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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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
315TH A7 BASE UNIT (223 TNG) GODMAN FIELD, FORT KNOCK, KENTUCKY
The undersigned was on duty at Godman Field 7 Jan 48 as Operations Officer.
At approximately 1400 hours and 7 minutes, 7 Jan 48 I received a call from Lt. Orner, AACS Detachment Commander, that the Tower had spotted an unidentified object and re-quested that I take a look. Lt. Orner pointed out the object to the southwest, which was easily discernible with the naked eye. The object appeared round and white (whiter than the clouds that passed in front of it) and could be seen through cirrus clouds. After looking through field glasses for approximately 3 or 4 minutes I called Co. Mix's office, advising that office of the object's presence. Lt. Col. Wood and Capt. Duealar came to the tower immediately. Col Mix followed them.
About this time a flight of four P-51 aircraft were noticed approaching from the south. I asked Tec. Sgt. Blackwell, Tower Operator, to contact the planes and see if they would take a look at the object for us. The planes were contacted and stated they had sufficient gas to take a look. One of the planes proceeded on to Standiford, the other planes were given a heading of $230^{\circ}$. One of the planes said he spotted the object at 1200 o'clock and was climbing toward it. One of the planes then said, "This ks 15,000 ft., let's level out". One of the planes, at this point (apparently the plane who saw the subject) estimated its speed (the object's) at 18CM.P.H. A few seconds later he stated the object was going up and forward as fast as he was. He stated that he was going to 20,000 feet, and if no closer was going to abandon the chase. This was the last radio contact I heard. It was impossible to identify which plane was doing the talking in the above report. Later we heard that one plane had landed at Standiford to get fuel and oxygen to resume the search.
The undersigned reported to Flight Service a description, position of the object while the planes searched for it.
"CERTIFIED A TRUZ COPY"
/5/ Cary W. Carter
CARY W. CARTER
Captain, USA
JAMES F. DUESLER, JR. CAPTAIN, USA7 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.