Case · C-006
Captain Mantell dies chasing an object over Fort Knox
Godman Army Airfield, Fort Knox, Kentucky (crash south of Franklin) · United States · Jan 7, 1948
In flight Mixed witness types
Explained
- What happened
- In the early afternoon the Kentucky highway patrol reported an unusual object and the staff of the Godman Field tower watched it at length; a formation of four F-51 fighters of the Kentucky Air National Guard, returning from an exercise, was asked to examine it. Captain Thomas Mantell climbed toward 25,000 feet without oxygen, lost consciousness and crashed on a farm south of Franklin, on the Tennessee border; the Air Force attributed the crash to hypoxia. The Project Blue Book case file on the incident is held at the National Archives (microfilm T1206), but was not found online in this search.
- Proposed explanation
- The astronomer J. Allen Hynek, an Air Force consultant, suggested in 1948 the planet Venus, a hypothesis later withdrawn; Edward Ruppelt and Project Blue Book (1952) identified the object as a Navy Skyhook balloon, in line with the binocular observation of the astronomer Carl Seyfert. A 2023 Army article recalls, however, that there are no documents proving or excluding that it was a Skyhook balloon.
- Official investigation
- U.S. Air Force (Project Sign, then Project Blue Book)
Sources
- U.S. Army / DVIDS, Eric Pilgrim – “Questions remain 75 years after mysterious Fort Knox UFO incident” (2023) (press)
- Wikipedia – Mantell UFO incident (other)
On this site
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