local time, 23 November 1948, Capt. ------ saw an
object in the air directly east of this base. It was at an unknown
altitude. It looked like a reddish star and was moving in a southerly
direction across Munich, turning slightly to the southwest then the
southeast. The speed could have been between 200 to 600 mph, the
actual speed could not be estimated, not knowing the height. Capt. ---
--- called base operations and they called the radar station. Radar
reported that they had seen nothing on their scope but would check
again. Radar then called operations to report that they did have a
target at 27,000 feet, some 30 miles south of Munich, traveling at
900 mph. Capt. ------ reported that the object that he saw was now in
that area. A few minutes later radar called again to say that the
target had climbed to 50,000 feet, and was circling 40 miles south of
Munich.
Capt. ------ is an experienced pilot now flying F-80's and is
considered to be completely reliable. The sighting was verified by
Capt. ------ , also an F-80 pilot.
The possibility that this was a balloon was checked but the answer
from Air Weather Service was "not a balloon." No aircraft were in the
area. Nothing we know of, except possibly experimental aircraft,
which are not in Germany, can climb 23,000 feet in a matter of
minutes and travel 900 miles per hour.
By the end of 1948, Project Sign had received several hundred UFO
reports. Of these, 167 had been saved as good reports. About three
dozen were "Unknown." Even though the UFO reports were getting better
and more numerous, the enthusiasm over the interplanetary idea was
cooling off. The same people who had fought to go to Godman AFB to
talk to Colonel Hix and his UFO observers in January now had to be
prodded when a sighting needed investigating. More and more work was
being pushed off onto the other investigative organization that was
helping ATIC. The kickback on the Top Secret Estimate of the
Situation was beginning to dampen a lot of enthusiasms. It was
definitely a bear market for UFO's.
A bull market was on the way, however. Early 1949 was to bring
"little lights" and green fireballs.
The "little lights" were UFO's, but the green fireballs were real.