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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.
“Mission Control”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
STATEMENT OF LT PAUL I. ORNER (cont'd)
NG800 gassed up and got more oxygen and flew a second mission on the same heading of $ 2 1 0^{\circ} $ to a position of about 100 miles south of Godman Field to an altitude of 33 thousand feet and did not sight the object. At about 1645 CST when NG800 reported not seeing the object I left the Control Tower.
At about 1735 CST I returned to the Control Tower and a bright light different than a star at a position of about $ 2 4 0 ^{0} $ azimuth and $ 8 ^{0} $ elevation from the Control Tower. This was a round object. It seemed to have a dark spot in the center and the object moved north and disappeared from the horizon at a point $ 2 5 0 ^{0} $ from the Tower. The unusual fact about this object was the fact that it remained visible and glowed through the haze near the Earth when no other stars were visible and did not disappear until it went below the level of the Earth in a manner similar to the sun or moon setting. This object was viewed and tracked with the Weather Station theodolite from the hangar roof.
DOWNGRADED AT 8 YEAR DECLASSIFIED AFTER 12 YEAR DOD DIR 5200.10 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.