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This Project Blue Book case file covers the 7 January 1948 incident at Godman Field, Fort Knox, Kentucky, which the file itself calls the famous "Mantell case." It holds control tower witness statements describing a large, bright object and the three P-51s sent to pursue it, whose flight leader, Mantell, stopped answering after climbing past 15,000 feet. It also includes weather data and Air Materiel Command correspondence. One analysis concludes that the object was not Venus and that the sighting must be considered unexplained.
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"Maxwell Flight Service Center made a long distance call to Franklin, Kentucky and spoke to police officer Joe Walker, who took charge at the scene of the accident. "Officer Walker stated that when he arrived the pilots body had been removed from the aircraft. Upon questioning eye witnesses, Officer Walker learned that the aircraft had exploded in the air before it hit the ground, but, that the aircraft did not burn upon contact with the ground. "The wreckage was scattered over an area of about one mile, and at that time the tail section, one wing, and the propeller had not been located. "Lt Tyler, Operations Officer at Standiford Field, departed Standiford Field for Bolling Green, Kentucky in NG 8101 to investigate the accident Also at our suggestion an investigation party and Military Police were dispatched from Godman Field to the scene. "So much for the accident - now hold on to your hat! "Godman Tower again contacted us to report that there was a large light in the sky in the approximate position of the object seen earlier. Then Lockbourne Tower and Clinton County Tower advised a great ball of light was traveling southwest across the sky. "We then contacted Olmsted Flight Service Center and gave them all the information available to deliver to the Air Defense Command at Mitchel Field, Hempstead, New York. "Later we received a call from St Louis Tower advising that a great ball of light was passing directly over the field - Scott Tower also verified this. "We then received a call from Air Defense Command through Olmsted Flight Service Center advising us to alert Coffeyville, Kansas, Ft Smith, Arkansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and that they had plotted the object as moving WSW at 250 miles per hour. "We then received information from Maxwell Flight Service Center that a Dr. Seyfert, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University, had spotted an object SSE of Nashville, Tennessee that he identified as a pear shaped balloon with cables and a basket attached, moving first SSE, then W, at a speed of 10 miles per hour at 25,000 feet. This was observed between 1630C and 1645C. " Olmsted Flight Service Center then advised us to instruct Godman Field to forward a complete report of the whole incident to Air Defense Command at Mitchel Field, Hempstead, New York as soon as possible. "The Military Police at the scene of the accident called back and ad- vised Godman Field that someone at Madisonville, Kentucky had observed, through a Finch telescope an object described as cone shaped, 100 feet from top to bottom, 45 feet across, and 4 miles high proceeding 57 at 10 miles per hour,
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 75 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.