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Checking the astronomer"s report, I read over the concluding statement:

"It simply could not have been Venus. They must have been desperate even to suggest it in the first place." Months later, in the secret Project "Saucer" report released December 30, 1949, I found official confirmation of this astronomer"s opinions. Since it has a peculiar bearing on the Mantell case, I am quoting it now:

When Venus is at its greatest brilliance, it is possible to see it during daytime when one knows exactly where to look. But on January 7, 1948, Venus was less than half as bright as its peak brilliance. However, under exceptionally good atmospheric conditions, and with the eye shielded from direct rays of the sun, Venus might be seen as an exceedingly tiny bright point of light.

. . . However, the chances of looking at just the right spot are very few.

It has been unofficially reported that the object was a Navy cosmic-ray research balloon. If this can be established, it Is to be preferred as an explanation. However, if one accepts the a.s.sumption that reports from various other localities refer to the same object, any such device must have been a good many miles high--25 to 50--in order to have been seen clearly, almost simultaneously, from places 175 miles apart.

If all reports were of a single object, in the knowledge of this investigator no man-made object could have been large enough and far enough away for the approximate simultaneous sightings. It is most unlikely, however, that so many separated persons should at that time have chanced on Venus in the daylight sky. It seems therefore much more probable that more than one object was involved.

The sighting might have included two or more balloons (or aircraft) or they might have included Venus and balloons. For reasons given above, the latter explanation seems more likely.

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Two things stand out in his report:

1. The obvious determination to fit some explanation, no matter how farfetched, to the Mantell sighting.

2. The impossibility that Venus--a tiny point of light, seen only with difficulty--was the tremendous metallic object described by Mantell and seen by G.o.dman Field officers.

With Venus eliminated, I went to work on the balloon theory. Since I had been a balloon pilot before learning to fly planes, this was fairly familiar ground.

Shallett"s alternate theory that Mantell had chased a Navy research balloon was widely repeated by readers unfamiliar with balloon operation. Few thought to check the speeds, heights, and distances involved.

Cosmic-ray research balloons are not powered; they are set free to drift with the wind. This particular Navy type is released at a base near Minneapolis. The gas bag is filled with only a small per cent of its helium capacity before the take-off.

In a routine flight, the balloon ascends rapidly to a very high alt.i.tude-as high as 100,000 feet. By this time the gas bag has swelled to full size, about l00 feet high and 70 feet in diameter. At a set time, a device releases the case of instruments under the balloon. The instruments descend by parachute, and the balloon, rising quickly, explodes from the sudden expansion.

Occasionally a balloon starts leaking, and it then remains relatively low. At first glance, this might seem the answer to the Kentucky sightings. If the balloon were low enough, it would loom up as a large circular object, as seen from directly below. Some witnesses might estimate its diameter as 250 feet or more, instead of its actual 70 feet. But this failure to recognize a balloon would require incredibly poor vision on the part of trained observers--state police, Army M.P."s, the G.o.dman Field officers, Mantell and his pilots.

Captain Mantell was a wartime pilot, with over three thousand hours in the air. He was trained to identify a distant enemy plane in a split second. His vision was perfect, and so was that of his pilots. In broad daylight

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they could not fail to recognize a balloon during their thirty-minute chase.

Colonel Hix and the other G.o.dman officers watched the object with high-powered gla.s.ses for long periods. It is incredible that they would not identify it as a balloon.

Before its appearance over G.o.dman Field, the leaking balloon would have drifted, at a low alt.i.tude, over several hundred miles. (A leak large enough to bring it down from high alt.i.tude would have caused it to land and be found.) Drifting at a low alt.i.tude, it would have been seen by several hundred thousand people, at the very least. Many would have reported it as a balloon. But even if this angle is ignored it still could not possibly have been a balloon at low alt.i.tude. The fast flight from Madisonville, the abrupt stop and hour-long hovering at G.o.dman Field, the quick bursts of speed Mantell reported make it impossible. To fly the go miles from Madisonville to Fort Knox in 30 minutes, a balloon would require a wind of 180 m.p.h. After traveling at this hurricane speed, it would then have had to come to a dead stop above G.o.dman Field. As the P-51"s approached, it would have had to speed tip again to 180, then to more than 360 to keep ahead of Mantell.

