The Mantell Incident: When a US Air Force Pilot Stopped Chasing a UFO
On January 7, 1948, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, 25, a pilot in the Kentucky Air National Guard, was killed in a plane crash. He was flying his P-51 Mustang around Franklin after he was sent to search for an unidentified aircraft. This event became one of the first incidents of the most publicized UFO-related events in the United States.
One of the most famous UFO cases in the United States was the accident that happened to Captain Mantell while chasing a UFO.
Captain Mantell’s accident is believed to have occurred in 1948 and is recorded on old film.
Captain Mantell’s accident
On January 7, 1948, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, 25, a pilot in the Kentucky Air National Guard, was killed in a plane crash. He was flying his P-51 Mustang around Franklin after he was sent to search for an unidentified aircraft.
This event became one of the first incidents of the most publicized UFO-related events in the United States.
Additional investigations by the US Air Force Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell may have been killed while chasing the Skyhook Globe, which in 1948 was a secret project he knew nothing about.
The captain chased the UFO down a steep incline and ignored warning signs to level off. His altitude reached the point where he passed out from lack of oxygen. His plane went into a downward spiral and crashed.
In 1956, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the original leader of Project Blue Book, described the Mantell crash as one of the 3 “classic” UFO incidents in 1948.
UFO cases
This helped establish the phenomenon in the public mind and also convinced some intelligence experts that these events were a true aerial phenomenon.
Somewhere in the Air Force or Navy archives there are records confirming that on January 7, 1948, regardless of whether it was launched from Clinton County Air Force Base, Ohio.
However, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was never able to find these records.
The people who worked on the first air hook designs “remember” working at the Clinton County Air Force Base in 1947. However, they refuse to limit themselves to just one flight on January 7.
This case continues to cause controversy in the US Air Force, as some experts claim that there are images of the incident.
