Documents / Document
This 92-page Project Blue Book file, released through The Black Vault, covers the 7 January 1948 sighting at Godman Field, Fort Knox, Kentucky. It holds control tower witness reports, a record of the P-51 pursuit led by Captain Thomas Mantell, AMC requests for theodolite readings and weather data, and astronomical tables for Venus and the Moon. One analysis concludes the object was not Venus and calls the sighting unexplained. The file also includes a 1964 letter to the Simpson County coroner about Mantell's death.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
At approximately 1300 hrs. a call came to this Headquarters from State Police, reporting a flying object near Elizabethtown. Another report case in from Madisonville about ten minutes later. A third call came in from Lexington, Kentucky. (All these towns are south of Godman Field). We alerted the Tower to be on the lookout for flying objects. At 1445 hrs. the Tower notified me that an object had been sighted at about 2150. I went to the Tower and observed the object until 1550 hrs. when it disappeared behind the clouds. The object observed could be plainly seen with the naked eye, and appeared to be about one-quarter the size of a full moon, white in color. Through eight-power binoculars, the object seemed to have a red border at the bottom, at times, and a red border at the top at times. It remained stationary for 1½ hours. when I arrived in the Tower, Tech. Sgt. Quinton Blackwell had contacted there P-51 airplanes over the field and suggested that they have a look if they had sufficient fuel. When I arrived, they were within sight of the Tower, headed on a course of 2150. I heard one of the pilots report that he saw the object straight ahead and estimated the apped of 180 M.P.H. The pilot stated that the object was very large and very bright. /s/ Guy P. Hix Guy P. HIX Colonel, USAF Convancing CERTIFIED A TRUS COPY JAMES F. DUESLER, JR. CAPTAIN, USAF DOWNGRADED AT 3 YEAR INTERVALS; DECLASSIFIED AFTER 12 YEARS. 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. 93 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.