The three fighter pilots chased the mysterious object for half an hour. (I have several times chased balloons with a plane, overtaking them in seconds.) In a straight chase, Mantell would have been closing in at 360; the tail wind acting on his fighter would nullify the balloon"s forward drift.

But even if you accept these improbable factors, there is one final fact that nullifies the balloon explanation. The strange object had disappeared when Mantell"s wingman searched the sky, just after the leader"s death. If it had been a balloon held stationary for an hour at a high alt.i.tude, and glowing brightly enough to be seen through clouds, it would have remained visible in the same general position.

Seen from 33,000 feet, it would have been even brighter, because of the clearer air.

But the mysterious object had completely vanished in

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those few minutes. A search covering a hundred miles failed to reveal a trace.

Whether at a high or low alt.i.tude, a balloon could not have escaped the pilot"s eyes. It would also have continued to be seen at G.o.dman Field and other points, through occasional breaks in the clouds.

I pointed out these facts to one Air Force officer at the Pentagon.

Next day he phoned me:

"I figured it out. The timing device went off and the balloon exploded. That"s why the pilot didn"t see it."

"It"s an odd coincidence," I said, "that it exploded in those five minutes after Mantell"s last report."

"Even so, it"s obviously the answer," he said.

Checking on this angle, I found:

1. No one in the Kentucky area had reported a descending parachute.

2. No cosmic-ray research instrument case or parachute was found in the area.

3. No instruments were returned to the Navy from this region. And all balloons and instruments released at that time were fully accounted for.

Even if it had been a balloon, it would not explain the later January 7th reports--the simultaneous sightings mentioned by Professor Hynek in the Project "Saucer" report. This includes the thing seen at Lockbourne Air Force Base two hours after Mantell"s death.

Obviously, the saucer seen flying at 500 m.p.h. over Lockbourne Field could not have been a balloon. Even if there had been several balloons in this area (and there were not, by official record), they could not have covered the courses reported. In some cases, they would have been flying against the wind, at terrific speed.

Then what was the mysterious object? And what killed Mantell?

Both the Air Force and the Post articles speculate that Mantell carelessly let himself black out.

Since some explanation had to be given, this might seem a good answer.

But Mantell was known for coolheaded judgment. As a wartime pilot, he was familiar with signs of anoxia (oxygen starvation). That he knew his tolerance for alt.i.tude is proved by his firmly declared

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intention to abandon the chase at 20,000 feet, since he had no oxygen equipment.

Mantell had his altimeter to warn him. From experience, he would recognize the first vague blurring, narrowing of vision, and other signs of anoxia. Despite this, the "blackout" explanation was accepted as plausible by many Americans.

While investigating the Mantell case, I talked with several pilots and aeronautical engineers. Several questioned that a P-51 starting a dive from 20,000 feet would have disintegrated so thoroughly.

"From thirty thousand feet, yes," said one engineer. "If the idea was to explain it away, I"d pick a high alt.i.tude to start from. But a pilotless plane doesn"t necessarily dive, as you know.

"It might slip off and spin, or spiral down, and a few have even landed themselves. Also, if the plane started down from twenty thousand, the pilot wouldn"t be too far blacked out. The odds are he"d come to when he got into thicker air--admitting he did blur out, which is only an Air Force guess. I don"t see why they"re so positive Mantell died before he hit the ground--unless they know something we don"t."

One of the pilot group put it more bluntly.

"It looks like a cover-up to me. I think Mantell did just what he said he would--close in on the thing. I think he either collided with it, or more likely they knocked him out of the air. They"d think he was trying to bring them down, barging in like that."

Even if you accept the blackout answer, it still does not explain what Mantell was chasing. it is possible that, excited by the huge, mysterious object, he recklessly climbed beyond the danger level, though such an act was completely at odds with his character.

But the ident.i.ty of the thing remains--officially--a mystery. If it was some weird experimental craft or a guided missile, then whose was it? Air Force officers had repeatedly told me they had no such device.